A critical aspect of both evidence-based medicine (EBM) and science-based medicine (SBM) is the randomized clinical trial. Ideally, particularly for conditions with a large subjective component in symptomatology, the trial should be randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled. As Kimball Atwood pointed out just last week (me too), in EBM, scientific prior probability tends to be discounted […]
Category: Medicine
On the blogging front, I started out this week with a part facetious, part serious, part the highly detailed analysis of a new study of interest that you’ve come to know and love (or hate). The study was Price et al, and it was yet another nail in the coffin of the scientifically discredited notion […]
I’m a cancer surgeon. I started out as a general surgeon, but my passion and scientific interest goaded me into specializing in cancer. Ultimately, I ended up subspecializing even more, ultimately becoming a breast cancer surgeon, but through it all cancer, not just breast cancer, has remained my clinical and scientific passion. So has science-based […]
Yesterday, I had a bit of fun while taking on a serious topic, namely yet another study that failed to find a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. Fortunately, though, I wasn’t the only one. Oh, no, not by any means. Liz Ditz has done what she does best and provided a comprehensive linkfest […]
THE PAST IS PROLOGUE Location: Central New Jersey, deep within the brick and steel of a secret pharma base. Year: 1999. A shadowy figure dressed in gray, bald, and stroking a white cat enters a nondescript room in the middle of which sits a massive conference table. More than a dozen men and women leap […]
