The Evidence Against Evidence-Based Medicine
A worthy goal built on a weak foundation
The practice of Medicine is moving in the direction of being more “evidence-based.” The goal is to provide improved patient outcomes. The field of Nutrition is also following the lead of the Medical field in becoming evidence-based. This is all great in concept. The foundation of this approach is to use the best available clinical evidence for patient treatment and guidelines. Unfortunately, the foundational base of evidence is filled with bias. As such, the foundation of evidence is crumbling.
It’s hard to trace just where it all started to go wrong — but I’d bet money on it being about money. At the headwaters of the river of money that is eroding the foundation of evidence are the Pharmaceutical and Food industries: That’s where the flow of money starts. And there is a lot of money to go around and a lot of bias as a result.
How can this happen if treatment and guidelines are based on clinical evidence?
To explain how, we need to look at how clinical evidence comes to exist and then how it becomes known in the Medical and Nutrition communities.
