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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

The plural of anecdotes is not data
BEN GOLDACRE

Anecdotes Data Plural
Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.
BEN GOLDACRE

Facts Pieces Together
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACRE

Argument People Reason
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bits Complicated Thinking
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
I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
BEN GOLDACRE

Disease Stage Trials
Teaching 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 GOLDACRE

Practice Teacher Teaching
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Children Talent
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
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
I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACRE

Bits Complicated Thinking
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
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Body Mind Play
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
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.
BEN GOLDACRE

Differences Medicine Teaching
Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
BEN GOLDACRE

Inspiration Motivation Real
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 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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