"This guide focuses on medicines and medical devices. It aims to provide journalists with the tools and knowledge to independently assess the evidence, critically appraise the risk-benefit ratio of any given product or policy, and expose corruption and malpractice. It can be read as a textbook, one chapter at a time, or used selectively to support your work. Investigating behind-the-scenes is consuming but rewarding. As we’ll discuss in Chapter 2, combining the methods and standards of muckraking and Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) can be highly effective. EBM, defined as “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients,” has been constantly revised to include a wider public health approach. But as Students4BestEvidence, a network of students from around the world who are interested in learning more about evidence-based health care, put it: “It’s about asking the right questions and using the best research evidence to answer those questions.” EBM is an approach that matches the ethics and standards of investigative journalism." (Introduction, page 8-9)