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s are disastrous. ...Relative risks are deeply misleading. They're a manipulative form of communication. To ever say, "Oh, this doubles your risk, or… - David Spiegelhalter
" "s are disastrous. ...Relative risks are deeply misleading. They're a manipulative form of communication. To ever say, "Oh, this doubles your risk, or increases your risk 50%," absolute No-no! They are hopeless. In some situations they can be very valuable... but in general, medical things what... should be always given... s... with and without something... Like my s... I was getting... 15%, 10 year risk: 15 out 100 people like me might expect to have a heart attack or stroke. So I... roughly halved it... only in terms of relative risk... from 15% to 7-8%. ...Being told it halved it does sound good, but if wasn't a very big number in the first place, halving it is of no interest... especially if the thing's going to give me some side-effects... if it did, it would be completely pointless... [Y]ou cannot know... whether you should do something... [Y]ou cannot trade off the benefits... [and] the harms from a medical treatment without knowing the absolute risk. You cannot do it in any rational way whatsoever. ...A lot of the communication now is using absolute risk, which is a huge improvement.
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About David Spiegelhalter
Sir David John Spiegelhalter (born 16 August 1953) is a British statistician and a Fellow of . From 2007 to 2018 he was in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is an ISI highly cited researcher and current Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the . In 2020 he joined the UK Statistics Authority board as a non-executive director for a period of three years, which was extended through to 2026.
Also Known As
Birth Name:
David John Spiegelhalter
Alternative Names:
David J Spiegelhalter
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David J. Spiegelhalter
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Sir David John Spiegelhalter
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Additional quotes by David Spiegelhalter
Communication is not a one-way process. It's not just telling people things. ...[T]he first rule of communication is to shut-up and... just listen... and good doctors will do that. ...Good doctors will listen and explore the person's values and concerns, and... explore to what extent... that person want[s] to be guided... to be told what to do... and that's... appropriate to want... guidance from a trusted source. ...And ...make sure ...before ...that stage, you have ...genuinely laid out the options in a way that gives it balance. You haven't tried to manipulate them... into a particular direction. ...Very difficult ...but ...a worthy objective, and... having done that, it's perfectly reasonable to... then, give advice.
[S]easonal flu—average year—kills 6,000 people in this country. Mainly old... vulnerable... frail...[etc.] So we are hit by this, year after year... epidemics... we've got to put this into perspective... [T]o an extent it is a trade-off between massive disruption... [I]f you say everyone has to stay in their home for 4 weeks... that's not just economic loss. It has a massive... health... [detriment] in terms of... mentality and fitness. Norsemen of harm will be done... so it's not just a matter of... "Minimize the number of deaths."
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In the trials that led to the vaccines... adverse events were reported by 38% of those receiving the real vaccine... 28% of those who received the control [dummy, or fake vaccine, of which some were meningitis vaccine] also reported a side-effect. ...[F]ewer than 1% reported a serious adverse event, and of these... slightly more had received the dummy than the active vaccine. ...So there was no evidence of increased risk ...
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