RIGHT. Sorry to be absent, I’m back from outer space.
NOW. There’s a new cheap edition of Bad Pharma out this month, with a new and very long extra chapter on everything that’s happened since the first edition came out. There are goodies and baddies galore, I’ll be writing about it all over the next few weeks, but if you’re impatient, there’s lots on the AllTrials website already.
Before that, Bad Pharma is Waterstones Book Club “Book of the Week“. This means it’s discounted, and out on the tables in Waterstones. More importantly, there’s a podcast discussion, and a book club reading guide. These are often great fun, and it’s worth checking out some of the others: they give suggested discussion points, this one has a piece by me on why I wrote the book, and how medical leaders have failed to address the problem of missing trials.
They also asked me to write about how I write, so there’s a splurge at the end about the huge synchronising data monster I’ve built to hoover up and organise knowledge. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
The reading guide is here:
www.waterstones.com/wat/images/special/pdf/9780007498086_reading_guide.pdf
You can buy the new super cheap edition of Bad Pharma here:
www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/ben+goldacre/bad+pharma/9640023/
There’s a Waterstones book club podcast on Bad Pharma here:
blog.waterstones.com/2013/09/book-club-bad-pharma/
And as always: remember to sign up to www.alltrials.net, our campaign to stop clinical trial results being withheld from doctors, patients and researchers. We cannot make informed decisions about which treatment is best, as long as this information is being casually withheld. History shows that quiet backroom activity has failed to fix the problem: loud, public scrutiny is the only hope we have, and that means you.
Onward!
Duck said,
October 3, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Can those of us who brought the book when it first came out get the new chapter free, please? Or do we have to buy the book all over again?
stbrown6885 said,
October 4, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Hi Ben,
So my incredible wife had this book on order for me so it came to me as soon as it was released.
Having read it and having spent the majority of my (admittedly so far quite brief) working life in jobs that in one way or another support the pharma industry–and therefore take a bit of a battering in the book–I’ve decided I try and make some improvements from the inside of my organisation.
I currently work for an academic publisher who (to the best of my knowledge) is not signed up to AllTrials.
If i were to start an internal movement to get them to sign up, what would you suggest the opening argument should be?
Any tips welcome.
Cheers
aggressivePerfector said,
October 7, 2013 at 3:14 am
RE all trials, for what it’s worth, a few months back I posted the reasons why I signed the petition, and why I think it’s good for everybody, having consequences extending even beyond medicine:
maximum-entropy-blog.blogspot.com/2013/04/alltrials-campaign.html
According to my detailed calculations, an expected 0.9 additional people should have been persuaded by it to also sign. (What greatness I’ve achieved comes from standing on the shoulders of giants!)
Keeps up the good work,
Tom.
WarwickAlice said,
October 15, 2013 at 3:25 pm
I saw this advert at Euston about a week ago – I went out to buy the book the next day, and it’s now second in line to my attention! (I’m reading “The Geek Manifesto” at the moment – which EVERYONE should read)
psychpractice said,
November 4, 2013 at 6:24 pm
Hi!
I just finished reading Bad Pharma. It was kind of life-changing, in a disturbing way. So thanks for that. Made me take a good hard look at what I’m willing to prescribe to patients, going forward.
The copy I read was from the public library. I’d like to buy the new edition with the extra chapter. Any idea when that will be available in the US?