Freedom Quote by Ben Goldacre

““What is odd, perhaps, is how the primacy of patient autonomy and informed consent over efficacy—which is what we’re talking about here—was presumed, but not actively discussed within the medical profession. Although the authoritative and paternalistic reassurance of the Victorian doctor who ‘blinds with science’ is a thing of the past in medicine, the success of the alternative therapy movement—whose practitioners mislead, mystify and blind their patients with sciencey-sounding ‘authoritative’ explanations, like the most patronising Victorian doctor imaginable—suggests that there may still be a market for that kind of approach.””

Ben Goldacre

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.8 out of 5 (3 ratings)

More by Ben Goldacre

In general, drug companies are reasonably good at developing new treatments, and there's also a lot of good in the industry.

Ben Goldacre

Image

Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.

Ben Goldacre

Image

“Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is,…

Ben Goldacre

Image

“At school you were taught about chemicals in test tubes, equations to describe motion, and maybe something on photosynthesis—about which more later—but in all…

Ben Goldacre

Image

And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you'll still be…

Ben Goldacre

Image

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Ben Goldacre

Image

“Today, scientists and doctors find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by vast armies of individuals who feel entitled to pass judgment on matters of evidence—an…

Ben Goldacre

Image

I hope that you will be asked to participate in a trial at some stage in your disease

Ben Goldacre

Image

Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link…

Ben Goldacre

“The American Academy of Pediatrics officially supports breastfeeding, but receives about half a million dollars from Ross, manufacturers of Similac infant formula.”

Ben Goldacre

Image

“More than that, these adverts sell a dubious world view. They sell the idea that science is not about the delicate relationship between evidence and theory. They suggest, instead, with all the might of their international advertising budgets, their Microcellular Complexes, their Neutrillium XY, their Tenseur Peptidique Végétal and the rest, that science is about impenetrable nonsense involving equations, molecules,…

Ben Goldacre

“At school you were taught about chemicals in test tubes, equations to describe motion, and maybe something on photosynthesis – about which more later – but in all likelihood you were taught nothing about death, risk, statistics, and the science of what will kill or cure you. The hole in our culture is gaping: evidence-based medicine, the ultimate applied science,…

Ben Goldacre

Explore all 71 Ben Goldacre quotes

More Freedom quotes

One is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn't want to go to the office every morning.

Marcel Duchamp

Image

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom…

Emily Robison

Image

I believe in freedom to do what you want if you aren't hurting others, but pictures of obese protesters giving their children big gulps.

Philip DeFranco

Image

Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they…

Abraham Lincoln

Image

If we gave up our freedom as the price of security, we would no longer be the great nation that we are.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Image

We live in the greatest country in the world because of the veterans who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom and the security…

Jon Husted

Image

Philosopher is a dictator who modifies accepted standards with his thoughts.

Ilkin Santak

Image

“No one was more surprised than I to realize that my newfound freedom had been purchased by giving up on eternity and settling for…

Carolyn Jessop

Image

“In a world of fixed future, there can be no right or wrong. Right and wrong demand freedom of choice, but if each action…

Alan Lightman

Image

“In any case, white people, who had robbed black people of their liberty and who profited by this theft every hour that they lived, had no moral ground on which to stand. They had the judges, the juries, the shotguns, the law—in a word, power. But it was a criminal power, to be feared but not respected, and to be…

James Baldwin

I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is…

Frederick Douglass