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Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.

Ben Goldacre

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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Coats Support White
Yes. I’m a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.
BEN GOLDACRE

Doctors People Roles
I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
BEN GOLDACRE

Adopt Doctors Drugs Enthusiastic
These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bullshit Culture Running
Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don’t drink too much, don’t smoke, and don’t get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health.
BEN GOLDACRE

Daily Excercise Life Lot Obesity Routine Vegetable
I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
BEN GOLDACRE

Disease Stage Trials
As it is a major component of blood, water is vital for transporting oxygen to the brain. Heaven forbid that your blood should dry out.
BEN GOLDACRE

Blood Oxygen Water
Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence.
BEN GOLDACRE

Practice Teacher Teaching
I 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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Different Interesting Writing
But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes.
BEN GOLDACRE

Change Own Political Require
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bits Complicated Thinking
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Data Fabric Pavement
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Book Ends might
I’ve detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don’t link to primary sources, I just don’t trust you.
BEN GOLDACRE

Linking New Rule Source Transparently
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Blind Ideas Medicine Spots
Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
BEN GOLDACRE

Design Mean Pain

Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.

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Popular Authors

Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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