Tag: evidence-based medicine

EBM hierarchy

2023: The year that the evidence-based medicine (EBM) paradigm was weaponized against vaccines and public health

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been a very useful paradigm for assessing evidence in medicine. However, like any other framework, it can be misused, particularly when fundamentalist EBM methodolatry leads to its inappropriate application to questions for which it is ill-suited, a misuse that has been weaponized against public health during the pandemic.

/ January 1, 2024
EBM hierarchy

Evidence-based medicine vs. basic science in medical school

Last week Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote a Substack arguing that medical students should learn the principles of evidence-based medicine before basic science.This is a recipe for amplifying the main flaw in EBM that science-based medicine was meant to correct, and Dr. Prasad's arguments would have been right at home on an integrative medicine blog. [Note ADDENDUM.]

/ May 22, 2023

It Will Take More Than “Courage” to Restore Public Trust in Medicine

Judah Kreinbrook, a first year medical student, responds to a post on Sensible Medicine by a medical student that exaggerated the risk of myocarditis from COVID-19 vaccines while expressing anger at how trust in medicine has been undermined. Having been raised by a family steeped in antivaccine views, Kreinbrook invokes his journey to SBM to gently correct his fellow medical student and...

/ December 31, 2022

Aromatase inhibitors and acupuncture in breast cancer: Spinning a negative study, four years later

Four years ago, I wrote about an essentially negative study looking at whether acupuncture could alleviate joint pain caused by aromatase inhibitors, a common treatment for estrogen-sensitive breast cancer. The study's back, and it doesn't look any more positive.

/ November 14, 2022
Acupuncture

But Is It Real?

Why we need more science in medicine.

/ September 7, 2022
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

How to design high quality acupuncture trials: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Acupuncture advocates have published guidelines for "rigorous" acupuncture randomized controlled trials. While that sounds good on the surface, the devil is in the details, which reveal that the dedication to scientific rigor is perhaps not so strong.

/ April 11, 2022
Ivermectin repurposing

Science-based medicine isn’t just for CAM. The case of ivermectin shows that it never was.

Another large randomized controlled trial for ivermectin showed no efficacy for the early treatment of COVID-19. This is not a surprise to science-based medicine advocates. Here's why the story of ivermectin shows that SBM isn't just for "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) —and never was.

/ April 4, 2022
Acupuncture needles

UK Recommendations Wrong on Acupuncture

NICE draft recommendations on acupuncture don't even make sense from an EBM perspective, and utterly fail to consider SBM principles.

/ August 5, 2020

Should Evidence-Based Medicine Be Replaced by Interpersonal Medicine?

An opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine complains about the limitations of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and recommends a new approach they call "interpersonal medicine." In my opinion, good clinical medicine is already interpersonal medicine; there is no need for something new.

/ November 27, 2018
EBM hierarchy

Responding to SBM Critics

A response to a critic of SBM, and setting the record straight on our actual positions regarding evidence and the practice of medicine.

/ April 19, 2017