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 GOLDACREThere 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.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
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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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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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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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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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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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The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating things in the whole of medicine. It’s not just about taking a pill, and your performance and your pain getting better. It’s about our beliefs and expectations. It’s about the cultural meaning of a treatment.
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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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Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
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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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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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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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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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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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