Sylvain's Panama Adventure » Science http://www.duford.com - Living in Central America Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:57:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Science-Based Medicine » Medicine’s Beautiful Idea http://www.duford.com/2010/05/science-based-medicine-%c2%bb-medicine%e2%80%99s-beautiful-idea/ http://www.duford.com/2010/05/science-based-medicine-%c2%bb-medicine%e2%80%99s-beautiful-idea/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 12:02:58 +0000 sduford http://www.duford.com/?p=270 For most of human history, doctors have killed their patients more often than they have saved them. An excellent new book, Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It, by Druin Burch, MD, describes medicine’s bleak past, how better ways of thinking led to modern successes, and how failure to adopt those better ways of thinking continues to impede medical progress. The moral is not that doctors once did foolish things. The moral is that even the best of people let themselves down when they rely on untested theories and that these failures kill people and stain history. Bleeding and mercury have gone out of fashion, untested certainties and overconfidence have not.

Burch’s conversation with his rowing coach epitomizes the problem:“I want you to keep your heart rate at 85% of max for the next hour and a half.” “Why?” “Because it’s the best way to improve your fitness.” “How do you know?” “Because I’ve done it before and it worked. Because that’s what the people who win the Olympics do. I know, I’ve trained some of them.” “But has anyone actually done an experiment?” “What on earth are you talking about?”

This book is Burch’s answer to his coach’s question. Medicine’s “beautiful idea” is that we should test all hypotheses and beliefs using the kind of tests that are reliable for determining the truth. Instead of going by tradition, authority, theory, common sense, or personal experience, we now have effective tools to find out for sure whether a treatment really works.

Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It

via Science-Based Medicine » Medicine’s Beautiful Idea.

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In light of recent events at the Texas and Florida education boards, this cartoon hits the nail right on the head:

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