How to Read a Paper by Trisha Greenhalgh Much is in the BMJ, if you already subscribe. Screening; evidence and practice. Muir Gray and Angela Raffle. Testing Treatments, also from Pinter and Martin, and available freely online here. Overdiagnosed, by Welch, Schwartz and Woloshin. Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Tyranny of Health, […]

and my concerns about it’s effectiveness and potential harms. References here. 1)     http://www.3weekcough.org/whattodo.html 2)     Lung C ancer Awareness Campaign Cluster Briefing Slide Pack, 2/4/12, DoH 3)     http://thorax.bmj.com/content/67/5/412.long 4)     http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1747254/pdf/v060p01059.pdf 5)     http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1747254/pdf/v060p01059.pdf 6)     http://thorax.bmj.com/content/61/11/975.abstract 7)     http://thorax.bmj.com/content/61/11/975.abstract 8)     http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16882373  

I’ve just watched an episode of this Channel 4 programme. Who can forget Dr Chris Steele doing the ‘first’ (!) testicular check on TV. And now we have had the Embarrassing Bodies, the Channel 4 programme, providing us with more of the same. It’s very tempting to think that more ‘awareness’ is always good for […]

And more than that, concentrate  efforts on things that are more likely to help now and in the future. I’m disturbed by the idea that fish oils are a  good idea for ‘depression to schizophrenia’ as evidenced by this article. There are several reasonable theories as to why fish oils might help mental health, but the […]

Sanctus clinics Edinburgh are no longer offering non evidence based ‘breast checks’ and Champneys are no longer offering non evidence based ovarian cancer screening. It would be very good if Champneys would now get rid of the rest of their enormous lot of non evidence based screening tests. There are loads. Do let me know, […]

Here are the references – it will be up here probably tomorrow. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22495689   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9783861   http://www.bmj.com/content/314/7086/1037   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.1242/abstract;jsessionid=3D0C17206FD3C96227DFD224D616F5FA.d02t03   http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/40/24/45760738.pdf   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.1242/pdf   http://www.york.ac.uk/res/herc/documents/wp/11_21.pdf   http://www.bmj.com/content/313/7072/1577?view=long&pmid=8990990   http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2466-10-41.pdf

is in the BMJ here

  From here, since my self-created recording is so bad.   Last week, Georgia Gale Grant argued that, rather than praying for the recovery of Fabrice Muamba, it would be better, for humanists, sceptics and aethists,  if aged between ‘14 and 35’ to ‘ get regular ECGs to make sure you’re not at any known risk […]

  Here are some of the references used in Women’s Hour today. There was not enough time to discuss the stats properly. What is crucial is the fact that there is a lot of guess work – there has (shockingly) never been a proper RCT of cervical screening in normal risk women. So all estimates […]

            Here are the references for a piece on the Pod Delusion podcast last week. The dreadful quality of the recording is all my fault.   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567   http://www.amazon.co.uk/Screening-Evidence-practice-Angela-Raffle/dp/0199214492   http://whqlibdoc.who.int/php/WHO_PHP_34.pdf   newbornbloodspot.screening.nhs.uk/getdata.php?id=11648   http://www.scielo.org.ar/pdf/rac/v76n2/en_v76n2a20.pdf     http://www.screening.nhs.uk/cms.php?folder=2898   http://www.annals.org/content/147/12/854.full   http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001877/screening-for-breast-cancer-with-mammography   http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/decisionaids   http://www.screening.nhs.uk/hcm#mce_temp_url#       http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa070972 […]