Randomized controlled trials: when the gold standard leaves you with fool’s gold
If I told you that I read a randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled trial conducted over 5 years and carried out in over 18,000 participants, is there any scenario under which you would not believe it to be an excellent trial?
The importance of red teams
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” —Richard Feynman
#96 – David Epstein: How a range of experience leads to better performance in a highly specialized world
“Sometimes the things you can do to cause the most rapid appearance of short-term progress can undermine long-term development.” — David Epstein
The red meat and plant-based recommendation wars
Does reducing meat consumption improve health?
Nobel retractions
On January 2nd, Arnold made headlines after announcing she and her co-authors retracted a paper that was published in the prestigious journal Science in May of 2019, 7 months after winning the Nobel Prize.
Intermittent fasting
Metabolic switching and different forms of fasting.
Qualy #65 – The three laws of medicine — Law #1: A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test
Today’s episode of The Qualys is from podcast #32 – Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., Ph.D.: new frontiers in cancer therapy, medicine, and the writing process.
Is diet soda more dangerous than sugar-sweetened beverages?
SMH
Am I fooling myself?
This story serves to remind me that we are not wired to think scientifically. Full stop. It is the quintessential human flaw. But scientific thinking is a skill to be practiced and improved upon.
What can you prove?
If that weren’t enough to set me off, consider the overall weakness of this study, and the choice of the word “proven” borders on journalistic manslaughter.