Medical Research Has Both Good And Bad Points

Medical research is the basic research, applied research, or translational research that is done to add to and support the body of knowledge in the field of medicine. Different kinds of medical studies exist. Research on public health, biochemistry, clinical research, microbiology, physiology, oncology, surgery, and many other non-communicable diseases may be part of medical research. Medical research can be broken down into two main groups: clinical trials, which test new treatments for safety and effectiveness, and all other research that helps make new treatments possible.

This type of research is called "preclinical" if its main goal is to find out more so that new therapeutic strategies can be made. Translational research is a new way of thinking about biomedical research. It focuses on feedback loops between basic and clinical research to speed up the transfer of knowledge from the bedside to the bench and back again.

Find the original study of the clinical trial you are going to evaluate. You can find this information on the publication's website, in the library, or through other online resources. Check to see where the study has been published before. Peer-reviewed journals are the best place to look for this information. Articles in other publications don't seem as real. If you see references to a study in ads or on a website that is trying to sell you something, don't believe them until you can find, evaluate, and measure the original study.

Pictures of Medical Research

Look into or find out more about the people who did the study. People who do research on a subject and work for a university or institution are the most credible. When scientists or research staff write about things that aren't in their field of expertise, their writing will have less credibility. Articles from writers who don't have qualifications or who aren't part of a well-known institution shouldn't be accepted until the author's credentials are checked out further.

Find out how many people took part in the study and how they were chosen. The more people who take part in the study, the better the results. However, the people who are chosen for the trial should all have age and gender that seem right for the research goals. Is there a group that serves as a control? If there is and the study groups were picked at random, people will be more likely to believe the results.

Look at the study's findings and results:

a) Do the results seem to support the conclusions?

b) Does the conclusion build on what other studies have found, or is it something new?

c) Do the investigators seem to be more optimistic than they should be about their findings? Were they really fair, or did they have too much information before coming to their conclusions about the study results? Decide if the study does what it was supposed to do and, if it doesn't, if the researchers explain the difference well.