David H. Freedman

I have a big feature article in the new (November) issue of The Atlantic, which just came out. It’s the magazine’s annual look at “Brave Thinkers,” and it leads off with my longish profile of Dr. John Ioannidis, who has spent most of his career studying and exposing the many problems with published medical research. My book Wrong opens with Ioannidis, and comes back to him a few times. But in the article I go much deeper into his work, his background, his personality and his thinking–I spent several days with him in Greece for the article–and say more about what his discoveries mean for medicine and doctors’ ability to treat us effectively. It’s not a pretty picture. Think of the article as an extremely long, important and (I’d like to think) colorful post for this blog.

By the way, sorry for the long gap since the last post, I got caught in an extended perfect storm of article deadlines, and travel for research and speaking engagements. (And it’s not over yet.)

Meanwhile, on another semi-personal note that affects this blog, I’ve been transitioning to some new projects. I’ll say more about these projects in the coming months, but for now let me just say I have a new special interest in obesity and weight loss, which I (and many others) think have become the biggest single health threat to the length and quality of our lives that is also potentially fixable. The blog’s basic theme isn’t really changing, but a lot of the posts will be about issues relating to obesity and weight loss. Note that I’ve parenthetically added the new special interest in obesity to the blog’s title. I hope it goes without saying I’d love to get feedback from MSOMed readers on this partial change in focus.