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.
BEN GOLDACREYou cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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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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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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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 think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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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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