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IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 14, 2007
International Journal of Epidemiology 2007 36(2):269-273; doi:10.1093/ije/dym002
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2007; all rights reserved.

Cochrane on Communism: the influence of ideology on the search for evidence

Martin McKee

European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, UK.

E-mail: martin.mckee@lshtm.ac.uk

Keywords Evidence, USSR, ideology

Accepted 22 December 2006

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   Introduction
 
In his seminal work Effectiveness and Efficiency,1 Archie Cochrane asked why, despite their enormous potential, randomized trials were much less widely used that they should be. At the time that he was writing, their geographical distribution was very uneven. He wrote ‘If some such index as the number of RCTs per 1,000 doctors per year for all the countries of the world were worked out, and a map of the world shaded according to the level of the index, one would see the UK in black, and scattered black patches in Scandinavia, the USA, and a few other countries. The rest would be nearly white. It appears in general that it is Catholicism, Communism, and underdevelopment that appear to be against RCTs. In underdeveloped countries this can be understood but what have Catholicism and Communism against RCTs?’

In this article, I will focus on Soviet communism. Cochrane . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   The emergence of Soviet science
 

   The benefits of ignorance
 

   The western response
 

   Wider implications
 

   Conclusion
 

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