I am catching up on the podcasts during my commute, and I gotta say, Mark, if other men knew how incredibly sexy it is for a man to say consensus is not evidence, there would be some major game change happening! Lol! I almost had to pull over and fan myself.

I have to combat this confusion often in my work. I am in your possibly most irritating profession, pediatrics. I've gone on many a soapbox rant with students that "expert opinion" or "expert consensus" is NOT a level of evidence. It doesn't belong in the chart at all. The evidence the experts are using to form their opinion can go in the evidence chart, but not their opinion. It makes me gnash my teeth every time I see this chart levels of evidence aap.jpg from the AAP. They probably think they are doing a good thing by placing expert opinion at the bottom-- but the fact that they don't even realize an opinion isn't evidence (as opposed to a case report, which is evidence but less reliable due to possible confounding factors) is so disappointing.

Thank you for being a bright spot in my day!