Alireza Khatami,
Volume 6, Issue 1 (4-2015)
Abstract
David Lawrence Sackett, OC, MD, FRSC, FRCP was an American-Canadian physician, trialist, and teacher. He is best known as one of the pioneers of evidence-based medicine (EBM), which is arguably the most important movement in medicine over the past three decades. He founded the first clinical epidemiology department in McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada in 1967. In addition, he was the head of the Center for the Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, UK. He also was the first chair of Cochrane Collaboration and the first founding coeditor of the journal of Evidence-Based Medicine and had many other honors. He published 12 books, 60 chapters in other books, and about 300 articles in scientific and medical journals.
He died on May 13, 2015 at age 80 because of cholangiocarcinoma. While Dr. Sackett will be missed by his friends, colleagues, mentees as well as EBM proponents and followers all over the world, his contributions to EBM in particular, and to medicine in general will never be forgotten.
Maede Habibi, Ghasem Yadegarfar,
Volume 10, Issue 1 (4-2019)
Abstract
This is a letter to editor criticizing the paper entitled “Efficacy of licorice extract in the treatment of melasma: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial”. We discuss some methodological points on external and internal validity of results. The paper suffers from lack of detailed information on sample size and power calculation to make sure generalisability of results to study population. The paper also did not report blinding procedure and placebo details. The results of the paper also suffer from multiplicity (multiple comparisons) and suitability of data analysis approach. It is recommended to apply either repeated measure ANOVA or a mixed model to consider correlation between repeated measure of outcomes and multiplicity problem.
