
Know Your Chances
This book has been shown in two randomized trials to improve peoples' understanding of risk in the context of health care choices.
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Sunn Skepsis
Denne portalen er ment å gi deg som pasient råd om kvalitetskriterier for helseinformasjon og tilgang til forskningsbasert informasjon.
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Julia Belluz – Lessons from the trenches of evidence-based health journalism at Vox.com
20-minute talk by Julia Belluz on the need to bring the cultures of health journalism and EBM together.
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English National Curriculum vs Key Concepts – Key Stage 3
A linked spreadsheet showing how the Key Concepts map to the Science National Curriculum in England at Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14).
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The surrogate battle – is lower always better?
James McCormick recruits a furious Fuhrer to point out that taking drugs to lower surrogate measures of ill health is a confidence trick.
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Teach Yourself Cochrane
Tells the story behind Cochrane and the challenges finding good quality evidence to produce reliable systematic reviews.
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Building evidence into education
Ben Goldacre explains why appropriate infrastructure is need to do clinical trials of sufficient rigour and size to yield reliable results.
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Anecdotes are great – if they convey data accurately
Ben Goldacre gives examples of how conclusions based on anecdotes and biased research can be damagingly misleading.
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Unsubstantiated and overstated claims of efficacy
A 32-slide presentation on misleading advertisements and FDA warnings prepared by PharmedOut.
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Introduction to Evidence-Based Medicine
Bill Caley’s 26 slides with notes used as an ‘Introduction to Evidence-Based Medicine’.
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Applying evidence to patients
A 27-minute talk on ‘Applying Evidence to Patients’, illustrated by 17 slides, with notes.
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Defining clinical questions
An 8-min talk on ‘Defining Clinical Questions’ illustrated by 10 slides, with notes.
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Applying the evidence
Six key slides produced by the University of Western Australia on applying evidence in practice.
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Appraising the evidence
Six key slides produced by the University of Western Australia to introduce critical appraisal.
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Not all scientific studies are created equally
David Schwartz dissects two types of studies that scientists use, illuminating why you should always approach claims with a critical eye.
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Applying the results of trials and systematic reviews to individual patients
Paul Glasziou uses 28 slides to address ‘Applying the results of trials and systematic reviews to individual patients’.
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Making the most of the evidence in education
A pamphlet to guide people using research evidence when deliberating about educational policies.
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Tipsheet for reporting on drugs, devices and medical technologies
Questions that will be familiar to reporters covering health and medicine.
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Tips for understanding Non-inferiority Trials
A non-inferiority experiment endeavours to show that a new intervention is ‘not unacceptably worse’ than the comparison intervention.
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GenerationR – The importance of involving children and young people in research
3/3, 22-min video at the launch of GenerationR, a network of young people who advise researchers.
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Generation R – The need to reduce waste in clinical research involving children
1/3, 14-min video at the launch of GenerationR, a network of young people who advise researchers.
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Preclinical animal studies: bad experiments cost lives
This blog notes that few therapies that treat disease in animals successfully translate into effective treatments for humans.
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Surrogate Endpoints in EBM: What are the benefits and dangers?
What are surrogate outcomes, their pros and cons, and why you should be cautious in extrapolating from them to clinical decisions.
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Balancing Benefits and harms
A blog explaining what is meant by ‘benefits’ and ‘harms’ in the context of healthcare interventions, and the importance of balancing them.
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Surrogate endpoints: pitfalls of easier questions
A blog explaining what surrogate endpoints are and why they should be interpreted cautiously.
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Making sense of randomized trials
A description of how clinical trials are constructed and analysed to ensure they provide fair comparisons of treatments.
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Making sense of results – CASP
This module introduces the key concepts required to make sense of statistical information presented in research papers.
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Toma de Decisiones Compartidas
¿Por qué nosotros, los pacientes, debemos participar en la toma de decisiones médicas importantes?
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Using the results of up-to-date systematic reviews of research
Trustworthy evidence from research is necessary, but not sufficient, to improve the quality of health care.
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Surrogate markers may not tell the whole story
A webpage explaining the limitations of using surrogate outcome markers in clinical research.
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Testing Treatments
Testing Treatments is a book to help the public understand why fair tests of treatments are needed, what they are, and how to use them.
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Effectiveness Delusions
Cherry picking the results of people in sub-groups can be misleading.
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Cecil and those pellets again…
If possible, participants in clinical trials should not know which treatment they are receiving.
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Catch 22 – clinical trials edition
Fair comparisons of treatments in animals or highly selected groups of people may not be relevant.
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Composite Outcomes
Fair comparisons of treatments should measure important outcomes and avoid dependence on surrogate outcome measures.
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Biomarkers unlimited
Fair comparisons of treatments should measure important outcomes and avoid dependence on surrogate outcome measures.
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Does it work?
People with vested interests may use misleading statistics to support claims about the efects of new treatments.
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Introduction to clinical trials: lay-friendly video
This lay-friendly video introduction to clinical trials was created by the European Communication on Research Awareness Needs Project.
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Testing Treatments Audio Book
The Testing Treatments Audiobook enables visitors to the TTi site to select whichever chapters in the book they would like to listen to.
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Methodology of clinical trials
Eurordis training on the methodology of clinical trials for representatives of patients’ organisations.
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How to read articles about healthcare
This article 'How to read health news behind the headlines', by Dr Alicia White, explains how to assess health claims in the media.
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Can measurements show if a treatment works?
An article discussing errors to avoid when testing treatments.
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Animal and Lab studies
A webpage explaining how results from animal studies may not be transferable to humans.
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Be careful with composites
Kevin Lomangino's article discusses the limitations of composite outcomes and surrogate markers.
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Disease outcomes vs. patient-relevant outcomes
An e-Learning module consisting of 3 slides and 2-min commentary on why it is important to treat patients, not numbers from tests.
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Viva la Evidence!
A brilliant song and video by James McCormack explaining the basics of evidence-based medicine.
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Evidence Based Medicine Matters: Examples of where EBM has benefitted patients
Booklet containing 15 examples submitted by Royal Colleges where Evidence-Based Medicine has benefited clinical practice.
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Some Studies That I Like to Quote
This short music video encourages health professionals to use evidence to help reach treatment decisions in partnership with patients.
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Shared Decision-Making
This resource from the Health Foundation shows how shared decision-making can be made to work in a typical consultation.
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On taking a good look at ourselves
Iain Chalmers talks about failings in scientific research that lead to avoidable harm to patients and waste of resources.
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Communicating with patients on evidence
This discussion paper from the US Institute of Medicine provides guidance on communicating evidence to patients.
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Involving citizens to improve healthcare
‘The confluence of interest between advocacy groups, those who sell treatments, and those who prescribe them makes for a potent […]
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Lay people help to rethink AIDS
‘Credibility struggles in the AIDS arena have been multilateral: they have involved an unusually wide range of players. And the […]
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A key partnership
‘People-focused research in the NHS simply cannot be delivered without the involvement of patients and the public. No matter how […]
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Patients’ choice: David and Goliath
‘Who has the power to see that research questions actually address the greatest needs of patients in all their misery […]
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Psoriasis patients poorly served by research
‘Few trials involved comparison of different options or looked at long-term management. The duration of studies is unconvincingly brief in […]
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Who decides what gets studied?
Clearly this situation is unsatisfactory, so how has it come about? One reason is that what gets studied by researchers […]
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Questions that are important for patients
Researchers in Bristol decided to pose a fundamental question: ‘To what extent are questions of importance to patients with osteoarthritis […]
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Stroke
Another example of unnecessary research, yet again because the results of preceding studies had not been gathered together and analyzed, […]
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Epidural analgesia for women in labour
The importance of assessing outcomes that matter to patients is clearly illustrated – in a very negative fashion – by […]
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What research regulation should do
‘If ethicists and others want something to criticise in clinical trials, they should look at scientifically inadequate work, reinvention of […]
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A commonsense approach to informed consent in good medical practice
‘What is missing in the debate surrounding informed consent is the true nature of patient understanding, what information patients want […]
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Rethinking informed consent
‘[Some] have come to suspect that informed consent is not fundamental to good biomedical practice, and . . . attempts […]
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What regulatory systems do not do
Although regulatory systems for research impose onerous requirements on researchers before studies start, there are many things they conspicuously fail […]
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Information and consent
Requirements relating to provision of information and consent for studies are one of the ways in which the regulatory system […]
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What does “statistically significant” mean?
‘To be honest, it’s a tricky idea. It can tell us if the difference between a drug and a placebo […]
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What does a “significant difference” between treatments mean?
Well, this is a trick question, because ‘significant difference’ can have several meanings. First, it can mean a difference that […]
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Addressing uncertainties about the effects of treatments
Where do we go from here? Clinicians need to be able to draw on resources that provide the best current […]
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When practitioners disagree
In this sub-section Introduction (this page) Caffeine for breathing problems in premature babies Antibiotics in pre-term labour Breast cancer Introduction […]
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Herceptin
Commercial companies are not alone in trumpeting the advantages of new treatments while down-playing drawbacks. Professional hype and enthusiastic media […]
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GET-IT provides plain language definitions of health research terms