The crisis of ethics and integrity in Evidence Based Medicine and scientific practice

Abstract

This issue of IJME carries three essays and a letter on the current crisis in Cochrane, earlier known as the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane expelled one of its founder members, Peter Gotzsche, on September 13, 2018, and in protest, four other Governing Board Members resigned. The essays show that what happened was not merely a clash within an organisation, but involved some basic differences on approach to Evidence Based Medicine. While these issues had been simmering for a long time, the expulsion brought them sharply into focus in the public domain.