Ben Goldacre, the physician and biostatistician behind the always-excellent Bad Science column in the Guardian, gave a barnburner of a talk at Strata 2012 yesterday, "The Information Architecture of Medicine is Broken". For anyone not aware of the problems caused by publication bias in clinical trials (for example, ineffective drugs with a wide variety of side-effects coming to market), his talk is a must-watch. There's also a great explanation of meta-analysis (using the logo of the Cochrane Collaboration as a backdrop).
Goldacre is attempting to shed light on the issue of negative results in clinical trials going unreported, by matching the register of planned clinical trials with those that are actually published. At around 12:00 in the video below, learn how you can help with this important project. You'll also spot an R chart or two during the presentation.
Strata 2012: The Information Architecture of Medicine is Broken
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