One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
BEN GOLDACREReal science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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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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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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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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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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I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
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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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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
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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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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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I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
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There 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.
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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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Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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