Helen Pearson: What Constitutes Real Medical Evidence?

Helen Pearson, PhD, is an award-winning biomedical journalist at Nature, named European Science Journalist of the Year in 2025. She teaches science writing at University College London. BEYOND BELIEF is her second, just published book. THE LIFE PROJECT was her first. The points we covered include:—The evolution of evidence over 8 decades, moving from rationalism, expert opinion, hunches (eminence-based) to empiricism, evidence-based—The enormous devastating adverse impact of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care book from a single sentence change, leading to an epidemic of sudden infant death syndrome. And how it ultimately got corrected. —The term evidence-based medicine was coined in 1991 at McMaster University—Iain Chalmers, Archie Cochrane and the Cochrane Collaboration“The scandalous failure of science to cumulate evidence scientifically”—Iain Chalmers—Systematic reviews—Natural experiments (such as with Shingles)—Resistance to change“Challenging a doctor’s conventional way of practice is like hitting him in the intellectual testicles”—Drummond Rennie, past JAMA editor —Evidence-based practice (and not) in the Covid pandemic—Recent examples of challenging dogma (kindly stones, thymus involution)—AI and misinformation, false evidenceThank you Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Ageless Mind Project, Anthony Higgins, E West, MagnaAnimus, and many others for tuning into my live video with Helen Pearson! Join me for my next live video in the app.A big thanks to Ground Truths subscribers from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join!If you found this interesting PLEASE share it!Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered.Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 51 summer interns coming in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in throughGround Truths. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe