Intended for healthcare professionals

Known unknowns - exploring uncertainty in medicine

"There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know"
- Donald Rumsfeld, speaking about weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war. but the notion was first formalized by the pioneering epidemiologist James Mackenzie in 1919.

Where those words were used to obfuscate, we hope to illuminate. In a series of webinars The BMJ, with the help of Allyson Pollock and George Davey Smith, will shed light on some areas of medicine and society where the public and patients need answers, but the evidence is lacking.

The known unknowns of ADHD

  • What is ADHD?
  • Anita Thapar, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Cardiff University
  • Influences on diagnosis
  • Stephen Hinshaw, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley,
  • Summary of the evidence on drug treatment
  • Daniel Gorman, director of postgraduate education at The Hospital for Sick Children
  • Psychological therapies: Purpose, potential, precision & practicalities
  • Edmund Sonuga-Barke, professor of developmental psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience at King’s College London
  • Being diagnosed with ADHD
  • Patient representative
  • Social media and self diagnosis
  • Elia Abi-Jaoude, assistant professor, and clinical investigator in the School of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto

Known unknowns of menopause-19

Therapy for the effects of menopause - 5pm (BST) on the 25th of May 2023

  • Introductions and opening remarks
  • Susan Bewley, emeritus professor of obstetric and women's health at King's College London
  • What are the key issues?
  • Martha Hickey, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne
  • Summary of the evidence on drug treatment
  • Gillian Reeves, director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, at the University of Oxford
  • Interventions for menopause in the workplace
  • Claire Hardy, senior lecturer in organisational health and wellbeing, at Lancaster University
  • Commercial influences and patient expectations
  • Margaret McCartney, GP in Glasgow
  • Summary from the chair and general discussion

Our previous series, known unknowns of Covid-19, was an invaluable resource for clinicians during the pandemic, the full webinars are available for free on our youtube page

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