johnnydoom
My background , study and training is/was in the field of Science, specifically the health and medical field. I managed a large, teaching University , research department. Anything we did was peer reviewed in depth by our team and also often by affiliate research departments at other hospitals before submitted for publication. You are correct that a good chunk of the research studies we see posted in mainstream media etc are biased and might have an agenda.....this is where people get mislead.
when I took advanced stats in my first Uni degree, our Prof made a statement that with any research , you can prove or disprove your thesis depending on the on the statistical methods and tests you choose. This gets abused and it's why you see so many research reports get debunked and disproven once they are peer reviewed and analyzed using the proper or better tools.
One of the projects this prof assigned was to perform a research study then analyze the data using 3 different ( but all good and accepted) statistical tests and methodologies. Two needed to prove our thesis and one disprove it. Then as a follow-up assignment , we were given somebody else's project that they proved and we had to disprove it using accepted statistical methodologies.
Bottom line is there are legitimized peer reviewed research papers published all they time and anyone can find and access these. JAMA, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine are just a few of the best peer reviewed Journals out there that you can have confidence in.
