I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREI think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREEat 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.
BEN GOLDACREI 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.
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.
BEN GOLDACREI 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 GOLDACREChildren 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.
BEN GOLDACREThere 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.
BEN GOLDACREYou cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACREBut as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes.
BEN GOLDACREDoctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
BEN GOLDACREOne of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
BEN GOLDACREThere 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.
BEN GOLDACREYes. 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.
BEN GOLDACREI think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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.
BEN GOLDACREI’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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