In order to test a new treatment, in a standard randomised controlled trial, we are ethically assumed to have ‘equipoise’: an honest uncertainty at the same chance of a patient being allocated to the new or old treatment. But, I hear you scoff, how can any investigator put themselves through the hell of ethical administration […]
Category: ethics
Secrets and lies. Truth and beauty.
… and other Bohemian aphorisms … There is a quite brilliant paper from the under-advertised PLoS One which shows how, in the are of incubation periods for respiratory disease, Truth By Citation is quite strikingly different than the reality of the evidence. The networks of citations demonstrate how repetition, sometime but not always with a […]
Average is a human rights abuse
This article in the Journal of Medical Ethics was directed at Archi from the Editor of E&P, and has got me all thoughtful about how a simple understanding of statistics is essential to everyone, even those working with the judiciary. The team writing this study reviewed the decisions of forensic physicians who were determining if […]