If you're concerned with studies, there's literally dozens of studies that prove how bad blocking DHT is and how important DHT for males are.
Pigeon posts a lot of those studies along with others. I could also post those same studies but see no need when he's already discussed it in length. My comments here are basically a summary of those. It could take pages and pages if I were to repost those all those studies.
Also, There is no selection bias by getting information from a poll on a hairloss forum that has BOTH pro-Finasteride users and anti-Finasteride users. It's not like this poll was on the PFS website.
It's pretty obvious there's some Big Pharma funded studies that don't just come from via Merck but that claim to be "independent" or "neutral" but aren't.
It's really naive of you to believe that just because some studies that just so happen to be pro-Finasteride studies, which follow almost ideal study methods, can't have data/results that is manipulated and falsified.
I mean Merck initially even covered up sexual side effects initially and you think them understating efficacy or side effects is a reach? That's truly naive.
here's a piece from Harvard about FDA:
by Donald W. Light A forthcoming article for the special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (JLME), edited by Marc Rodwin and supported by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, presents evidence that about 90 percent of all new drugs approved by the FDA over the past 30 years are...
ethics.harvard.edu
"The bar for “safe” is equally low, and over the past 30 years, approved drugs have caused an epidemic of harmful side effects, even when properly prescribed. Every week, about 53,000 excess hospitalizations and about 2400 excess deaths occur in the United States among people taking properly prescribed drugs to be healthier.
Prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.
This evidence indicates why we can no longer trust the FDA to carry out its historic mission to protect the public from harmful and ineffective drugs. Strong public demand that government “do something” about periodic drug disasters has played a central role in developing the FDA.2 Yet close, constant contact by companies with FDA staff and officials has contributed to vague, minimal criteria of what “safe” and “effective” mean."
Even those FDA approved studies don't really mean anything, the place is corrupt as hell and that's common knowledge.
And if the FDA is doing this kind of stuff, you really think the other smaller studies which paint Finasteride as mainly good and having minimal sides are accurate? LOL.
If Big Pharma can fund the expensive studies, you seriously are naive enough to believe they would only fund one or 2 studies and just end it there? LOL of course they would easily be able to fund smaller studies and even false marketing like Websites, YouTube videos, bought of scientists, and regulatory body members.