Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre is a British physician, academic, science writer, and broadcaster recognized for his work in exposing the misuse of science and statistics in journalism, politics, the pharmaceutical industry, and alternative medicine. Goldacre trained in medicine at Oxford and University College London, in psychiatry at the Maudsley, and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was awarded an MBE for his contributions to medicine, public health, and science communication.

Goldacre is known for his weekly column, "Bad Science," which appeared in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. His first book, "Bad Science," has sold more than 500,000 copies, is published in 18 countries, and reached number one in the United Kingdom non-fiction bestseller charts. The book was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. His second book, "Bad Pharma," examines issues in medicine, including missing clinical trials, poorly designed research, and biased dissemination of evidence. "Bad Pharma" is a top ten UK bestseller. Goldacre also authored "I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That," a collection of his journalism.

Goldacre has received several awards, including the Royal Statistical Society's Award for Statistical Excellence in Journalism, the Faculty of Public Health DARE Prize Lecture, an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University, "Best Freelancer" at the Medical Journalists Awards, the Healthwatch Award, and "Best Feature" at the British Science Writers Awards. His TED talks have been viewed by millions, and his lectures and books are used in university teaching internationally. He produced "The Rise of the Lifestyle Nutritionists" and the two-part documentary "The Placebo Effect" for BBC Radio 4.

Goldacre became the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of Oxford's Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science. His academic and policy work focuses on informatics, epidemiology, and evidence-based medicine, addressing issues such as variation in care, use of electronic health data, evidence-based social policy, access to clinical trial data, efficient trial design, and retracted papers. Goldacre served as principal investigator of the OpenSAFELY collaboration, which developed a software platform to analyze the records of 24 million NHS patients to identify risk factors for hospital deaths from COVID-19.

He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials, initiatives promoting open science practices in clinical trials. Goldacre leads the EBMdataLab at the University of Oxford, developing tools such as OpenPrescribing to improve data use in healthcare and academia, identifying significant cost savings for the NHS. He has provided evidence to multiple parliamentary select committees, including the Public Accounts Committee, Science and Technology, Health, and Culture Media & Sport. Goldacre's work bridges the gap between rigorous science and public understanding, establishing him as a leading voice in evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and health data science.