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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - April 24, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: africa bad science book MMR Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - March 18, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign publication bias Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - March 15, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: evidence based policy Source Type: blogs
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 [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - February 15, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign Source Type: blogs
This is excellent, and amazing. GSK have just signed up to alltrials.net
GSK have just this minute announced that they are signing up to the alltrials.net campaign. This will be written in a hurry. Briefly: the results of clinical trials have been routinely withheld from doctors and patients throughout medicine, and this problem has not been fixed. The www.alltrials.net campaign is asking for all trials to be [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - February 5, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign bad science Source Type: blogs
EU lead on clinical trials comes out in favour of transparency. Hurrah!
There is a new EU Clinical Trials Regulation currently passing through parliament in Brussels. It is currently in draft form, and riddled with holes: essentially it allows companies and researchers to withhold trial results, and play fast and loose with analyses. These problems are best documented in the BMJ by one of the co-founders of [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - February 4, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign publication bias Source Type: blogs
Some talks in the US and Canada. COME!
Bad Pharma is out in the US and Canada on 5th Feb, which is extremely good news (sorry about the delay, floods and hurricanes apparently..). I’ll be doing a few public lectures in various places, there’s a list below. Also: in the UK I’ve done about a gazillion talks, and the most fun things always [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - January 30, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
AllTrials campaign launches, please sign and spread!
I am very pleased to announce the launch of a prominent campaign for access to all trial results, which we have launched this week at www.alltrials.net, with myself, Sense About Science, Sir Iain Chalmers from the James Lind Initiative (previously co-founder of Cochrane), Dr Fiona Godlee (Editor in Chief of the BMJ), and Dr Carl [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - January 16, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: alltrials campaign big pharma publication bias Source Type: blogs
Health Select Committee call on NICE, GMC, pharma industry to address missing data
Excellent to see the UK House Of Commons Health Select Committee making such a clear statement about the ongoing problem of missing trial results, which the ABPI have laughably claimed is “historic“. They call upon NICE, the GMC and the pharmaceutical industry to address the problem, and they also take a very strong clear position: [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - January 16, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
I made this Radio 4 documentary on randomised trials on government policy
Here’s a documentary I made for BBC Radio 4 (with producer Rami Tzabar) about evidence based social policy, and why we should do more randomised trials in government. It’s good fun, 40 minutes, with contributions from Dean Karlan (who wrote this book and is behind all these excellent trials on reducing poverty), Prof Sheila Bird, Jonathan Portes [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - January 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science evidence based policy government reports podcast politics Source Type: blogs
