When relative and absolute risks disagree (Part 2 of 4) Click here to see part 1 When did your doctor last prescribe you a quinolone antibiotic? My last was in 2017, which was before the FDA warning about aortic aneurysm, but after warnings about severe nerve damage. Now I'm curious: Next time I get a… Continue reading Quinolones and the risk of aortic aneurysm
Overview (Part 1 of 4) When did your doctor last prescribe you a quinolone antibiotic? My last was in 2017, which was before the FDA warning about aortic aneurysm, but after warnings about severe nerve damage. Now I'm curious: Next time I get a urinary tract infection, what will my doctor prescribe...? When did you… Continue reading Quinolones and the risk of aortic aneurysm
Discordance between treatment and follow-up phases (part 3 in a series): Panacea was a goddess known for having a cure-all, which is why her name now means “a solution to every problem.” This series comprises a critique of an RCT, recently published in JAMA, in which the authors concluded that the treatment was something of a panacea...
Statistical and clinical significance of confounders in RCTs: One thing I tell my students is that thinking hard is hard — but necessary. Of course we would all prefer to make decisions the easy way — with simple heuristics or decision rules. Unfortunately, when we fail to grapple with the nuances in each new decision task, we increase our risk for error...
Confounding bias (part 2 in a series): Panacea was a goddess known for having a cure-all, which is why her name now means “a solution to every problem.” This series comprises a critique of an RCT, recently published in JAMA, in which the authors concluded that the treatment was something of a panacea...
Overview (part 1 in a series): Panacea was a goddess known for having a cure-all, which is why her name now means "a solution to every problem." This series comprises a critique of an RCT, recently published in JAMA, in which the authors concluded that the treatment was something of a panacea...
When science is inconvenient and we want to disregard its conclusions, we tend to rely on the old axiom that science doesn't prove anything. And it's true. But science does tell us what has the highest probability of being true at any given time, and therein lies its power...
