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Doctoring Data: How to sort out medical advice from medical nonsense by [Malcolm Kendrick]

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Malcolm Kendrick

Doctoring Data: How to sort out medical advice from medical nonsense Kindle Edition

by Malcolm Kendrick (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Is coffee good for you? Will sausages kill you? Should you avoid sugar, fat, salt, or all three? Booked your smear test yet? Checked your balls? Considering bariatric surgery? Are you taking statins like a good boy or girl? ... Or should you just ignore this relentless bombardment of medical advice and remember that no one gets out of life alive.

With the same brilliance and humour that bowled us over in "The Great Cholesterol Con", Dr Kendrick takes a scalpel to the world of medical research and dissects it for your inspection. He reveals the tricks that are played to make minute risk look enormous. How the drug trials are hyped, the data manipulated, the endless games that are played to scare us into doing what, in many cases, makes the most money. After reading this book you will know what to believe and what to ignore. You'll have a much greater understanding of the world of medical research. A world in crisis.

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” Dr. Marcia Angell.

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253 pages
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English
Publication date

February 7, 2015
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764 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr Kendrick graduated from medical school in Aberdeen and trained as a General Practitioner in Scotland. After ten years he split his time between General Practice and education. On the doctor side, Malcolm currently lives and works in Cheshire in General Practice, Intermediate Care and Out of Hours. On the education side, Malcolm set up the on- line educational system for the European Society of Cardiology, working with the European Commission and also set up the first website for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK. Malcolm is an original member of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford and of The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics (THINCS). The latter comprises a group of scientists, doctors and researchers who share the belief that cholesterol does not cause cardiovascular disease. This is the field of medicine for which Malcolm is best known. His long term interest in the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease has re- sulted in many publications in journals such as the BMJ, Medical Hypoth- eses, Pulse and PharmacoEconomics. His breadth and depth of expertise in this area led to his election to Who’s Who in 2009. The Great Cholesterol Con was the book that firmly placed Malcolm on the world stage of the ‘diet-cholesterol-heart’ hypothesis and his army of followers are eagerly awaiting his next bout of wit and wisdom. Malcolm blogs at drmalcolmkendrick.org and lectures by invitation. Married with two children and two cats, Malcolm would like more people to challenge the status quo, and never just accept the party line. He likes to ski, golf, sail, --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN : B00TCG3X4S
Publisher : Columbus Publishing Ltd (February 7, 2015)
Publication date : February 7, 2015
Language : English
File size : 764 KB
Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 253 pages
Lending : Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #358,407 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #4,559 in Medical eBooks
- #18,564 in Health, Fitness & Dieting (Kindle Store)
- #31,333 in Medical Books

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379 ratings

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Amazon Customer

Enormously Informative and Very Engaging

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2015

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You know the great nutrition debate on dietary fat popularized recently by Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz and others? First the "experts" are telling us that saturated fat is bad for us, then this guy in the New York Times says that we've been fooled by the experts and that we should, in fact, gorge on fat, when all of a sudden a new study pops up from Harvard "proving" that consumption of any amount of red meat is going to kill us after all.

Don't you wish you could make sense of it all? I certainly did. I'd been fooled by the "experts" and the headlines so many times that I'd begun wishing I had taken a course in college on how to make sense of medical research. Something that would have taught me in particular how to spot biases, half-truths and plain old BS. Well, here's the answer to my wishes. "Doctoring Data" does just that.

The book is phenomenally engaging and witty. Better than my imagined college course, it feels almost like having a conversation with an old friend, the brilliant (if perhaps somewhat scatterbrained) physician who explains it all so well: passionate about his subject, sketching charts on a napkin while sipping his drink, and pulling no punches when exposing the dishonesty and senselessness rampant in medical research today.

Bottom line: read this book. The author would frown if I said it might just save your life, so I will only say that I hope it will - in at least a small way - reduce your risk of suffering due to a medical absurdity.

102 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Curmudgeon writes great book

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2018

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I am a physician entering the final years of a Primary Care practice. I have now read and reread this enjoyable volume. I have seen the evolution of disease paradigms and preventive medicine campaigns and have had frequent concerns that things were just not "right". After reading this (twice) I am simultaneously elated and aghast. Elated that my crude internal " Qualitative Rubbish Detector" was NOT ,all these years, giving off a false alarm but its warnings have been confirmed by a physician with a more finely tuned "QUANTITATIVE Rubbish Detector" who can show not only that we are being bombarded with misinformation but what quality and what percentage misinformation. THAT is refreshing. That this happens so much,though,is ghastly. And to find a former editor of the New England Journal agreeing that journal editors can't hold authors to the standards we need is disheartening. After all, it should be their JOB to make sure primary endpoints aren't switched,papers don't deal with subgroup analyses dressed up like primary endpoints, meta-analyses do not summarily reject important, pertinent ,well-done studies because they might lead to an unpopular outcome, and that guidelines that kill tens of thousands of patients should be RAPIDLY abandoned when it turns out they were based on fraudulent studies in which the data was contrived.( and not,as was done, leave the guidelines in place because the admittedly fraudulent papers have not yet been officially withdrawn). I don't necessarily agree with Kendrick on everything but I enjoy his analysis and find that much/most of what he says is quite compelling. And infuriating. And hilarious. Which is a good combination. I happen to be a physician, but I feel the writing is more than clear enough for any interested lay person to thoroughly enjoy this book.

26 people found this helpful

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El Professor

An Amazing and Accurate Analysis of Western Medicine's problems

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2015

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What an amazing book. Based on work that I have done in drug development I would say he is spot on. The researchers I worked generally highly ethical and genuinely concerned about contributing to patient well-being. That being said, they were also often less than prepared in experimental design and statistical analysis (which was my contribution). At the same time, these same researchers were under tremendous pressure for POSITIVE results from management above them. Only positive results contribute to the bottom line. Kendrick reveals the magnitude of the problem facing Western medicine - see the March 16, 2015 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education "Amid a Sea of False Findings, the NIH Tries Reform" for a recent perspective. Once you buy this you will never look at a prescription in the same way, as a matter of fact you may opt not to go the drug route at all.

64 people found this helpful

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S. C. OBrien

Should Be Required Reading!

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2015

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I liked this book enough that I will be giving it as a gift this year. First off, allow me to say that it has a number of editing issues, but that I don't really care because it is so informative.

This book should be required reading for everyone because it introduces a degree of critical thinking for those encountering medical industry promotions masquerading as health information. In a very entertaining and non-technical way, Dr. Kendrick teaches you how to see the story behind the presented data. While it does involve arithmetic to show how numbers are manipulated, even the math-impaired will find it easy to follow. Also, although he is from the UK, he draws plenty of examples from both the US market and that of Europe/UK.

Spoiler alert- if you are taking prescription medications you are likely to rethink the decision to embrace each one. And that is his objective. He is very clear that he is NOT anti-medication, quite the contrary. But rather he is promoting good critical thinking on the part of the patient because it may not be coming from your doctor.

Enjoy the fun and give thanks for becoming armed with new tools to take control of your health!

27 people found this helpful

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Marjorie Jones

Improve your own health. read this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 1, 2016

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I really appreciate the work of Malcolm Kendrick. He is explaining some quite difficult concepts and has tried to make his book digestible for the general public. I do not know what I expected, but in truth it is quite academic. I think I might have found some of his examples easier to grasp had there been more diagrams and graphs. Nevertheless, the message he is promulgating is very, very important. Fundamentally the body is a self regulating organism and is designed to cope with most illnesses itself. Only in the most serious of situations is medical intervention advantageous. The population is too ready to go to the medical cabinet and start stuffing pills in the belief that the medicine will cure them. It is a very serious book and I am very grateful to Dr Kendrick for giving up his time to try to educate people like me. I am obliged to have a medical examination every year. The doctor who supervises this is not my General Practitioner or in my GP's surgery. Thus I can talk frankly to this doctor. He said that when he first came into practice 30 years ago 50% of the medicines that he was prescribing then are now withdrawn because they were harmful, or dangerous and many ineffective. Food for thought. Thank you Dr Kendrick

21 people found this helpful

Gillian D

Be a better informed patient for your own, and your family's, health.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2015

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Dr Kendrick, once again, brings into the light of day what's really going on in parts of our dear old NHS. Explains how the system, top down, is now firmly in the grip of vested interests, in particular big pharma, and how self important, inflated egos promote the agenda's of big pharma and fail to protect the interests of patients by attacking viciously those who have the temerity to challenge some of the very dangerous nonsense that is going on. Including attempts to prevent publication of worthwhile research by medical scientists who can find themselves cast into the wilderness.

Meanwhile, the publication of the deluge of poor, biased research to "prove" previous poor biased research was "right" continues unabated. And, surprise, surprise, you, as a patient can very easily find yourself on the receiving end of medical advice that may well make you very unwell. So called "preventative" medicine - sounds nice and caring, doesn't it - is busy medicalising the well by implementing NICE guidelines which promote medications in particular that may well cause serious harm. Ostensibly, on the grounds of lowering your risk of some future illness - which you might or might not have got anyway. The healthy are now well and truly in the sights of big pharma as consumers of their questionable products. Aided by some of those in the medical profession and some unwitting health journalists who seem to be engaged in a campaign to scare folks into the arms of big pharma.

Another surprise for me was how the household name charities who support patients and their families with particular illnesses are essentially controlled by big pharma. The unethical has become the new normal. I have no doubt that the majority of GP's and other doctors want to do the best they can for their patients but, unfortunately, they too have been dragged into this system which starts with their education in medical schools where independent, questioning minds are soon trampled on and they soon learn there are certain "facts" that must not be challenged. I wonder how many GP's are out there who quietly despair at the way they are hamstrung by this Orwellian system.

You will never read another newspaper article about health again in the same way. And you will know what's really going on when some eminent
big ego publicly attacks another doctor for daring to give what might actually be good advice or a different point of view. The biggest message I took from this is that I need to be a much better informed patient. All GP's and patients need to read this. The people who need to read it the most are the Health Select Committee and without consulting anyone at all connected with big pharma so they can make some better decisions and rigorously enforce a much needed brand new transparent and ethical system of scientific medical research

30 people found this helpful

nona

An inspirational read but a bit too scientific in places ....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2016

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An inspirational read, although for me not as easy to get into as Dr Kendrick's The Great Cholesterol Con, probably because I have an interest in that topic. I was put on Statins in my 40's, a women with no other risk factors. I wish this author's books had been around then or I would have questioned this. It is only 20 years later when I have started to have all the classic side effects, mainly muscle problems, that I wish I had not gone onto them, and it is only now when I have found an enlightened female gp that I have stopped taking them. I strongly feel that this book should be required reading for medical students, although I doubt that will happen. Personally a bit above my head in places and I found myself skimming through pages, although would be well suited to medical professionals or scientists. Maybe I will give it another read when the full effects of statin withdrawal have kicked in!!!

12 people found this helpful

J W.

Every health care professional needs to read this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2016

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This is a book that every consultant, doctor and or health professional should have on their shelves and are fully conversant with, imagine a world where your doctor listened, knew that there was no such thing as good and bad cholesterol and wanted to treat the causes of illnesses rather than pushing pills to mask the symtoms. Current thinking is a bit like limping into the surgery in agony, doctor gives out very strong pain killers that make you forget you have feet let alone a six inch nail in one, symptoms have been equalised, so the problem must be gone. This book is one of the most readable and in part hilarious books I have read, scarily it opens the Pandora's box and maybe just maybe hope was caught in time.

11 people found this helpful

J. Rawlinson

Fascinating and enlightening - more medics need to read this as well as public health/policy makers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2017

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Finally got around to reading this on holiday this year - fascinating account of the differences between population health, diet and relative risks of conditions compared to potentially more damaging medications pushed onto people by others. Having been involved with healthcare and cancer research for many years, am always keen to understand more about the attitudes and behaviour of those of us who receive free healthcare (irrespective of cause/contribution by anything we might have done) compared to those who have to contribute to their medical insurance/care and general wellbeing. Overmedicalising issues comes with its own risks and this book draws our attention to the myriad of factors that contribute to the position we find ourselves in the UK - suggesting those with a very low risk of CVD should take statins and seemingly hiding information that dares question the wisdom. A very good read irrespective of your background or work - and lots of food for thought by those who wonder where to invest most wisely in healthcare and public health systems. Not an over complicated read but certainly thought provoking - and now bought the Great Cholesterol Con by same author to follow up as like the style.

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