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The plural of anecdotes is not data

Ben Goldacre

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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Data Fabric Pavement
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bits Complicated Thinking
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
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
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Daily Excercise Life Lot Obesity Routine Vegetable
These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
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Bullshit Culture Running
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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Differences Medicine Teaching
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
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
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Body Mind Play
One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
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Interesting Medicine Trick
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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Activities Leisure People Talking
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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Linking New Rule Source Transparently
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
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Argument People Reason
Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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Design Mean Pain
The plural of anecdotes is not data
BEN GOLDACRE

Anecdotes Data Plural
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Inspiration Motivation Pain

The plural of anecdotes is not data

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The plural of anecdotes is not data

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