Episode 1 | Professor Ian Harris

Professor Harris is a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of New South Wales. He's a practicing orthopaedic surgeon with several public and private appointments, who specialises in trauma surgery and lectures both nationally and internationally on the topics of orthopaedics, surgery and epidemiology.

 
In addition to sitting on numerous boards, he also leads a prolific research unit specialising in surgical outcomes and the evidence-base for surgery in general. These works formed the basis for both his PhD and his book Surgery: The Ultimate Placebo, in which Prof Harris argues that many common surgeries are performed without robust evidence of their effectiveness. 

He concludes that much of the perceived benefits for many of these procedures could therefore be due to the placebo effect. Both the book and Prof Harris have subsequently garnered much attention.