Thumbnails

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• Difficulty Introductory

Details

In TTi, Thumbnails are short stories that illustrate key points of the main text.

We have grouped them into four categories:

• Background
• Examples
• Methods
• Actions

You can browse them from this page and link to them from relevant points in the main text.  You can also browse them using the “In this section” list on the right.

If you would like to suggest additions to this collection, or pass comment on existing thumbnails, please feel encouraged to use the Comment box at the foot of this (or any) page to tell us about them.  We won’t bite, and we won’t spam you for the rest of your life either!

Background

• Don’t be too certain
• Doctors talk about guesswork in prescribing
• Anecdotes are anecdotes
• We do things because…
• From person to patient
• Stepwise progress doesn’t hit the headlines
• Mistaking the cure
• Believing is seeing
• Synthesizing information from research
• Marketing-based medicine
• Science is cumulative, but scientists don’t accumulate evidence scientifically
• Who says medical research is bad for your health?
• Rethinking informed consent 
• Doctors and drug companies 
• All it takes is to find the gene
• Patients’ choice: David and Goliath

Examples

• A tragic epidemic of blindness in babies
• On being sucked into a maelstrom
• Who has diabetes?
• No wonder she was confused
• The classical (Halstead) radical mastectomy
• Overdiagnosing prostate cancer
• Discoverer of PSA speaks out
• Selling screening
• The Screening Circus
• Doctors talk about guesswork in prescribing
• Could checking the evidence first have prevented a death?
• Academic nicety – or sensible choice?
• My experience of Magpie
• Impact of “me-too” drugs in Canada
• Dodgy, devious and duped?
• Psoriasis patients poorly served by research
• Lay people help to rethink AIDS

Methods

• Drastic treatment is not always the best
• Random allocation – a simple explanation
• The struggle for unbiased evidence
• Don’t assume early detection is worthwhile
• Don’t play poker with your genes
• Facing up to uncertainties: a matter of life and death
• Addressing uncertainty is professional
• Can patients cope with uncertainty?
• What does “statistically significant” mean?
• Why did you start?
• The importance of systematic reviews
• Biased ethics
• Pester power and new drugs
• Shared decision-making
• Don’t be fooled by eye-catching statistics

Action

• The Yellow Card Scheme
• Instructions to authors to put research in context by the editors of the medical journal The Lancet
• In an ideal world
• A commonsense approach to informed consent in good medical practice
• What research regulation should do
• A key partnership
• Involving citizens to improve healthcare