A puzzling omission in a great medical textbook edited by a pioneer of controlled trials

Evidence-based medicine

“…Duncan Neuhauser, Mireya Diaz and Iain Chalmers () are puzzled that one of the great pioneers of clinical trials, Russell LaFayette Cecil, failed to include a chapter on trial methodology when he went on to edit his best-selling Textbook of Medicine – but perhaps they are being diplomatic 1 . If Cecil thought most doctors did not need to worry their heads about science he was merely reflecting the profession's long-standing ambivalence to science after two millennia of reliance on Galenic teaching and personal experience.…”