Sensible Medicine Sensible Medicine Authors - Prasad/Cifu/Mandrola/Demania/Makary/Cristea/Alderighi & More

The Thomas Sowell quote, “On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions” has been ringing in my head a lot lately.


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Gosh was I lucky to speak with Professor Erik Van Zwet from Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is the first author on a recent NEJM Evidence paper looking at more than 23,000 trials in the Cochrane Database. (I linked to an URL that should get by the paywall.)
There are technical aspects of this paper. We hit on some (not a lot) of them. The gist of it though is really important when we look at evidence. Erik did an excellent job of explaining P-values, trial power, and, at the end, we discuss how this work might inform the ability of trials to replicate.
This discussion also pairs well with one I had with computer scientist Ben Recht.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
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Why have I been committed to medical education? Some of the reasons are admirable but not terribly novel. Others are a bit hard to admit, but just as true.


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Friday Reflection 35: Why Don’t Doctors Want to See Patients?
I was asked “Why is it that doctors don’t want to see patients?” and I could not answer the question. Fourteen months later, here is my response.


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Ben Recht is a professor at UC Berkeley. You know, the place that has all those parking spaces for the Nobel laureates.
He understands the innards of math. And that is exactly why he explained that doctors who use evidence don’t have to get bogged down in technicalities.
I reached out to Ben to discuss a complicated but provocative statistical paper in NEJM evidence. But we mostly talk basics.
Ben writes at his Substack arg min


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