I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me – I would go so far as to say that it’s my favourite leisure activity.
BEN GOLDACREI write about misuses of evidence in plenty of different spheres: scaremongering journalists, obvious quacks and naturopaths, and flaws in the way that evidence is used in mainstream academia, medicine and in (government) policy.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
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I’ve detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don’t link to primary sources, I just don’t trust you.
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I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
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You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
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You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Data is the fabric of the modern world: just like we walk down pavements, so we trace routes through data, and build knowledge and products out of it.
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
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Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
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Science has authority not because of white coats or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.
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There is this peculiar blind spot in the culture of academic medicine around whether withholding trial results is research misconduct. People who work in any industry can reinforce each others’ ideas about what is okay.
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But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes.
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And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you’ll still be wrong, but you’ll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now.
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