The doctors who proved that medical instinct was not enough

Image credit: Cochrane

By Helen Pearson

Building on Dr Archie Cochrane's work pushing for proof over assumption, Dr Iain Chalmers helped to elevate the importance of evidence and to reshape medical culture from within.

In the 1960s, when Iain Chalmers was training to be a doctor in Britain, he was struck by something odd. When two doctors treated patients with the same condition, they would often give out wildly different advice. This was very puzzling to Chalmers. He didn’t know which doctor was right, or which treatment was most effective.

In fact, the medical community had a powerful tool – randomised controlled trials – to show whether a treatment helped or harmed. The trouble was that at no point during his medical education had anyone mentioned this to Chalmers. And he was hardly alone: most doctors weren’t being taught much about clinical trials in medical school.

“I would willingly have sacrificed all my medical freedom for some hard evidence,” Cochrane wrote