Randall Monroe of xkcd started writing explanations of complex physical phenomena using only the most common 1,000 English words (or the most common ‘ten hundred’, as he’d have to put it). He recently released a straightforward application which allows writers to check which words fall into his list of 1,000. I’ve …
Hierarchies of evidence can be classified as exhaustive or inexhaustive. A hierarchy is exhaustive if and only if it gives some ranking to any given piece of medical evidence – there’s nothing it leaves out. But there’s a dilemma which hierarchy authors face: either way, hierarchies of evidence present a …
Hierarchies of evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) come in many varieties and have been very influential in medical practice and policy since the late 1990s. However, two fundamental problematic assumptions underpin the use of hierarchies of any kind in clinical practice: (1) that evidence can and should be appraised in …
Evidence-Based Medicine is an attempt to simplify and streamline a complex reality into a more manageable structure. Reflective EBM proponents know that matters are very complicated. But they understand that practitioners have very limited time (and abilities) to deal with these complexities. They must use heuristics and simplifications. Sometimes this …
Strength of Recommendation hierarchies such as SORT and GRADE go a step further than your standard hierarchy of evidence. Standard hierarchies tend to rank or rate the evidence provided by a study on a scale of quality, strength or validity. Strength of Recommendation hierarchies are usually two-step processes. First, they …
Critics and advocates alike have expended much effort defining Evidence-Based Medicine. However, there has been little consensus about what “Evidence-Based Medicine” is. Some authors see ‘EBM’ as something one believes—a view about medicine. Others interpret EBM as something one does—a particular way of practicing medicine. Still others seem to view …
