What if academics were as dumb as quacks with statistics?
Ben Goldacre introduces a statistical error that appears in about half of all the published papers in academic neuroscience research.
Publish or be damned
Ben Goldacre points out the indefensible practice of announcing conclusions from research studies which haven’t been published.
Key Concepts for assessing claims about treatment effects
This page is about the Key Concepts people need to understand to be able to assess claims about the effects of […]
The Bias of Language
Publication of research findings in a particular language may be prompted by the nature and direction of the results.
About Testing Treatments interactive (TTi)
On this page: Why TTi? Who is TTi for? How is material in TTi organised? What kind of learning resources […]
The need to compare like-with-like in treatment comparisons
Allocation bias results when trials fail to ensure that, apart from the treatments being compared, ‘like will be compared with like’.
The need to avoid differences in the way treatment outcomes are assessed
Biased treatment outcome assessment can result if people know which participants have received which treatments.
Why treatment comparisons are essential
Formal comparisons are required to assess treatment effects and to take account of the natural course of health problems.
Making Sense of Screening
Screening tests can cause harm. This guide helps you to make sense of claims about screening for health conditions.
Cecil and those pellets again…
If possible, participants in clinical trials should not know which treatment they are receiving.
Composite Outcomes
Fair comparisons of treatments should measure important outcomes and avoid dependence on surrogate outcome measures.
Soy Lattes
Just because two things are associated, doesn’t mean one thing caused the other.
Association is not the same as causation. Let’s say that again: association is not the same as causation!
This article explains how to tell when correlation or association has been confused with causation.
Why do we need fair tests of treatments?
Modern medicine has been hugely successful at reducing the impact of disease and increasing life expectancy. In spite of this, […]
What are fair tests of treatments?
Not all is created equal: some tests of s are more reliable than others. Sometimes tests of treatments can be […]
Foreword by Ben Goldacre
Medicine shouldn’t be about authority, and the most important question anyone can ask on any claim is simple: ‘how do […]
Jargon buster
About GET-IT
GET-IT provides plain language definitions of health research terms