Research Interests
I am interested in foundational issues surrounding evidence, especially those related to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), as well as the ethics and epistemology of placebos. I am currently the founding director of the Oxford Empathy Programme, and my main aims in the next 5 years are to improve the ethics and epistemology of placebo effects, investigate the role of human empathy in the digital age, and improve the theory and practice of evidence-based healthcare. The quality of my research (which includes over 90 publications and two books) together with its impact, were part of a submission that was given top scores in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), and I have two Impact Case Studies that have been informally ranked as high quality for the forthcoming (2021) REF. I communicate the results of my research through academic channels, teaching (I have won three teaching awards), and social media (20,000 followers. I have recently written a popular science book, Doctor You, which has reached number 1 on Amazon in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.