TED Community » Ben Goldacre

About Me

I'm a doctor, write books, make radio documentaries, and write a weekly column in the Guardian newspaper. My work unpicks dodgy scientific claims from pharmaceutical companies, government reports, quacks, PR people, and journalists. This is a good way to make enemies, and ensure they have a platform!

I think unpicking bad science is the best way to explain good science.

My last book "Bad Science" was about all these themes, but mostly quacks and journalists.

My next book "The Drug Pushers" is about bad behaviour the pharmaceutical industry.

I currently work as an academic in epidemiology.

Location:
United Kingdom, London
Gender:
Male
I am:
Activist, Blogger, Doctor, Public servant, Scientist, Student, Writer/Editor
My website links:
Blog, Twitter, Book
TED conferences attended:
TEDGlobal 2011
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TEDCRED 50+ TED Speaker

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Communicating science.

Statistics.

Evidence based medicine.

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +50.70 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • +7

    A reply on Talk: Ben Goldacre: What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe

    Sep 28 2012: I'm no defender of current treatments in psychiatry, but you'll find a wide range of random variation in clinical trial results in all fields of medicine, because there is so much random variation in human pathology, whether it's heart attacks or migraines. This is also one of the reasons why fraud is more common in biomedical fields: the variation in the data is sufficiently high that failure to replicate will not expose you.

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