I’ve written recently about the various things you should do when writing, and, perhaps more importantly, about the things that you shouldn’t do. But there is a risk that you take me a little too literally. […]
Latest articles
How often can you cry “Wolf”?
The fable of the bored shepherd boy, alone on a hillside (except for the sheep – sheep don’t count as company*) waiting for something to happen, is one that I hope most of us know and can recount if needed at any dinner table. In my folk-recollections of the tale, it’s three times that the […]
Practical Authorship: Keeping it Brief
You’ll have read, or have been taught about haiku, the highly stylised Japanese three line poetry which has five, seven and five syllables per line. What you don’t hear is people saying “Oh, haiku are great; I just wish they were a bit longer”. […]
StatsMiniBlog: Trial Sequential Analysis
You might have seen this “Trial Sequential Analysis” in the odd systematic review or meta-analysis, and seen some strange graphs with ‘cumulative z-score boundaries’ in them. And then either quickly closed the PDF or flicked away to catch up with an episode of Peppa Pig. But fear not. TSA is not as strange an idea […]
#MedicalMeanings
In an #ADC_JC from the dawn of time we discussed a paper concerned with the outcome of retrievals of children with bilious vomiting. We spent a disproportionate amount of time discussing the meaning of the word bile. […]
StatsMiniBlog: Value of Information
When there’s a limited pot of money to do research with, it would be sensible to put it where it might do the most good, wouldn’t it? Well that’s exactly what the ‘value of information’ framework attempts to help researchers / commissioners of research do … The concept is to take what you already know, with […]
Practical Authorship: What not to do when writing, 2.
What not to do when writing? Well! Where should I start? (actually, I already have – check out the previous post where I covered loads of really good stuff like how to talk about people and things and punctuation and irritants generally.)* Here I’m going to talk about the use of mathematical symbols, abbreviations and quote […]
Guest Post: Experience of running a PPI group
We’ve discussed before on this blog the possible benefits of public/patient involvement in research, and how it might be done, but in this guest post from Jemma Cleminson we get an insight into the challenges of doing it in real life. With many of the big funders of research now expecting involvement of patients and the public […]
Practical Authorship: What not to do when writing, 1.
The world is full of people who will tell what rules to follow when writing, and include some frankly made up rules about what not to do. Many of these should be ignored and dismissed as the worst sort of control freakery. I’d argue that there is no such thing as incorrect writing – because […]
How do health care teams talk about very-low-success interventions?
The situation is clear. The child has an illness which is very likely to end their life – and soon – in days, not months or years. They may be hooked to a ventilator, drizzled with inotropes, or osmosed. The health care team is talking – once again – about the outcomes and what we […]