You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
BEN GOLDACREPositive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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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 think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
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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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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 hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
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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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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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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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Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
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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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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 and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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