Friday, November 25, 2011

Evidence based medicine

The following is from "Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials":
As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

2 comments:

  1. Could the trial be considered to be skewed by the fact that the only people who can be found willing to participate are suicidal?

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  2. I'd hope the researchers would have done their best to minimize if not eliminate selection or self-selection bias. :-)

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