The plural of anecdotes is not data
BEN GOLDACREScience 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.
More Ben Goldacre Quotes
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
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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’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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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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These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
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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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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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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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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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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 think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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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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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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