“Get something out on social?” urged a colleague in response to UK Chancellor George Osborne’s sugar tax announcement in his Budget speech last week. “I think you can claim that as a ‘win’ for The BMJ” added another after we reminded him of the many articles we have published on the sugar tax. We quickly […]
Category: Readers’ editor
David Payne: Top nurses with a tamed Hound
Spare a thought for the comedian asked to host a professional awards ceremony within a week of the UK general election. Oliver Reed lookalike Rufus Hound (pictured) showed all the signs of having his comic wings clipped as he took to the podium at London’s Savoy Hotel last week to present the Nursing Standard Nurse Awards. […]
David Payne: Digital dilemmas—a day in my life at The BMJ
Wednesday December 10. 8.30am: I’m on the bus into work and checking Twitter when I see an exchange between @garyschwitzer and @bengoldacre about some embargoed papers we press released last night, (including Ben’s editorial and a linked research paper about the association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases), not showing on […]
Readers’ editor: Inserts in the print issue
If you shake the current print issue of The BMJ, a cluster of inserts fall to the ground, among them a wine club promotion, an online menswear retailer, and a charity appeal from the Refugee Council. Sometimes readers do challenge the accuracy of information in these inserts, or question our decision to accept money from […]
The BMJ Today: Feet and fudge
A calcaneal fracture can mean a two year recovery, with a stiff, painful, deformed foot that will not fit into a normal shoe. How does operative and non-operative treatment for intra-articular fractures compare? A research team led by Damian Griffin, professor of trauma and orthopaedic surgery at Warwick University Medical School, conclude in their randomised […]
The BMJ Today: Talking shit again
By the end of next month rural India could have an extra 5.2m toilets as part of a pre-election pledge by Narendra Modi, now prime minister, to build “toilets first and temples later.” Readers of The BMJ will no doubt be heartened by the Indian government’s announcement, coming seven years after sanitation topped a reader poll […]
Readers’ editor: A website needing more soft fruit
We like it when readers take the time and trouble to give us feedback. We’ve been particularly appreciative in the last two weeks as The BMJ’s new website beds down following its launch on 30 June. Some readers responded to the editorial published to mark the new website and the journal’s new name and logo. Eighty […]
The BMJ Today: New name, new logo, new website, some bugs
Writers of this daily update about new stuff published by The BMJ usually face an embarrassment of riches—more than 100 articles go online each week, along with dozens of rapid responses, video abstracts, and audio interviews. But yesterday hardly anything got published because we needed to clear the decks for a new website, which heralds […]
Trish Groves: Media reaction to the updated Cochrane reviews on Tamiflu and Relenza
The two updated Cochrane reviews on the benefits and harms in influenza of the neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) attracted lots of attention after The BMJ published them earlier this month. This is my third blog about the feedback. The first blog focussed on rapid responses to the two research articles, and the second looked at how they […]
Trish Groves: How bloggers responded to the updated Cochrane reviews on Tamiflu and Relenza
My earlier blog outlined BMJ reader feedback to the two updated Cochrane reviews on the benefits and harms in influenza of the neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). But the two research articles also attracted a great deal of attention in the blogosphere. […]