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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

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

Bits Complicated Thinking
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
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
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
There 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 GOLDACRE

Blind Ideas Medicine Spots
Yes. 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 GOLDACRE

Doctors People Roles
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
Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
BEN GOLDACRE

Data Decision Doctors
You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
BEN GOLDACRE

Body Mind Play
Transparency and detail are everything in science.
BEN GOLDACRE

Details Everything Transparency
I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
BEN GOLDACRE

Disease Stage Trials
I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
BEN GOLDACRE

Adopt Doctors Drugs Enthusiastic
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
Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist.
BEN GOLDACRE

Design Mean Pain
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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