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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.

Ben Goldacre

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
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 GOLDACRE

Cancer Inspiration Motivation
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE

Argument People Reason
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
Transparency and detail are everything in science.
BEN GOLDACRE

Details Everything Transparency
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
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Body Mind Play
I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
BEN GOLDACRE

Disease Stage Trials
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

Coats Support White
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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Bits Complicated Thinking
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
Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
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Design Mean Pain
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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Book Real Writing
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
The plural of anecdotes is not data
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Anecdotes Data Plural
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Blood Oxygen Water
But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes.
BEN GOLDACRE

Change Own Political Require

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 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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