Ben Goldacre

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Ben Michael Goldacre (born 20 May 1974) is a British physician, academic, and science writer.

He is a senior clinical research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, a research group within the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, as of March 2015.

Goldacre is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials movement, which he wrote about from 2003 to 2011, and his book "British Science (2008), a critique of irrationality and other aspects of complementary medicine; and Statins (2009), an examination of evidence-based medicine.

Goldacre gives free talks on bad science; he describes himself as a "nerd evangelist."

Early life and education

Michael Goldacre, a professor of public health at the University of Oxford, and Susan Traynor (stage name Noosha Fox) lead singer of 1970s pop band Fox, both of whom are Australian. He is the nephew of Robyn Williams, a science writer, and Henry Parkes' great-grandson, a politician and writer who is considered the father of the Australian Federation. He has three children.

At Magdalen College School, Oxford, Goldacre was educated. He studied medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he obtained his first-class Bachelor of Arts honours degree during his preclinical studies in 1995 in Physiological Sciences. Isis, Oxford's student newspaper, was edited by him.

Goldacre, a visiting researcher in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Milan, was an author who worked on fMRI brain scans of language and executive function. Goldacre did clinical medicine at UCL Medical School, graduating as a medical doctor in 2000 with a Bachelor of Medicine (MB, BS) degree, following his studies at Oxford and Milan. In 1997, he obtained a Master of Arts degree in philosophy from King's College London.

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Career and research

Goldacre completed the Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) Part II examinations in December 2005 and became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) Part II. He was appointed a research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry in London in 2008 and a Guardian research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Goldacre was named a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2012.

Goldacre joined the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences' Center for Evidence-Based Medicine in 2015, funding a project funded by a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In 2022, he became Oxford's newly established Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science as the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director.

According to Scopus and Google Scholar, his most cited articles in NeuroReport, the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, and PLOS ONE have been published in NeuroReport, the European Journal of Preservative Cardiology, as of 2016.

Goldacre was in 2020, along with Liam Smeeth, the lead investigator of the OpenSAFELY consortium, which developed a software platform to analyze the clinical data of 24 million NHS patients in order to identify key risk factors for hospital deaths from COVID-19.

Goldacre was best known for his weekly column "Bad Science," which appeared in The Guardian's Saturday edition from 2003 to 2011. The column was mainly about pseudoscience and the misuse of science. Marketing, television, quackery, pharmaceutical industry issues, and the pharmaceutical industry's relationship with medical journals were among the topics discussed.

Anti-immunization campaigners have attacked Goldacre (particularly followers of Andrew Wakefield, Jeni Barnett), Brain Gym, bogus positive MRSA swab reports in tabloid newspapers, media bias, and the product's Penta Water manufacturers.

He has been a vocal critic of dietist Gillian McKeith. Goldacre obtained a lifetime membership in the American Association of Nutritional Consultants in honor of his late cat, Henrietta, from the same organization for $60, while reviewing McKeith's membership in the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. Following a complaint from a "Bad Science" reader, McKeith decided not to use the word "Doctor" in her advertisements in February 2007. "Nutritionists are particularly harmful because they misrepresent themselves as both men and women of science," Goldacre said in an interview with Richard Saunders of the podcast Skeptic Zone.

Matthias Rath, a vitamin entrepreneur, filed a lawsuit against Goldacre and The Guardian in 2008, in which Goldacre and The Guardian chastised Rath's promotion of vitamin pills to AIDS sufferers in South African townships. Rath renounced his appeal in September 2008 and was charged with the payment of initial expenses of £220,000 to The Guardian. As of September 2008, the paper was still seeking full costs of £500,000, and Goldacre had expressed an interest in writing a book about Rath and South Africa, as a chapter on the subject had to be cut from his book as the case progressed. The chapter was revived in a new book in a later version of the book and also published online in 2009. Goldacre continues to cite Rath as a proponent of harmful pseudoscience.

Goldacre defended Wakefield against an investigation into Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 paper in The Lancet, prompting criticism from newspaper reporter Brian Deer.

Goldacre argued in The Guardian in September 2005 that he did not have a clue:

Goldacre shared more support three years later as Wakefield appeared at a General Medical Council hearing charged with "significant professional misconduct."

Bad Science, Goldacre's first book, was published by Fourth Estate in September 2008. Many of his Guardian columns have been extended and rewritten in the book. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) and The Daily Telegraph had it highly praised, and Amazon Books' Top ten bestseller list for Amazon Books was included. It was nominated for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize. "One of the key messages" of Goldacre's book [Bad Science] was "that there are no actual differences between the $600 billion pharmaceutical industry and the $50 billion food supplement pill industry," he said in an interview in 2008.

In September 2012 and in the United States and Canada, his second book, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients, was released in the United Kingdom and Canada in February 2013.

In the book he argues that:

Goldacre wrote "the power of ideas" in The Atheist's Guide to Christmas (2009), a charity book that includes essays and anecdotes from 42 well-known atheists and apatheists, as well as others. He identifies himself as an apatheist. Imogen Evans, Hazel Thornton, Iain Chalmers, and Paul Glasziou contributed to a reissue of Testing Treatments: Better Healthcare by Imogen Evans, Hamzel Thornton, Iain Chalmers, and Paul Glasziou, who was also a writer for a Pinter & Martin issue in March 2010. Several articles on the MMR vaccine, science journalism, and other topics have been published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

He collaborated with the Behavioural Insights Team of the UK government on a research paper on the use of randomised controlled trials in June 2012, and in May 2013, he wrote the foreword to the Romney, Hythe, and Dymchurch Railway's "official Guidebook." He worked on a comprehensive review of statins' side effects compared to placebos in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology in March 2014. Although many newspapers that covered the study reported that statins had "virtually no side effects," Goldacre sluggishly wrote about this coverage as inaccurate. For example, he said that the study was based on trial results, which are likely to be inaccurate.

Several of Goldacre's essays were assembled into a single volume: I Think It's a Bit More Complicated Than That.

In September 2018, Matt Hancock was elected Chair of the NHS HealthTech Advisory Board.

During an episode about the least used station in Oxfordshire, Finstock, Goldacre also appeared on Geoff Marshall's YouTube channel expressing his passion for railways.

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