I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREI think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREThere 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 GOLDACREIf I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you’d know it all already.
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 GOLDACREAmazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.
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 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 agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
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 GOLDACREEat 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 GOLDACREYou cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
BEN GOLDACREReal science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.
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 GOLDACREI think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
BEN GOLDACREChildren 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 GOLDACREAs 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