The mayfly lives only one day. And sometimes it rains.
Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.
The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating things in the whole of medicine. It's not just about taking a pill, and your performance and your pain getting better. It's about our beliefs and expectations. It's about the cultural meaning of a treatment.
I write about misuses of evidence in plenty of different spheres: scaremongering journalists, obvious quacks and naturopaths, and flaws in the way that evidence is used in mainstream academia, medicine and in (government) policy. One of the things I always found interesting is the same tricks are used to distort medicine in all of those domains.
Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.
Science has authority not because of white coats or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.
We realized that the world of popular culture had been creating the perfect candidate for many years: the female champion of the universe.
A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate.
The point of being at home is to be with my family as much as possible.
So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young.