A newsletter for people interested in medicine, its subspecialties, health policy, outcomes, human biology, drug development, translational science, medical ethics, and science communication

There are no rules in love and war

Your Bivalent Booster Mandate For Students is Inappropriate

Forcing family members & doctors to engage in the COVID19 forever war is anti-science & hurts patients

Being able to debunk Jade Eggs does not mean you know how many boosters a 20 year old man needs

Vinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Professor Hematologist/ OncologistProfessor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and MedicineAuthor of 500+ Peer Reviewed papers,...

The VPZD Show Ep. 23 (Early Exclusive for Sensible Medicine)

The Study of the Week breaks down the recent Medical vs N95 mask study in the Annals of Internal Medicine

A prominent journal in cardiology has published one of the most flawed analyses I have seen in years. And the conclusions are even worse.

A tale of two failed therapies and thousands of people without principles

What you don't see on the inpatient service

My occasional "Friday Reflection" post on Sensible Medicine meant for weekend reading. Hope you enjoy, please share your thoughts.

By Leslie Bienen

Can you guess which recommendations are now in vogue?

Administrators are not burdened by common sense or evidence based policy

Career aspirations must come secondary to research that always and only advances patient interests

We are excited to share this guest post from Dr. Mohammed Ruzieh from the University of Florida. He dissects a flawed study of stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation

An anonymous east coast academic medical doctor writers a rejoinder

In March 2000, doctors in most of Israel went on strike. Deaths dropped by 20%. Suppose oseltamivir became unavailable during a bad flu season. Would that cause a health catastrophe – or would it...

Dr. Katie Sharff tackles COVID stigma

This study reminds me that colon cancer screening is a decision, like all healthcare decisions, to be made by a patient in consultation with his or her physician.

It's time to be honest about bad evidence and bad leadership

Findings suggest that COVID-19 is not a dramatically worse malady

In this Study of the Week, we learn about the DCP trial, which compared two ways to treat high blood pressure. Experts preferred one drug; practicing doctors another.

We discuss the state of medical education, Harvard music video, causal language at JAMA and more

More episodes coming soon

The Study of the Week once again underscores the value of sharing medical trial data for re-analysis

Young men need different advice than old women

Professor Kaul explains why the POST-PCI trial of stress testing vs no stress testing after high-risk coronary stenting failed to answer its question. It's a tour-de-force in critical appraisal.

The Study of the Week considers a major trial of a pricy device that breaks a basic rule of science. Yet a major journal and regulators allowed it. What should one think?

Healthy middle age people carrying CO2 monitors need frank advice to stop

Before we begin to cover current articles, we’re going to dive into some of the topics that are particularly rich veins for the churnalist. The coverage of nutrition research is an obvious place to...

The White House is pushing Americans hard to take a novel Covid vaccine before the studies are complete.

In the Study of the Week, academic cardiologist Andrew Foy explains a study that his group published on the matter of statins and diabetes.

How a doctor reacts to a patient’s death (and thus, maybe this whole reflection) is pretty unimportant.

Vinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Professor Hematologist/ OncologistProfessor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and MedicineAuthor of 450+ Peer Reviewed papers,...

The Study of the Week highlights the complexity of using trials that deliver clearly positive results.

This is the paradox of being a young trainee: I need empathy and experience to be an effective healer, but empathy and experience take time.

A quantitative analysis demonstrating the superiority of positive findings over negative ones. Should be good post for fans of the JAMA's Users's Guides, our Symptom to Diagnosis and McGee's Eviden...

The POST-PCI trial was reported as “negative.” The better interpretation was that it was inconclusive. These are not the same.

This Study of the Week column is a tour de force of critical appraisal of one the most important trials presented at the recent ESC conference

Last Monday, we considered potential bias in data analysis. Today, the Study of the Week considers another source of bias—trial design.

Doubt and pain

Can we learn from Kahneman & Tversky?

Reader responses

This is the third of my three-part series on the importance of control arms of trials

Robert M Kaplan and Sander Greenland

The results could force journals to cease publishing. The physician-researchers who primarily publish in these journals could spend more time improving medical care by seeing patients.

At the heart of one of modern medicine's greatest errors was confusing correlation and causation.

It’s my pleasure to introduce today’s guest post by Timothée Olivier.

What do they mean? (4 fold increase in over 55, but what about 18 to 54?)

Mandrola, Hoeg and Prasad talk about Denmark vs the US, and the Cochrane Mask review

Drs. Alderighi and Rasoini are back with some tips for budding health journalists. Their short essay helps everyone learn key tips and tricks of reading observational studies

Drs Camilla Alderighi and Raffaele Rasoini write about an important project to improve health literacy. These words tempt you to be optimistic! Thank you @camialderighi @RasoiniR

An example from Multiple Myeloma teaches an ethical lesson in oncology

Three professors of Medicine comment on how they see COVID-19 in August of 2022.

1. Kudos to Harvard 2. The rankings are idiotic 3. If we are going to rank...

Moving on from Nutrition #churnalism to exercise #churnalism. Prepare to grit your teeth. Enjoy!

A Soviet refugee and physician worries about the suppression of reasonable disagreement, ideological purity testing and attempts to legislate acceptable medical practice to conform to the desired...

Guest post from David Allely, MS3

Text version https://www.drugdevletter.com/p/how-to-read-and-interpret-a-cancerVinay Prasad, MD MPH; Physician & Professor Hematologist/ OncologistProfessor ...