For some reason, reddit seems to believe that mainstream medical practice is generally backed up by science. As a med student, this is a laughable notion.

The new trend is for all interventions to be backed up by hard evidence ("evidence based medicine"), ie meta-analysis of randomized control trials; however many treatments are not backed up by this evidence.

Let me provide an example: the flu vaccine recommendations of the CDC are not supported by the evidence.

In med school, we're taught that the Cochrane Reviews are among the gold-standards of medical evidence. Here's what they say about the flu vaccine.

Martha Henry, program coordinator for the Knight Fellowships, interviews Gary Taubes about his controversial article.