Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
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 think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREThe plural of anecdotes is not data
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 GOLDACREData 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 GOLDACREI hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
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 GOLDACREI think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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 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 GOLDACREI’ve detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don’t link to primary sources, I just don’t trust you.
BEN GOLDACREYou are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
BEN GOLDACRETeaching 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.
BEN GOLDACREI agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
BEN GOLDACRETransparency and detail are everything in science.
BEN GOLDACREDoctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
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