(Podcast Version – follow/subscribe)
I recently removed the following two links from our Resources Page:
I still consider these links to be potentially useful. So, why did I remove them? The bottom line is that while Cochrane resources can be valuable if used critically, they can also lead people to incorrect conclusions if used uncritically. Cochrane is a hub for evidence-based medicine, but as people who follow this site know, evidence-based medicine falls short of science-based medicine (Click Here to watch Harriet Hall’s free course on the subject). When it comes to SCAM (Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine), Cochrane falls short of an entirely scientific analysis. So while I can recommend a critical use of Cochrane resources, my recommendation has to be qualified, and the Resources Page just isn’t the best place to do that.
What really tipped me over the edge of decision on this was listening to Mark Crislip‘s podcast (QuackCast) episode Cochrane Reviews: The Food Babe of Medicine?, which I highly recommend listening to. At the end of the episode, he pointed out Cochrane’s recommendation for people to use a remedy lacking demonstrable clinical efficacy in order to ‘see if it works for you,’ which is nothing short of recommending for people to trust their personal experiences (which kinda defeats the purpose of science in medicine, to begin with). As Mark Crislip likes to say: the three most dangerous words in all of medicine are “in my experience.” And of course, Ellen White warned against trusting our “experience” in Experience Not Reliable.
Ultimately, Cochrane resources may be useful for those who are able to use them critically, but to really get science-based medicine, there are other resources that are better.
“Real experience is a variety of careful experiments made with the mind freed from prejudice and uncontrolled by previously established opinions and habits. The results are marked with careful solicitude and an anxious desire to learn, to improve, and to reform on every habit that is not in harmony with physical and moral laws. The idea of others’ gainsaying what you have learned by experience seems to you to be folly and even cruelty itself. But there are more errors received and firmly retained from false ideas of experience than from any other cause, for the reason that what is generally termed experience is not experience at all; because there has never been a fair trial by actual experiment and thorough investigation, with a knowledge of the principle involved in the action.
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But true experience is in harmony with natural law and science.”
– Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 3, pp. 69, 71
