In my early twenties, I tore a carotid artery out of my neck in a motorcycle accident. The emergency procedure that followed undoubtedly saved my life and from that point forward I had no time to listen to people complaining about the limitations of the nationalised health care that exists in the UK. In my thirties, the same system of evidence-based medicine let me down badly, and in the end, it was a chiropractor who describes himself as “the least evidence-driven person he knows” that turned my life around. Now I’m slightly confused. I am aware that the evidence-based system has a lot to offer, but I don’t feel I can use it effectively without the assistance of someone like Dr. Tommy Wood. Why? The system is in crisis. The system is in crisis in part because of the sheer volume of evidence being generated, much of which is unreproducible or misappropriated by vested interests. Building a meta-analysis atop of this shoddy foundation does little to clarify the situation. Animal and cell models. Are used as supporting evidence but frequently what happens outside of the body or in another animal has little or nothing to do with what happens in humans in a real-life setting. The models are becoming cheap enough for scientists to make multiple attempts at finding the “correct” answer, and much of the data are never published. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. You cannot prove something to be true using statistical methods. Science advances one funeral at a time. Handing out a grant to the young and inexperienced is a risky thing to do, and so inevitably the money follows experience. But imagine if your entire life’s work was based on ideas that were later shown to be wrong. Would you come clean? In this candid interview with Dr. Tommy Wood. Tommy talks about the limitations of the evidence-based system, but his intention is not to throw science under the bus. Rather, he wants us all to understand the limitations and proceed with caution. As a scientist that does peer review for a living, Tommy’s goal is to leave science in better shape than he found it. Since recording this interview, we have adopted the Agile Scrum sprint system of health coaching. And it’s going great! We’re excited about the new system, and the first health sprints are underway. I’m still very keen to know what you think about the idea, so please complete the one question (three clicks total) survey I mention in the show. Survey: The scrum and sprint Agile methods are applicable to health coaching. Here’s the outline of this interview with Dr. Tommy Wood 0:00:15    The main paper from Tommy’s PhD thesis: Treatment temperature and insult severity influence the neuroprotective effects of therapeutic hypothermia. 0:01:28    Newborn babies with brain injury. 0:02:20    The cooling is only 2 or 3 degrees. 0:02:33    What's the best temperature? 0:03:28    Figure 1: Hemispheric area loss after moderate hypoxia-ischaemia. 0:04:01    Richard D. Feinman: “Nobody loses an average amount of weight.” 0:04:49    Tommy may sound anti-science, but this is what he does for a living and he hopes to leave science in a better state than when he left it. 0:06:04    People are selective about the studies they choose to dismantle. 0:06:39    The Cochrane Collaboration. 0:07:04    Cochrane do systematic reviews and meta-analysis. 0:07:37    The meta-analysis is only as good as the studies on which it's based. 0:08:13    Publication bias is a problem. 0:08:58    Anyone can learn how to do a Cochrane review. 0:09:32    Questionable discussion: Effects of low-carbohydrate diets v. low-fat diets on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. 0:09:55    Tommy’s letter: The cardiovascular risk reduction benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet outweigh the potential increase in LDL-cholesterol. 0:10:47    Self-appointed expert that cannot be wrong. 0:12:11    The are a number of different funding sources. 0:13:20    It's less risky to give mon