Gordon Guyatt's Confession: What the Father of Evidence-Based Medicine Didn't Read (#36)

Dr. Gordon Guyatt revolutionized modern medicine. As a professor at McMaster University, he coined the term "evidence-based medicine" in 1991, created the hierarchy of evidence that every medical student learns, and wrote the User's Guide to the Medical Literature that taught physicians worldwide how to critically evaluate research. For 48 years, he's been the gold standard for rigorous scientific thinking in healthcare.

Then came his systematic reviews of pediatric gender medicine. His team found only low-quality evidence for youth interventions. When twenty U.S. states used his work to restrict access to these treatments, Guyatt called it "egregious, unconscionable misuse of our work." But in this explosive interview, he admits signing a statement endorsing "medically necessary care for gender diverse youth" without reading it carefully. "That was not my paragraph, and I didn't read carefully enough," he confesses. When pressed further: "I was a dope. Okay. I'm sometimes a dope."