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.
Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress.
...It would be possible to make much more progress than has been made if the NCI knew its job better, knew how to make discoveries...The NCI really does not know how to make discoveries....So long as the NCI is not willing to follow up ideas that seem good to people who have had experience making discoveries, the work of the NCI is going to be pedestrian.
Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Windmills installed around the world converting their direct current into alternating current and feeding the electric energy into the world network can harvest the planet Earth's prime daily energy income source-the wind--and adequately supply all the world's energy needs
It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.
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