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 GOLDACREThere are many differences between medicine and teaching, but they have much in common. Both involve craft and personal expertise, learned through experience; but both can be informed by the experience of others.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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The plural of anecdotes is not data
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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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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.
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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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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.
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If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you’d know it all already.
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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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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.
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Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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Children can be disgusting, and often they can develop extraordinary talents, but I’m yet to meet any child who can stimulate his carotid arteries inside his ribcage.
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You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
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