The Lancet editor got it wrong though - it is medical literature, not scientific literature which is the problem. The key difference between science and medicine is that medicine is all about curing illnesses whereas science is all about understanding. Of course, if you understand an illness you have a far better chance of curing it but this difference in focus is what leads to all the problems.

A medical researcher wants to find a cure so if they find that patients who take magic pill A get cured of disease B it's a huge success. However, without understanding how magic pill A cures disease B there is no science here. This focus on correlation rather than causation is what leads to the problems because a golden rule of science is that correlation does not imply causation.