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I suspect that most people who watch the video interview with Iain Chalmers will not register the passing reference he makes to Will Silverman.
I would have missed it myself if Iain had not told me (well a recommendation from Iain to do something IS an instruction) to read Will Silverman's monograph "Retrolental Fibroplasia: A Modern Parable".
http://www.neonatology.org/classics/parable/
One review recommended it as essential reading for neonatologists. This betrays too narrow an understanding of Silverman's reason for telling the story: "My account is not addressed primarily to experienced neonatologists and perinatologists".
It is a classic cautionary tale of good intentions combined with life-threatening illness leading to irresponsible innovation rushing ahead of the evidence without regard to the need to research the benefits and harms.
Silverman's conclusion is that the use of oxygen for respiratory distress syndrome in neonates should have been introduced in RCTs. He calls his monograph a parable, because the lesson applies to all medical innovations in all specialties.
If specialists such as cardiologists and interventional radiologists had read, marked, learnt, and inwardly digested Silverman's parable, investigative journalists such as Deborah Cohen would be at a loss for words:
One thing that seems to have changed since 1980 (when the book was published) is that marketing departments have discovered that good intentions and threatening conditions can be harnessed to subvert regulatory authorities and responsible innovators.
Michael