Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
BEN GOLDACREI agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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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.
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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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These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
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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.
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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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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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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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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.
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The plural of anecdotes is not data
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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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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.
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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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You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.
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I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
BEN GOLDACRE