Helen Pearson: What Constitutes Real Medical Evidence?

Helen Pearson, PhD, is an award-winning biomedical journalist at Nature, named European Science Journalist of the Year in 2025. She teaches science writing at University College London. BEYOND BELIEF is her second, just published book. THE LIFE PROJECT was her first.

The points we covered include:

—The evolution of evidence over 8 decades, moving from rationalism, expert opinion, hunches (eminence-based) to empiricism, evidence-based

—The enormous devastating adverse impact of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care book from a single sentence change, leading to an epidemic of sudden infant death syndrome. And how it ultimately got corrected.

—The term evidence-based medicine was coined in 1991 at McMaster University

—Iain Chalmers, Archie Cochrane and the Cochrane Collaboration

“The scandalous failure of science to cumulate evidence scientifically”—Iain Chalmers

—Systematic reviews

—Natural experiments (such as with Shingles)

—Resistance to change

“Challenging a doctor’s conventional way of practice is like hitting him in the intellectual testicles”—Drummond Rennie, past JAMA editor

—Evidence-based practice (and not) in the Covid pandemic

—Recent examples of challenging dogma (kindly stones, thymus involution)

—AI and misinformation, false evidence

Thank you Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Ageless Mind Project, Anthony Higgins, E West, MagnaAnimus, and many others for tuning into my live video with Helen Pearson! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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