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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.

Ben Goldacre

Transparency and detail are everything in science.
BEN GOLDACRE

Details Everything Transparency
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
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
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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Facts Pieces Together
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
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
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
I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
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Disease Stage Trials
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
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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Argument People Reason
I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
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Adopt Doctors Drugs Enthusiastic
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
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Bits Complicated Thinking
The plural of anecdotes is not data
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Anecdotes Data Plural
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 GOLDACRE

Different Interesting Writing

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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