Most patients—and even many medical doctors and scientists—have not grasped how important it is to use rigorous science to evaluate claims for medical treatments. All too often people decide to try a treatment that is irrational, hasn’t been tested, or has been tested and shown not to work. Why do they make those bad decisions?
How can you know whether a medical treatment works? If others say it worked for them, your Aunt Sally swears it cured her, there’s someone in a white lab coat lecturing about it on YouTube, and you try it and your symptoms go away, you can pretty much assume it really works. Right? No, wrong! That’s all the “evidence” most people need, but it’s not evidence at all.