This is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I question why I am even wasting my time reading this tripe but I will plod forward so that there is a counterargument to this work. I also need to understand criticisms of this paradigm so that the paradigm can be improved.

Importantly, the authors focus on an outdated definition of EBM. This definition was the first iteration of the definition and is oft-quoted but it is out of date nonetheless.

Evidence based medicine (EBM) is the conscientious, explicit, judicious use of the current, best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.

The current paradigm of EBM was published in 2002 well before this book was published and should have been included in this book. Hickey and Roberts claim it had its origins in the legal system which is total BS. If you read the early EBM papers there is no mention of the legal system driving this paradigm.  I also consider EBM to just be a set of skills (searching, critical appraisal, application) to use in the care of patients.

Current EBM Paradigm: From https://acpjc.acponline.org/Content/136/2/ISSUE/ACPJC-2002-136-2-A11.htm

They focus and have problems with 2 words in the above definition: best and evidence. They are concerned that best leads to selection of evidence and that “one bit of evidence is better than another”. Of course some evidence is better than others. Empirical studies (not done by the evil drug companies) have demonstrated that certain design flaws, for example lack of blinding, lead to overestimation of effects. Studies have also demonstrated that observational study designs can overestimate effects and even give opposite effects to randomized trials (see the HRT saga). I’m sure they will argue later in the book that all these types of studies are rigged and randomized trials are rigged (probably because their holy grail, Vitamin C, failed in controlled trials to be useful). There are too many studies showing similar effects to discount the evidence that supports the fact that some studies are better than others.

They claim “EBM’s evidence does not mean scientific information or data, but refers to legal justification“. First off, EBM does not possess evidence so the ‘ is misplaced. Second, this statement doesn’t even possess any face validity. Journals are full of scientific information and data. What are they talking about?

They claim “EBM has little to offer the doctor treating a patient, beyond suggestions about what might be expected with an average patient“. Studies used to inform practice usually are based on a sampling of patients because we can’t study every single person with that problem. Sampling can be done to reflect a broad range of people with a given problem or it can be done to select for certain subpopulations of disease (for example, advanced disease or early disease). On average, most people are average. So their statement isn’t totally without merit. We can’t do studies on every type of patient. But, here is where the current paradigm helps us. We (as doctors) take into account the patient’s state and circumstances when applying the best available evidence to their case. We use our clinical training and experience to decide what we should do from what we could do. There are ways to adapt study data to an individual patient like I demonstrate in this video. N-of-1 trials can also be done on individual patients to see if a therapy is effective (more on this in another post).

Finally, (though there is a lot more I could comment on) they have problems with using statistics to analyze data. As I mention above, in medicine we can only sample a small percentage of those with disease. If we could study everyone we wouldn’t need statistics but since we can’t we use statistics on a sample to try to generalize it to the whole population. I don’t know of any other way to do this because we simply can’t study everyone. (I recognize this is a gross simplification of what statistics do and not totally accurate.)

The next chapter I’ll critique is entitled “Populations are not People”. Stay tuned…