Theme issue will question the evidence for evidence based medicine

Interest in evidence based medicine has grown exponentially from one Medline citation in 1992 to more than 13 000 in 2004. Professional organisations and training programmes for healthcare professionals have moved from whether to teach evidence based medicine to how to teach it, resulting in an explosion in the number of courses, workshops, and seminars offered in this practice. Reports describing evidence based rejuvenations of traditional educational events are burgeoning, and case reports and a survey of residency programmes have concluded that some of the determinants of continuing high attendance at postgraduate journal clubs include the teaching of critical appraisal skills and emphasising the primary literature (and not surprisingly, providing free food).1 2 Familiarity with its terminology has extended into the popular press, as evidenced by a recent article in the …