It Ain't Necessarily So: Why Much of the Medical Literature Is Wrong

I can't always distinguish good vs. bad research, that's why I need a medical person smarter than me that can analyze papers. I'm sure your neurologist isn't any better than me at it, but I doubt s/he has hired an analyst to keep them up-to-date on the latest research. Easy question to find out. 'What are the 10 most important research findings on stroke in the last 10 years? That you are using for your stroke patients?'
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/829866#2
In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun to ask, "Is there a Santa Claus?"^[1] Virginia's father, Dr. Phillip O'Hanlon, suggested that course of action because "if you see it in the Sun, it's so." Today many clinicians and health professionals may share the same faith in the printed word and assume that if it says it in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) or JAMA or The Lancet, then it's so.
Putting the existence of Santa Claus aside, John Ioannidis^[2] and others have argued that much of the medical literature is prone to bias and is, in fact, wrong.
Given a statistical association between X and Y, most people make the assumption that X caused Y. However, we can easily come up with 5 other scenarios to explain the same situation.

5 more pages at the link.