Having worked on a startup dedicated to evidence based medicine I find this article very telling. In General Medical treatment seem to lack data driven procedures. Clinical Trials designed to prove efficacy rarely produce results significantly better than the placebo effect, and treatments are often prescribed based on a theoretical assumption about what should work.
No where is this more true than in Cancer Research where physicians and foundations alike are compelled to tell a false story about winning the war on Cancer in order to encourage more philanthropic or government funding. When in fact, we are at best, “holding our ground”.
This short piece from the NYTimes indicates not so much how good research data can change practices as it describes how difficult it can be to get doctors to believe data over their own intuition.