Hi all, I haven’t posted much on badscience.net due to exciting home events, fun dayjob activity, a ton of behind-the-scenes work on trials transparency with alltrials.net, activity on policy RCTs, exciting websites, and a zillion talks. I’m going to post this year’s backlog over the next week or two (and maybe rejig the site if I get a chance). So first up…

Here’s an editorial I wrote in the British Medical Journal with David Spiegelhalter, about the complex contradictory mess of evidence on the impact of bicycle helmets. Like most places where there’s controversy and disagreement, this is a great opportunity to walk through the benefits and shortcomings of different epidemiological techniques, from case control studies to modelling. Epidemiology is my dayjob; Bad Science and Bad Pharma are both, effectively, epidemiology textbooks with bad guys; and since the techniques of epidemiology are at the core of most media stories and squabbles on health, it’s very weird that you don’t hear the word more often. More on that in another journal article, which I’ll post later on!

This link to the full piece on the BMJ website should get you past the paywall:

www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3817.full?ijkey=I5vHBog6FhaaLzX&keytype=ref