Tag: John Ioannidis

Carl Sagan

John Ioannidis and the Carl Sagan effect in science communication about COVID-19

We have been critical about John Ioannidis over a number of his statements about the COVID-19 pandemic. Now he's done it again, producing a poor-quality paper whose unwritten assumptions suggest that the Carl Sagan effect, in which scientists are penalized professionally by their peers for becoming popular science communicators, still holds considerable sway in science and medicine.

/ December 13, 2021

Contrarian Doctors: The Pandemic is Over, Again

I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons the pandemic isn’t over yet, is because contrarian doctors repeatedly said it was.

/ November 19, 2021

Intubations and Accusations: Doctors were “just going crazy, and intubating people who did not have to be intubated”

It's problematic when a paragon of evidence-based medicine claims vaccines spread disease and amplifies internet rumors that doctors killed COVID-19 patients through premature intubations.

/ September 19, 2021

“What Exactly Did the Virus do to All These People?” Reflections on Ted Nugent, Mel Q, Kelly Brogan, and John Ioannidis

The notion that many people are dying with SARS-CoV-2 not from SARS-CoV-2 has hindered our ability to contain to the virus. Whether the source is QAnon influencers or a highly credentialed scientists, we must push back on narratives that are used to minimize the danger of COVID-19.

/ June 18, 2021
John Ioannidis with Laura Ingraham on Fox News

What the heck happened to John Ioannidis?

John Ioannidis is one of the most published and influential scientists in the world, someone whose skewering of bad medical research we at SBM have frequently lauded over the years. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Since then, Prof. Ioannidis has been publishing dubious studies that minimize the dangers of the coronavirus, shown up in the media to decry "lockdowns," and, most recently,...

/ March 29, 2021

Pitfalls in Research: Why Studies Are More Often Wrong than Right

Here is a course guide to episode 9, "Pitfalls of Research", of my YouTube lecture series on science-based medicine.

/ March 3, 2020

The Debate Is Over: Antidepressants DO Work Better Than Placebo

The idea that antidepressants are no more effective than placebo has been put to rest. They clearly work when used appropriately, although the effect size is not as large as the published studies have suggested.

/ March 6, 2018

Is there a reproducibility “crisis” in biomedical science? No, but there is a reproducibility problem

Reproducibility is the key to scientific advancement. It has been claimed that we suffer from a "reproducibility crisis," but in reality it is a chronic problem in reproducibility. Here we will look at the scope of the problem and strategies to address it.

/ June 6, 2016

The hijacking of evidence-based medicine

A hero of the blog, John Ioannidis, worries that evidence-based medicine has been hijacked, and when Ioannidis says something we at SBM listen. But has EBM been "hijacked"?

/ March 21, 2016

Screening for disease in people without symptoms: The reality

One of the most contentious questions that come up in science-based medicine that we discuss on this blog is the issue of screening asymptomatic individuals for disease. The most common conditions screened for that we, at least, have discussed on this blog are cancers (e.g., mammography for breast cancer, prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer, ultrasound screening for thyroid cancer), but screening...

/ February 2, 2015