Footnotes

• Twitter @carlheneghan, @JKAronson

• Contributors CH wrote the first draft and JA contributed to this draft and both authors approved the final version.

• Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

• Competing interests CH holds grant funding from the NIHR School of Primary Care Research Evidence Synthesis Working Group (project 390) and the NIHR Oxford BRC. He is editor in chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine and an NIHR senior investigator. He is director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM), which jointly runs the EvidenceLive Conference with the BMJ and the Overdiagnosis Conference with some international partners, which are based on a non-profit model. CH has also received funding as

  part of a work package funded by the NIHR under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP‐PG‐0608‐10073).

  JA has written and edited articles and textbooks on adverse drug reactions, including Meyler’s Side Effects of Drugs (16th edition, 2016), its companion volumes the Side Effects of Drugs Annuals, and Stephens’ Detection and Evaluation of Adverse Drug Reactions (6th edition, 2011). He is an associate editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine and a member of the CEBM (see above).

  The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.

• Patient consent for publication Not required.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.