Politicians and talking heads aren't the only ones playing the spin game--researchers are fiendishly good at it, too.

Science is supposed to be impartial, but a new analysis reveals the sad and frightening truth: Studies published in some of the world's leading medical journals often reach conclusions that are completely at odds with the actual data.

British and French researchers looked at 72 recent studies, and found that half of them reached conclusions that made the treatments look good, even when a closer look at the results in the study itself revealed otherwise, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

That's assuming they didn't fudge their own conclusions, of course.

Even worse, the peer-review process in place at these journals often fails to pick up on the biases, false conclusions and outright lies, according to the new study.

Take a 2000 study on Vioxx, which found the drug had a fivefold increase in heart risk when compared to an older med.

Should be pretty clear, right?

It would have been--if the researchers behind that study came out and put it that way.

But they didn't.

Instead, those researchers declared that the other drug in their study simply prevented those extra heart attacks, according to the new analysis. It wasn't a weakness in Vioxx--just extra protection from the other drug, they claimed.

Well, we all know what happened after that... Vioxx was ultimately pulled from the market over that very same heart risk these earlier researchers hid.

That's some pretty deadly spin.

Another common trick is to hide or completely ignore the placebo, making antidepressants and other psychiatric meds look much more effective than they really are, since these meds are often put to shame by simple sugar pills.

I've warned you about shady research before... and this study just scratches the surface. Some studies are designed from the beginning to favor the drug, so they don't even have to hide the real conclusion.

In other cases, they simply cut a study short as soon as they get the results they want. An analysis published earlier this year found that shortened trials almost always make a drug look more effective than it really is.

And if all that smoke and all those mirrors still can't make a drug look good, they still have one other option: Sweep the whole thing under the rug, and make sure the study never gets published.

One 2008 analysis looked at 71 trials on antidepressant meds. Of 38 positive studies, 37 were published. Most of those remaining studies--the negative ones--never saw the light of day, and the ones that did were published with positive spin.

The researchers behind the new analysis say they believe their fellow researchers aren't out to cheat--they're merely "enthusiastic."

But you and I know better than that.

These people know exactly what they're doing--and they should be ashamed of themselves.

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