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medicine

Placebos for all, or why the p-value should have no place in healthcare decision making

David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at UCL, has a new essay over at Aeon opining about the problems with p-values. A short while back, we also discussed p-value problems, and Colquhoun arrives at the same conclusions as us about the… Read More »Placebos for all, or why the p-value should have no place in healthcare decision making

Access to medicines and medical technologies for the global poor

The UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines recently published its long awaited report Promoting innovation and access to health technologies. The report explores and proposes some solutions to the well recognised problem of under-investment in research and… Read More »Access to medicines and medical technologies for the global poor

“Health is bad for you. That’s what many economists believe.” Richard Horton’s anti-economics strikes again.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the venerable medical journal the Lancet, is no stranger to bad economics. In 2012 and 2013, he stoked the ire of economists worldwide with a series of ill-informed tweets. These included gems such as: Economics, second only to… Read More »“Health is bad for you. That’s what many economists believe.” Richard Horton’s anti-economics strikes again.

The ‘Weekend Effect’ (and what it means for research and policy)

Today, two new studies are published examining different aspects of the observed increase in the risk of mortality associated with weekend admission, the so-called ‘weekend effect’. In the first [disclaimer: I am an author of this], the results of a… Read More »The ‘Weekend Effect’ (and what it means for research and policy)