The ethical standards of the “Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group”
Still catching up on posting things from this year. Here’s a piece I wrote in the BMJ with medical student colleagues about an extraordinary, influential, and rather depressing organisation called the “Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group”. This was a committee of the great and good in medicine, co-chaired by Sir Richard Thompson […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - December 17, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: ABPI badpharma ESHLSG Source Type: blogs
RandomiseMe: our fun new website that lets anyone design and run a randomised controlled trial.
Catching up and blogging this year’s activities: here’s a fun website I made with my friend Carl Reynolds, fellow doctor behind NHS HackDays (where nerds who love the NHS build useful tools). RandomiseMe lets you design and run randomised controlled trials, either on yourself, or on your friends. You can do a trial to see if your […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - December 16, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
We should teach epidemiology in schools.
Just catching up with posting things from this year, here’s an editorial in The Lancet from Paul Fine, Andy Haines and me. We argue that epidemiology is the unsung hidden hand, whose techniques underpin a huge chunk of our causal reasoning about the world. It has helped to guide technical specialties like economics, but it’s […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - December 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: epidemiology schools Source Type: blogs
Bicycle Helmets and the law: a perfect teaching case for epidemiology.
Hi all, I haven’t posted much on badscience.net due to exciting home events, fun dayjob activity, a ton of behind-the-scenes work on trials transparency with alltrials.net, activity on policy RCTs, exciting websites, and a zillion talks. I’m going to post this year’s backlog over the next week or two (and maybe rejig the site if […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - December 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: epidemiology risk statistics Source Type: blogs
Why – and how – I wrote Bad Pharma
This is my piece for Waterstones Book Club, where I was asked to write about why – and how – I wrote Bad Pharma. The full book club caboodle is here, and you can buy the book here. Here it is… ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I wrote this book because we need to fix a set of problems […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - October 8, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
I totally just walked past a tube advert for my book.
You might not find this as weird as I do, but I totally just walked past a tube advert for my book. SO: there’s a lovely new edition of Bad Pharma out this month, with a spanking extra chapter about all the bad things that naughty people like the ABPI and EFPIA have done in […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - October 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
New super cheap edition of Bad Pharma, with extra chapter, and: Waterstones Book Club!
RIGHT. Sorry to be absent, I’m back from outer space. NOW. There’s a new cheap edition of Bad Pharma out this month, with a new and very long extra chapter on everything that’s happened since the first edition came out. There are goodies and baddies galore, I’ll be writing about it all over the next few […] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - October 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign badpharma book Source Type: blogs
Head-to-Head with PhRMA on transparency in the BMJ
This week in the BMJ there’s a head-to-head on trials transparency between me and PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry representative body in the US. My article is here, PhRMA’s is here, both articles are open access for one week (since it was press released, them’s the rules at the BMJ…) but mine is open access forever, [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - July 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign bad science publication bias Source Type: blogs
Discussing AllTrials on the BBC Daily Politics today
I’m on the BBC2 show Daily Politics today at 12:40pm with Grant Shapps and Andy Burnham, discussing the alltrials.net campaign, and the problem of trial results being withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients. Here’s a brief film they made on the subject. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22957195 In case there’s any doubt on the evidence, here’s my evidence to [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - June 19, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign publication bias Source Type: blogs
Here’s me and Fiona Godlee (BMJ) giving evidence to Public Accounts Committee on withheld Tamiflu trials
In December last year a group of MPs including Sarah Wollaston, David Davis, Julian Huppert and Adam Afriyie wrote to Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, asking for an inquiry into Tamiflu. Specifically, they asked about the way that vitally important information on clinical trials around Tamiflu have been withheld from doctors and [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - June 18, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign publication bias tamiflu Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - June 1, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
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-week-internship-at-the-institute-of-biomedical-engineering-imperial-college-london-for-a-level-students “On offer is a one week internship [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - May 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science just a blog Source Type: blogs
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=26501 Amanda Berry’s mother traveled to New York to tell her story to Psychic Sylvia Browne [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - May 7, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: just a blog Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - April 26, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign bad science big pharma Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - April 25, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: small blogs suicide Source Type: blogs
