A new edition of the book “Testing Treatments” is available – online as a pdf file and for free! Amazing.
British physician-writer Ben Goldacre, who wrote the foreword in the book, blogged:
“People often ask if there’s one good book that is accessible to all, about how evidence based medicine works. The answer is undoubtedly “Testing Treatments”.
…
This book should be in every school, and every medical waiting room. Until then, it’s in your hands. Read on.”
Chapter headings, just to entice you:
New – but no better or even worse
Used but inadequately tested
Key concepts in fair tests of treatments
Dealing with uncertainty about the effects of treatments
Clinical research: the good, the bad, and the unnecessary
Less research, better research, and research for the right reasons
Improving tests of treatments is everybody’s business
Blueprint for a revolution
Feeling a bit revolutionary, I went right for that last chapter and found this blueprint:
1. Encourage honesty when there are uncertainties about the effects of treatments
2. Confront double standards on consent to treatment offered within and outside clinical trials
3. Increase knowledge about how to judge whether claims about treatment effects are trustworthy
4. Increase the capacity for preparing, maintaining, and disseminating systematic reviews of research evidence about the effects of treatments
5. Tackle scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest within the clinical research community
6. Require industry to provide better, more complete, and more relevant evidence about the effects of treatment
7. Identify and prioritise research addressing questions about the effects of treatments which are deemed important by patients and clinicians
Enough excerpts. Time for you to dig in on your own.
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like