A network for students interested in evidence-based health care

Evidence Reviews
woman reading a newspaper

Health in the Media: Alzheimer’s Disease

If you’ve read a newspaper or seen the news over the couple of weeks there’s a good chance you’ll have seen a few pretty terrifying headlines related to Alzheimer’s disease… So can you really catch Alzheimer’s disease from blood transfusions, dental visits or surgery? In short: no. Here’s how we know: 1. This was a very small, observational study 8 patients were studied in a purely observational manner; there was no randomisation, control group or blinding. The data is comprised of

Evidence Reviews
woman reading a newspaper

Health in the Media: Iodine Nutrition

The ‘Health in the Media’ feature is back! Iodine deficiency has been linked to poor thyroid function and weight gain, but did the Daily Mail dish out helpful advice on where to find dietary iodine?

Tutorials and Fundamentals
doctor checking the evidence

Defining “Risk”

“This treatment lowers your high risk of heart attack considerably”. Wait, what is “risk”? This post explains you a definition of risk that is useful to understand in health-related questions.

Evidence Reviews
Kendall Jenner

Detox tea: What’s the skinny?

Kendall Jenner is among numerous celebs to attribute their svelte physiques to so-called detox tea – but can tea really help you detox and lose weight?

Evidence Reviews
bronchiectasis

How should we treat bronchiectasis?

Currently decisions made on treatment of bronchiectasis are based on guidelines which have a very poor evidence base. Read more to find out!

Learning Resources
data mining

Data mining or data dredging?

Advances in technology now allow huge amounts of data to be handled simultaneously. Katherine takes a look at how this can be used in healthcare and how it can be exploited.

Tutorials and Fundamentals
data analysis

Nominal, ordinal, or numerical variables?

How can you tell if a variable is nominal, ordinal, or numerical? Why does it even matter? Determining the appropriate variable type used in a study is essential to determining the correct statistical method to use when obtaining your results. It is important not to take the variables out of context because more often than not, the same variable that can be ordinal can also be numerical, depending on how the data was recorded and analyzed. This post will give you a specific example that may help you better grasp this concept.

Tutorials and Fundamentals
data analysis

Data analysis methods

A description of the two types of data analysis – “As Treated” and “Intention to Treat” – using a hypothetical trial as an example

Want to blog for us?

Register to become an S4BE Contributor

Popular Articles

Tutorials and Fundamentals

A beginner’s guide to confounding

This blog introduces you to the concept of confounding. There is a clear explanation and then examples and methods to minimise the effect of confounding during study design and statistical analysis.