Understanding Evidence

[AJ Lievre]

This was tweeted out this morning by Roger Kerry and Alan Taylor. This was a week long blog series on “understanding evidence”. Check it out, post your thoughts
By the way the tweet had a # tag with it #UnderstandingEvidence Still not exactly sure what that means, but I’m sure you can figure it out.

http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/category/understanding-evidence/

[Erik Lineberry]

I really liked the topic that highlighted S4BE. That site has a wealth of resource all over it. I have quite a few tabs open from them right now (not a many as Justin though).

The most recent post about evidence of absence and the invisible unicorn was great at explaining a common conclusion that authors draw and it is usually not truly the case. This is a great tidbit to be aware of when assessing articles. I look forward to more posts from this blog and hope that is doesn’t remain just a week long special.

Also I really want this watch.

I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.

[August Winter]

It certainly reads like Understanding Evidence will be an ongoing series, which is great because I found the posts easy to read and engaging, which is a must for most EBP articles.

I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on teaching EBM to 11-13 year old students like the one author reports having done. I think that this is such an interesting topic because one third of EBM is understanding and critically appraising information and I think this is one of the biggest failings of junior high, high school, undergraduate, and at times even graduate education. Overall I think the focus of EBM on multiple value sources that go into decision making is also a worthwhile topic to be incorporated frequently into education. On the other hand, EBM as a topic itself can be abstract and dry, so I’d be curious how exactly the author framed her talk to this population.

Most importantly though, that watch is seriously sweet.

[Scott Resetar]

It’s a great watch, but I’m not a watch guy, unfortunately. A brief google search for the watch show that you can’t buy one. I would wear a one of a kind watch.

The second blog has to do with an intervention being rapidly scaled up, and possibly causing harm. I think this is unlikely to really happen in PT because a topic is rarely ever “settled” or “closed”, at least not in my mind. It is an interesting question, though. If a topic has an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing in favor of an intervention, when does it become unethical to continue wasting research dollars on that topic? I think the scientific method requires that we continue to replicate and test certain assertions, so once something is “settled” you still need to have a big test of it once every decade or so. Newton’s law of gravity was “settled” for a long time. It doesn’t mean it was right.

The gem of the third blog is this link: http://www.students4bestevidence.net/library/ , which has a ton of great resources for us to use!

The fourth blog was a complete bust.

The fifth blog talks about the importance of explaining EBM to the masses. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to use this paradigm if patients don’t know about it, or if they aren’t aware they have a big role to play in their decisions.

The sixth one has to do with the philosophical question of “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, Which is something we should all keep in mind when we see a negative ( no difference) trial published.

The most recent one, published 10-21-16, is a nice historical overview of Archie Cochrane, and his work with EBM and the collaboration. I don’t know a lot about him and it makes me want to read his autobiography.

[Author]

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