Sometimes, a dispute with a consumer movement comes along that has profound implications for far more than the people in…
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Evidence Consumer-Contested Evidence: Why the ME/CFS Exercise Dispute Matters So Much
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Annual open access roundup Open Access 2018: A Year of Funders and Universities Drawing Lines in the Sand
This is the sixth year I’ve rounded up the year in open access – and it was the most remarkable…
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Evidence The Dangerous Allure of Breech Birth at Home – and a Problematic New Paper
At first glance, I thought I’d misunderstood it. I just didn’t expect to see a paper with so much spin about…
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Bias “True Patient Advocates Must Be Students of Evidence-Based Medicine”: An Impatient Rebuttal
Here’s the thing. If you’re a doctor who is a fervent advocate for a professional school of thought, and you feel…
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Evidence Post-Surgery Thoughts on Evidence and Choice
I had been losing sight, slowly at first, but later, scarily quickly. By the time I had my first surgery…
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Evidence “High Value, Low Wastage Research” Is More Than Just a Catchphrase Now
I don’t recall hearing it before. But I’ve heard the slogan “high value, low wastage research” a lot the last…
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Evidence Correcting the Record On That Critique of the Cochrane HPV Vaccine Review
It can be a long, unrewarding slog to unpack the problems in a published paper. David Allison and colleagues talked…
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Science Communication Free Speech and Journals’ Responsibility in Vaccine Debates
“Learn what they don’t want you to know.” That pretty much captures the conspiracy-laced journey into data you often see…
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Bias Scientific Advocacy and Biases of the Ideological and Industry Kinds
I think the main thing I learned – very painfully – in 20 years as a health consumer advocate, is…
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Bias Boilover: The Cochrane HPV Vaccine Fire Isn’t Really About the Evidence – but it’s Critical to Science
It was always a volatile situation. If it blew, it was going to be even harder to keep perspective through all…
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Health The HPV Vaccine Should Be Preventing Cervical Cancer: Can We Tell Whether It Actually Is?
The suspense is tough. Will the HPV vaccine reduce cervical cancer and related deaths or won’t it? It should, but this is…
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Evidence The HPV Vaccine: A Critique of a Critique of a Meta-Analysis
Battles over vaccine evidence sure can get toxic, can’t they? If you’re a diehard partisan, though, you can look for…