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Rationally Speaking 22 - Steven Novella on Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

Mar 24, 20243 min read

Rationally Speaking #22 - Steven Novella on Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

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Show notes > Our Guest, Dr. Steven Novella discusses a recent article in The Atlantic in which researcher John Ioannidis shows that 40% of papers published in top medical journals are either wrong or make exaggerated claims (and those are the top journals!). He also discusses the difference between Science and Evidence based medicine. Also, Zombies: are they epidemiologically possible?
> Steven Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is the host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, author of the Neurologica blog, and co-editor of the Science Based Medicine blog.

Snips

[20:54] The Role of Preliminary Studies and Misuse of Data

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✨ Summary

Observational data cannot be used to draw efficacy conclusions due to uncontrolled variables. Preliminary studies are essential for designing definitive trials by helping researchers learn how to address specific questions. Basing medical practice solely on preliminary studies is problematic as it can lead to incorrect conclusions. It is crucial to understand that preliminary studies only guide further research to uncover the true answers.

📚 Transcript

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Speaker 1

You can't use observational data to make efficacy conclusions because you're not controlling for variables, for example. But in this case, the part of the problem is that you're looking at what we call preliminary data, preliminary studies, and then drawing to draw some kind of definitive conclusion from It or base your medical practice on it. But the role of preliminary studies is to-is to help you design later definitive trials. So they do serve a role. You can't go right to the large definitive trial because you won't know how best to do it. You learn how to-to research a very specific question by doing these preliminary studies, and that's, you know, what the-the later definitive studies emerge out of, all of the argument About what these preliminary studies mean. The-the problem is, however, is-is basing your practice on these preliminary studies rather than saying, all right, the-all these tell us is how basically to do more research to find Out what the real answer is. And-and again, what you-what you notice is work-tell us-it tells us is, if you rely on that preliminary data, most of the time you're going to be wrong.

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