Cochrane and the challenges of producing trustworthy evidence in medicine

This was published in the Wire on 18 Nov 2018. Here is the link, and below is an excerpt:

“In 1972, a British doctor Archibald Cochrane wrote a book titled Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services. It had a great influence on ideas about decision-making in medicine and public health. Archibald was concerned with discrepancies in the “input and output” of his country’s healthcare system. Were the treatments then in use effective and efficient in terms of the overall population health being achieved? He, and many others, believed that extant data and evaluation methods did not provide good answers but that the then-novel method of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) was promising… Today, we understand these and related ideas under the rubric of ‘evidence-based medicine’ (EBM), and the Cochrane Collaboration has been at the forefront of EBM since its founding in 1993. Gøtzsche’s association with the organisation dates back to this time.”