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 fest...
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 lit...
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...
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 organisatio...
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 t...
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 advertis...
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, t...
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...
Ray’s guest this week is Julian Elliott - the well-travelled Australian doctor, researcher and big picture thinker who aims to use new technology to radically improve health systems and access to evidence for people around the world – whether they’re in high or low income countries. Julian is something of a futurist. So at a time when all kinds of websites, apps and wearable devices are ingesting our health and personal data, Ray asks him what the consequences of this ever increasing deluge of d...
Hailed as one of the best British novelists writing today, Sarah Moss is our very special literary guest on TRD this week. She joins Ray to explore the intersection between fiction and health, and to talk about the doctors, patients, parents and families she portrays so vividly in her five highly acclaimed novels. The role of the writer, Sarah says, is to ‘ask hard questions beautifully’. She certainly does this through her own exploration of individual lives and struggles within clearly defined...
Psychiatrist and would-be international DJ Prathap Tharyan joins Ray from his home in India this week to explore a fascinating fraction of his work, life and philosophy. Prathap’s wide-ranging agenda reflects a decidedly down-to-earth and original take on understanding and improving the human condition. Be it tending to victims of the Boxing Day tsunami, ensuring humanistic care for the homeless or working with Wikipedia to get better health information to millions around the globe – people and ...
Paul Glasziou (aka The Surfing Professor) joins Ray this week to share insights from his stellar career as both a family doctor in Brisbane and a global evidence guru at Oxford and Bond Universities. He explores big picture health issues like overdiagnosis, overtreatment and the implications of genomic testing, alongside important questions for our everyday health - like how you can find and use evidence and put it to good use when visiting or choosing your own doctor or specialist. At one point...
This week Professor Jimmy Volmink joins Ray to trace an extraordinary personal and professional journey that defied the odds. From his childhood with little educational opportunity in apartheid South Africa to a stellar international research career, he shares the critical moments, chance meetings and inspiring influences that have shaped his life and work. Jimmy's journey reflects the incredible social, political and human rights struggles of twentieth century South Africa. His current role at ...
This week Ray catches up with Professor Lisa Bero - one of the world’s leading experts on industry influence on science. Her groundbreaking research continues to show how the tactics of big tobacco, big pharma and increasingly the food industry influence the decisions of health professionals and distort research findings. Lisa’s current work looks at how private companies are now influencing public health in areas like obesity. Late last year, it was discovered that her research was being secret...
Described as one of world's most prominent psychiatrists, Dr Allen Frances recently made the controversial claim that 'Donald Trump isn't mad, we are'. In this episode, he shares the thinking behind this now infamous statement that attracted both praise and condemnation from mental health professionals and media around the globe. In recent years, Allen Frances headed the Taskforce which wrote the 4th edition of the influential psychiatric manual of mental disorders, the DSM. But now he's become ...
Who better to kick off a series on all things health and evidence than the exceptional and erudite Editor-in-Chief of The BMJ, Dr Fiona Godlee. In this episode, Fiona chats to Ray about the BMJ's ongoing and often controversial campaigns to change medicine - and broader society - for the better. She also looks to a future that addresses the distorting influence of industry funding on health evidence and outcomes, and let's us in on what drives and inspires her to achieve so much in her influenti...
Who's Ray? What's Cochrane? Why listen to The Recommended Dose podcast? This super-quick mini-episode offers a snapshot of what we're all about... For a full transcript of this episode visit https://australia.cochrane.org/recommended-dose-explainer-episode-transcript
