Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
Interpretation
Positive results are preferentially published over negative ones, undermining trust in medical evidence.
This quote by Ben Goldacre highlights a significant bias in the publication practices of medical research, where studies that yield positive findings are more likely to be published than those with negative findings. This imbalance can lead to a distorted understanding of medical evidence, inhibiting genuine progress and improvement in healthcare, as important negative outcomes may be overlooked.
In practice
In a research talk, one could quote Goldacre to emphasize the importance of transparency in scientific publishing.
Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence.
Yes. I'm a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.
Countless women are alive today because of ideas stimulated by a design flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.
Frequently on the lunar surface I said to myself, 'This is the Moon, that is the Earth. I'm really here, I'm really here!'
God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller asο»Ώ time moves on.
'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.
There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.
That's not right. That's not even wrong.
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