Studies of studies show that we get things wrong

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: View the Text (PDF)

Target Audience: Self-directed learning

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Short Description:

Ben Goldacre gives examples of how conclusions based on anecdotes and biased research can be damagingly misleading.

Key Concepts addressed:

• 1-2 Anecdotes are unreliable evidence

Details

Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Friday 15 July 2011

Morons often like to claim that their truth has been suppressed: that they are like Galileo, a noble outsider, fighting the rigid and political domain of the scientific literature, which resists every challenge to orthodoxy.

Like many claims, this is something where it’s possible to gather data.

Firstly, there are individual anecdotes that demonstrate the routine humdrum of medical fact being overturned.

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