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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.

Ben Goldacre

Transparency and detail are everything in science.
BEN GOLDACRE

Details Everything Transparency
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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Data Fabric Pavement
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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Blood Oxygen Water
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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Children Talent
One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
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Interesting Medicine Trick
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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Activities Leisure People Talking
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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Cancer Inspiration Motivation
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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Change Own Political Require
If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you’d know it all already.
BEN GOLDACRE

Book Real Writing
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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Argument People Reason
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Bits Complicated Thinking
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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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.
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Doctors People Roles
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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Blind Ideas Medicine Spots
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bits Complicated Thinking
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

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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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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