Supplements vs drugs - the birth of a misleading dichotomy
In my last email, I illustrated the supplement double standard - a tendency to think that supplements are effective and have no side...
Islon Woolf MD
Apr 22, 20186 min read
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Critical Thinking in Medicine
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Patients are Vulnerable to False Claims
Healthcare is filled with thousands of claims; most are untrue. Your inability to assess these claims renders you vulnerable. This blog aims to equip you with the basic skills necessary to evaluate healthcare claims for yourself.
The Hierarchy of Medical Evidence
Evaluating a claim in healthcare can be simplified once you understand three simple rules:
1. A claim is only as strong as the evidence behind it.
2. Medical evidence falls into only a few distinct categories.
3. Each category is predictably reliable, and can be ranked into a hierarchy.
4. To evaluate a claim, simply identify its evidence and where it falls in the hierarchy.
Use The Hierarchy to Evaluate a Claim
Suppose you believe a treatment works because a friend had a good result, this is anecdotal evidence. It sits near the bottom of the evidence hierarchy. We are easily fooled by anecdotes due to a host of reasons, such as: placebo effects, the natural history of the disease, or concurrent treatments. Unless you have stronger evidence - or a reason why this anecdote is more reliable than the millions that have fooled us before - this treatment is unlikely to work.
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