One of the saddest things that can occur, in science as well as sport, is to unintentionally hurt a teammate and friend through carelessness. In writing my commentary1 I just plain and simply didn't do a good enough job to distinguish my criticism of the unnamed “experts” from my reporting of what David Naylor wrote he was telling his patients in 1997. By singling out a colleague who has himself been a proponent of a more evidence-based and cautious approach to clinical preventive medicine and who later coauthored a study identifying new side effects of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women,2 I made a dumb mistake. So let me make it clear: I hold David Naylor in the highest regard, never intended my criticism of the experts to apply to him and regret any misinterpretation to the contrary.
David Sackett Trout Research and Education Centre at Irish Lake Markdale, Ont.
References
- 1.Sackett DL. The arrogance of preventive medicine [editorial]. CMAJ 2002;167(4):363-4. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 2.Mamdani M, Tu K, van Walraven C, Austin PC, Naylor CD. Postmenopausal estrogen replacement therapy and increased rates of cholecystectomy and appendectomy. CMAJ 2000;162(10): 1421-4. [PMC free article] [PubMed]