Table 8 Nine key concepts prioritised for the Informed Health Choices podcast
Recognising an unreliable basis for treatment claims • Treatments may be harmful • Personal experiences or anecdotes (stories) are an unreliable basis for assessing the effects of most treatments • An “outcome” may be associated with a treatment but not caused by the treatment • Widely used treatments or treatments that have been used for a long time are not necessarily beneficial or safe • Opinions of experts or authorities do not alone provide a reliable basis for deciding on the benefits and harms of treatments Understanding whether comparisons are fair and reliable • Identifying effects of treatments depends on making comparisons • Apart from the treatments being compared, the comparison groups need to be similar (i.e. “like needs to be compared with like”) • The results of single comparisons of treatments can be misleading Making informed choices about treatments • Decisions about treatments should not be based on considering only their benefits |