The Recommended Dose with Ray Moynihan

This week, a closer look at the role journals both prestigious and predatory play in science and academia. Dr David Moher, Director of the Centre for Journalology at Canada’s Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, joins Ray to explore the way publication practices and the 'publish or perish' mentality shape researchers’ careers and the research agenda more broadly.

Professor Fran Baum is a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Public Health and the Director of the Southgate Institute of Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University in South Australia. This week, she joins Ray to shine a light on the role of the social determinants of health, and explain some of the ways we could improve the daily lives and life expectancy of people around the globe.

This week, Dr Arnav Agarwal joins Ray to share the perspective and experiences of a young, recently graduated doctor working in a busy, metropolitan hospital. Despite the long shifts and demanding environment, Arnav makes time and space to reflect on work, life and mortality through his thought-provoking poetry and volunteer work.

This week, Ray ventures into the notoriously complex field of nutrition with special guest, Professor Marion Nestle. Named by Forbes as one of the world's most powerful foodies, Marion’s stellar career spans five decades of research, teaching, advocacy work and the publication of countless prize-winning books.

After ten years at the helm of the Cochrane Library, Dr David Tovey recently stepped down as Editor-in-Chief. This week he joins Ray to reflect on Cochrane’s past, present and future and share some of the challenges and rewards of leading one of the world’s largest and most trusted health research networks.

Our latest series kicks off with Australia’s multi-award-winning health and science reporter, Liam Mannix. He joins Ray to share his insights into the role and impact of evidence, advocacy and investigative reporting in today’s ever-changing media landscape.

Not sure what The Recommended Dose is all about? These quick highlights from a few of Ray's many special guests will give you the idea... Catch all the full-length, wide-ranging interviews on series 1 and 2 of The Recommended Dose with Ray Moynihan wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

Named by Reuters as one of the most influential scientific minds of our time, this week’s guest wears many hats and pursues all kinds of surprising interests. Jeremy Grimshaw has earned a global reputation for translating evidence into genuine changes that improve human health. He’s a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa, President of the global Campbell Collaboration and a long-time Cochrane luminary. And as Ray discovers, he can make complex behavioural science, obscure music festivals and Formula 1 racing the most comfortable of companions in the course of just one lively conversation. Here, Jeremy closes out series 2 of the Recommended Dose with his original insights into health and social sciences research, and throws in some top musical tips for good measure.

This week a very different kind of conversation on the Recommended Dose – one that considers the art of medicine more than the science. Iona Heath is a long-time family doctor who has worked in a London GP clinic for over 30 years, and at one time became President of the Royal College of General Practitioners. With an international profile, gained in part through her much-loved writing in the BMJ, Iona is unlike many of our previous guests. For a start, she loves words more than numbers, and literature more than clinical guidelines. Host Ray Moynihan caught up with Iona at a recent conference in Helsinki – where she'd just presented little data but much food for thought from the likes of novelists EM Forster and James Baldwin. Here, she shares more of her love of literature and thoughtful commitment to the best kind of patient care.

This week Ray sits down with the man best known as the godfather of Evidence Based Medicine (or EBM), Professor Gordon Guyatt. Together they explore the past, present and future of EBM, and look at how an approach encouraging doctors to look more rigorously at the evidence grew into a global reform movement to better inform all our healthcare decisions. Like most global movements, EBM is not without its critics. Acknowledging this, Gordon shares his thoughts on prominent critiques that argue EBM has been 'hijacked' by commercial interests. And on a more personal note, he reflects on his early dreams of being a novelist, his four tilts at election to Canada's Parliament, and the many ways his two very different parents have shaped his world view.

This week, a very special conversation with a maverick British medico who set up a tiny research centre in Oxford and watched it grow into a global collaboration of over 40,000 people across 130 countries. Three decades on, the Cochrane Collaboration now produces the world's most trusted health evidence that's used by patients, health professionals, researchers and policy makers around the world every day. Cochrane co-founder Iain Chalmers joins Ray to look back on the origins of the organisation and the extraordinary life of its namesake, Archie Cochrane. Iain also reflects on his work beyond the collaboration - from working in refugee camps in Gaza to teaching children in Uganda how to detect ‘bullshit’ health claims and more recently, establishing the James Lind Alliance. It's no surprise he's received the BMJ’s most prestigious award for a lifetime of achievement in healthcare, along with a knighthood from the Queen.

This week’s guest has led something of a double life, using both medicine and the media to explore and promote the critical role of evidence in healthcare. Now based at the University of Sydney, Alexandra Barratt's journey from clinician to journalist to global advocate for evidence based medicine and shared decision-making is a fascinating one. Here she talks with Ray about her varied career and the reasons she's ended up challenging conventional wisdom. She also talks about her research into the pros and cons of breast cancer screening and questions the widely-accepted idea that early detection is always the best medicine. For show notes and a complete transcript of this episode, visit australia.cochrane.org/trd.

A familiar voice to millions, Dr Norman Swan is Australia’s best known health reporter. Having presented the ABC’s Health Report for more than three decades, this week he’s on the other side of the microphone. Norman joins Ray to talk frankly about medicine and the media. He shares some of the joys and challenges of his work inside and outside of the ABC - including his stint as resident medic on commercial TV show The Biggest Loser and his work establishing a private media company that advertises in health clinics across Australia. A multi-award winning journalist and now popular podcaster, the common thread running through Norman Swan's distinguished career is a life-long interest in bringing new ideas, information and evidence to audiences of all kinds. For a more show details and a full transcript of all our episodes visit www.australia.cochrane.org/trd

This week influential Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Internal Medicine Dr Rita Redberg joins Ray for a wide ranging conversation on all things health. A Professor at the University of California San Francisco and high profile contributor to The Washington Post and New York Times, Rita is also a practising cardiologist who loves to see patients. She says that ‘being a doctor is really a privilege’. Together, Ray and Rita canvas many topics including shared decision making between doctors and patients, the tricky territory of medical device approvals, the controversy surrounding both statins and CT scans, and the implications of not including enough women in clinical trials.

Series two of The Recommended Dose kicks off with polymath and poet, Dr John Ioannidis. Recognised by The Atlantic as one the most influential scientists alive today, he’s a global authority on genetics, medical research and the nature of scientific inquiry itself – among many other things. A professor at Stanford University, John has authored close to 1,000 academic papers and served on the editorial boards of 30 of the world's top journals. He is best known for seriously challenging the status quo. His trailblazing 2005 paper 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False' has been viewed over 2.5 million times and is the most cited article in the history of PLoS Medicine. In it, he argues that most medical research is biased, overblown or simply wrong. Here, he talks to Ray about the far-reaching implications of these findings for people both inside and outside the world of health. While most closely associated with exploring cutting-edge conundrums across science, genomics and even economics, John is also something of a humanist. He’d be right at home with the philosophers of ancient Greece, seeking as he does to find answers to the big questions of the day in science and medicine, as well as in nature and narratives. A voracious reader himself, John has a lifelong love of ‘swimming in books’ and has penned seven literary works of his own in Greek – two of which have been nominated for prestigious literary prizes. And fittingly, he finds inspiration for his myriad of multi-disciplinary pursuits on Antipaxi, one of Greece’s most beautiful and secluded islands. He shares some of his distinctive logic, reason - and even a little of his poetry - on this very special episode of The Recommended Dose, produced by Cochrane Australia and co-published with the BMJ. You'll find our show notes and a full transcript of the show at http://australia.cochrane.org/trd