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How Statistical Deception Created the Appearance That Statins Are Safe and Effective in Primary and Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease

David Diamond and Uffe Ravnskov argue that the widely described benefits of statins are largely attributable to the strategic use of statistical techniques to increase the perceived benefits and minimize the perceived risks, noting: “the presentation of statin trial findings can be characterized as a deceptive strategy in which negligible benefits of statin treatment have been amplified with the use of relative risk statistics, and that serious adverse effects are either ignored or explained away as ... chance occurrences. Moreover, the authors of these studies have presented the rate of adverse events in terms of absolute risk, which, compared to relative risk, minimizes the appearance of their magnitudes.”

Read MoreHow Statistical Deception Created the Appearance That Statins Are Safe and Effective in Primary and Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease