This author, a teacher of medical students, has taken a keen interest in the history of the teaching and practice of medicine. The definitive treatment of medical history by Porter left no doubt that it is only for approximately the last century that science has imposed a balance of benefit on Western medical practice. Subsequent reading of Druin Burch's "Taking the Medicine" inclines Parslow to believe that it is only the last 30 years that can be regarded as the era of evidence-based medicine. In medicine, patient survival after treatment is an objective measure that cannot be manipulated. However, in education, educators normalize the distribution of their marks to get a profile that is largely invariant between years. This gives them little ground for evaluating the true efficacy of educational approaches. It is now time for educators to learn the lessons of medical accountability, and Laura Furge has foreshadowed how Institutional Review Boards may increasingly impose accountability for education initiatives to bring education into an evidence-based era.