I’ve just spent five days—yes, five days—talking about health literacy. Before my five day conversation I’d never thought much about health literacy, but now I see myself as an expert. Pick a small enough subject and you can be a world expert in about 20 minutes. But health literacy is actually a big subject and […]
Once in every while an ethical dilemma will swim across the horizon, a dilemma whose wake will induce in me a bout of moral seasickness. My compass spins, my bearings wheel and lurch. One such is the reappearance of “facilitated self-harm”. I am not over-fond of the word “facilitate”. It drips with the oil of […]
Something has just happened that will almost certainly end the tyranny of impact factors and may well mark another step towards the extinction of most scientific journals. Did you notice it? Probably not, and even if you did you may not have understood what it was or what it may lead to. It was the […]
The adrenaline rush was unbearable. I could feel my palms sweating. When I tried to clip the microphone on to my coat, my hands were trembling. Eager looking eyes of the audience were pinned on me. I took a deep breath and with my heart still pounding, I said, “Hello everyone!” […]
WHO is currently setting priorities for research in chronic or non-communicable disease, and generally the first research question is “Will what has worked in rich countries work in low and middle income countries?” We know, for example, what to do to reduce deaths from heart disease and how to reduce tobacco consumption. But interestingly when […]
Reader I am sick, sick if not quite unto death then very nearly unto despair. There is a gnawing within that will not let me rest. I have searched in vain for what to call my malediction. I have been sacking my shelves, rifling my dictionaries and encyclopedias, consulting with the most eminent physicians, but […]
Frank Wells, who is probably the UK’s first professional fraud buster, says he has “yet to meet a female research fraudster.” All the 26 cases of proven villainy he has dealt with have been men. That’s interesting, but not quite enough to fill a blog and perhaps says more about the sex ratio of senior […]
Last week I fell onto an outstretched hand and clinically had an obvious fracture on the ulnar side of my left wrist. Interestingly, the very diligent nurse practitioner who examined me became fixated on my scaphoid – having pushed extraordinarily hard in the anatomical snuffbox and eliciting pain. Scaphoid views were requested and no fracture […]
As this is a scientific journal, I imagine its readers will have more than a passing interest in Darwin. It is hardly surprising. Darwinism is a scientific hypothesis of such revelatory brilliance, of such simplicity and such reach, of such sheer explanatory power that it is difficult to remain unmoved by it. […]
At last I have online access to my medical records. I wrote a blog some six months ago about how a talk by Harold Shipman’s successor had convinced me that I should get access. I do most of my work online, complete my tax return online, make all my travel arrangements online, bank online, and […]