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Healthy Skepticism Groups

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This group is developing and maintaining the Healthy Skepticism website.

 

The website has been developed by Peter Mansfield with assistance from Ashton McAllan (consultant). Clare Mansfield has helped move content from the old website to the new. Sub sections of the website are maintained by the: HS library group AdWatch group Ad Gallery group Poster Competition group See also: Website credits

 

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PharmedOut’s annual conference: Missing The Target: When Practitioners Harm More Than Heal

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963