Ben Goldacre Quotes

These Corporations Run Our Culture, And They Riddle It With Bullshit.

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.

Children Can Be Disgusting, And Often They Can Develop Extraordinary Talents, But I’m Yet To Meet Any Child Who Can Stimulate His Carotid Arteries Inside His Ribcage.

Data Is The Fabric Of The Modern World: Just Like We Walk Down Pavements, So We Trace Routes Through Data, And Build Knowledge And Products Out Of It.

I Think You'll Find It's A Bit More Complicated Than That.

I Hope That You Will Be Asked To Participate In A Trial At Some Stage In Your Disease

Homeopathy Pills Are, After All, Empty Little Sugar Pills Which Seem To Work, And So They Embody [..] How We Can Be Misled Into Thinking That Any Intervention Is More Effective Than It Really Is.

If I Was Writing A Lifestyle Book It Would Have The Same Advice On Every Page, And You’d Know It All Already. Eat Lots Of Fruit And Vegetables, And Live Your Whole Life In Every Way As Well As You Can: Exercise Regularly As Part Of Your Daily Routine, Avoid Obesity, Don’t Drink Too Much, Don’t Smoke, And Don’t Get Distracted From The Real, Basic, Simple Causes Of Ill Health. But As We Will See, Even These Things Are Hard To Do On Your Own, And In Reality Require Wholesale Social And Political Changes.

In The Past, [medicalization]has Been Portrayed As Something That Doctors Inflict On A Passive And Un-suspecting World - An Expansion Of The Medical Empire. But In Reality, It Seems That These Reductionist Bio-medical Stories Can Appeal To Us All, Because Complex Problems Often Have Depressingly-complex Causes, And The Solutions Can Be Taxing, And Unsatisfactory.

I Agree, The World Would Be A Better Place If Doctors Were Less Enthusiastic About Adopting Very New Drugs.

Transparency And Detail Are Everything In Science.

There Are Many Differences Between Medicine And Teaching, But They Have Much In Common. Both Involve Craft And Personal Expertise, Learned Through Experience; But Both Can Be Informed By The Experience Of Others.