Rapid Responses to:

LETTERS: Colin Baigent, Rory Collins, and Richard Peto Article makes simple errors and could cause unnecessary deaths BMJ 2002; 324: 167 [Full text]

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Curioser and curioser

Neville W Goodman   (23 January 2002)

Curioser and curioser 23 January 2002
Neville W Goodman, Consultant Anaesthetist Southmead Hospital, Bristol Send response to journal: Re: Curioser and curioser	Letters submitted as Rapid Responses usually take a few weeks to appear in the paper journal. Here we have a letter that appears the week after the article it is criticising. I have just checked back and find that Cleland replied, it seems to me quite robustly, to the criticisms of Baigent and colleagues. Why did his rebuttal not appear in the paper journal as well? Or must the holy temple of meta-analysis be protected? The debate surrounding the issue of anti-platelet therapy is a reminder that certainty is a rare thing in medicine, and the clarity of answers provided by evidence-based medicine can sometimes be a distortion of the statistical lens through which it is viewed.