Quotes by Ben Goldacre - Page 1

The plural of anecdotes is not data
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Anecdotes
Data
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Transparency and detail are everything in science.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Details
Transparency
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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Bits
Complicated
Thinking
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These corporations run our culture, and they riddle it with bullshit.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Running
Bullshit
Culture
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Bad things happen when problems are protected by a force field of tediousness.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Bad Things
Protected
Things Happen
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You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Argument
People
Reason
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I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Disease
Stage
Trials
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You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Body
Mind
Play
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Real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else's position.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Inspiration
Motivation
Real
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Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn't mean flying carpets exist.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Design
Mean
Pain
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I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Adopting
Agree
Better Place
Doctors
Drug
Enthusiastic
Would Be
World Better New
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Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Data
Decision
Doctors
Treatment
Informed
Patients
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In general, drug companies are reasonably good at developing new treatments, and there's also a lot of good in the industry.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Developing
Drug Companies
Industry
General
Companies
Reasonably
Treatments
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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 / Physician
Leisure Activities
People
Talking
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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 / Physician
Blood
Oxygen
Water
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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 / Physician
Cancer
Inspiration
Motivation
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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 / Physician
Data
Fabric
Modern World
Pavement
Routes
Trace
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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 / Physician
Amazing Things
Facts
Figures
Linked
Pieces
Produce
Things Happen
Together
Emerges
Larger
Pull
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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 / Physician
Arteries
Children
Talent
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Alternative therapists don't kill many people, but they do make a great teaching tool for the basics of evidence-based medicine, because their efforts to distort science are so extreme.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Basics
Medicine
Therapists
Alternative
Extreme
Science Great People
Distort
Efforts
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In an ideal world, you might imagine that scientific papers were only cited by academics on the basis of their content. This might be true. But lots of other stuff can have an influence.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Ideal World
Influence
Papers
Academics
Lots
Basis
Be True
Content
Cited
Ideal
Scientific
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Homeopathy pills are, after all, empty little sugar pills which seem to work, and so they embody [..] how we can be misled into thinking that any intervention is more effective than it really is.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Littles
Pills
Thinking
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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 / Physician
Coats
Support
White
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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 / Physician
Science
Authority
Coats
Evidence
Precision
Support
Theory
Titles
Transparency
White
Case
Set
Explain
Reference
Studies
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More academics should blog, post videos, post audio, post lectures, offer articles and more. You'll enjoy it: I've had threats and blackmail, abuse, smears and formal complaints with forged documentation.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Abuse
Articles
Audio
Complaints
Documentation
Forged
Formal
Lectures
Academics
Blog
Offer
Post
Threats
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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 / Physician
Differences
Expertise
Medicine
Teaching
Craft
Informed
Involve
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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 / Physician
Academic
Blind
Blind Spots
Ideas
Medicine
Misconduct
Okay
Peculiar
Withholding
Work Culture People
Spot
Reinforce
Trial
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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 / Physician
Book
Ends
Might
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There is actually quite a lot of crossover between the quacks and drug companies. They use the same tricks and tactics to bamboozle people into buying their pills, but drug firms can afford to use slightly more sophisticated versions.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Buying
Crossover
Drug Companies
Pills
Sophisticated
Tactics
Tricks
Versions
Use People More
Afford
People More Use
Quite A Lot
Slightly
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If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can't realistically go unnoticed.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Decision
Deliberate
Frightening
Peers
Unnoticed
Apparently
Case
Changeable
Chooses
Directly
Realistically
Scientific
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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 / Physician
Teacher
Consumers
Critical
Evidence
Practice
Research
Results
Teaching
Understanding
Teachers
Better Understanding
Disseminate
Ecosystem
Supports
Systems
Widely
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The value of a scientific publication goes beyond this simple benefit, of all relevant information appearing, unambiguously, in one place. It's also a way to communicate your ideas to your scientific peers, and invite them to express an informed view.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Appearing
Communicate
Ideas
Information
Peers
Publication
Relevant
Simple
Benefit
Beyond
Express
Goes
Invite
Scientific
View
Value
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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 / Physician
Inspiration
Motivation
Pain
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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 / Physician
Bad People
Colleagues
Doctors
Enormous
Flip
Good People
Harm
People
Roles
Lots
Doctor
Forth
Inflict
Systems
Yes
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When you prescribe a new drug, often you are prescribing something that has only been tested in a few thousand people for a very short period of time, perhaps only six months, and that's not long enough to know whether there are any medium- or long-term side effects.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Effects
Long Term
Tested
Thousand
Time Long People
Time Enough Long
Medium
Prescribe
Short Period
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If you put me in charge of the medical research budget, I would cancel all primary research, I would cancel all new trials, for just one year, and I would spend the money exclusively on making sure that we make the best possible use of the clinical evidence that we already have.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Medical
Evidence
Just One
Medical Research
Trials
Use
Years
Best Money Me
Budget
Cancel
Charge
Clinical
Primary
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I'd like to submit to Bad Science my teacher who gave us a handout which says that 'Water is best absorbed by the body when provided in frequent small amounts.' What I want to know is this. If I drink too much in one go, will it leak out off my arsehole instead? Thank you. Anton.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Teacher
Arseholes
Water
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Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Science
Authority
Being Honest
Clear
Coats
Core
Drawing
Following
Honest
Hypothesis
Judgment
Method
Precision
Principles
Results
Support
Transparency
White
Calls
Hand
Line
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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. One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Different
Interesting
Writing
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In the past, [medicalization]has been portrayed as something that doctors inflict on a passive and un-suspecting world - an expansion of the Medical Empire. But in reality, it seems that these reductionist bio-medical stories can appeal to us all, because complex problems often have depressingly-complex causes, and the solutions can be taxing, and unsatisfactory.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Doctors
Past
Reality
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Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link to primary sources, I just don't trust you.
Ben Goldacre / Physician
Dubious
Motivation
Pain
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If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you’d know it all already. 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. 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 / Physician
Book
Real
Writing
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