Ben Goldacre's Blog, page 6

Badger badger badger badger CULL badger badger badger TRIAL

Reading about the badger cull today, I noticed this column – on the evidence for badger culls – never got posted. Here it is! Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 23 July 2011 Squabbles between farmers and animal rights’ protesters bore me senseless. This week, environment secretary Caroline Spelman announced that the scientific evidence supports her new policy [...]

Why is Imperial College permitting Westminster public school to sell an internship?

This is very odd indeed. Westminster, one of the most expensive public schools in the UK, is holding a fund-raising auction. In this auction, you can buy an internship at Imperial College’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, on the promise that this will look great on your CV. auction.westminster.org.uk/lots/one-w... “On offer is a one week internship [...]

Shame on you, Sylvia Browne, for telling Amanda Berry’s mother her daughter was dead.

The story of Amanda Berry’s rescue in Cleveland – after ten years in captivity - is extraordinary. In 2004, popular psychic Sylvia Brown told Amanda’s mother that her little girl was dead. Here is a contemporaneous account of that show. www.wkyc.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=... Amanda Berry’s mother traveled to New York to tell her story to Psychic Sylvia Browne [...]

My evidence to the Science and Tech Select Committee inquiry on missing trial data

The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee are currently looking at the problem of clinical trial results being withheld from doctors and patients (partly, the committee says, in response to Bad Pharma, which is heartening). A clear, thoughtful report and policy recommendations from this committee could be an important step towards fixing these [...]

Suicide advert from Hyundai is almost surreally misguided

The new advert from Hyundai features a depressed man attempting to commit suicide using the exhaust fumes from his car. The advert is on YouTube here, watch at your discretion. There is clear evidence that this kind of content increases the use of specific suicide methods, as I wrote in 2009: … it has been shown repeatedly that [...]

How vaccine scares respect local cultural boundaries.

I was on Newsnight this evening, discussing the measles outbreak in Swansea, and how we can get people vaccinated with MMR when they’ve previously refused. In my view: prevention is better than cure, it’s hard to reverse a scare story once the toothpaste is out of the tube, and we must innoculate ourselves against future [...]

I’m on the One Show talking about missing trials tonight

I made a film for The One Show on BBC1, which goes out tonight. It’s about “publication bias“: the problem of clinical trial results being withheld from doctors and patients. (I also get to go into an awesome underground bunker where documents are stored…). You can watch it here: www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01rfr0r/?t=1m42s There is currently a Science [...]

Teachers! What would evidence based practice look like?

I was asked by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) and the Department for Education to look at how to improve the use of evidence in schools. I think there are huge, positive opportunities for teachers here, that go way beyond just doing a few more trials: there is a need for a coherent [...]

Here’s my paper on evidence and teaching for the education minister.

I was asked by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) and the Department for Education to look at how to improve the use of evidence in schools. I think there are huge, positive opportunities for teachers here, that go way beyond just doing a few more trials. Pasted below is the briefing note from [...]

80 patient groups (eighty!) sign up to alltrials.net in one go! Then Cancer Research UK!

We rely on clinical trials in medicine, but companies and researchers are able to withhold results wherever it suits them: this breaks evidence based medicine. The best available systematic review evidence estimates that around half of all trials for the treatments we use today have not been published: you can read the details on this [...]