Recently I asked a leader of a major research funder what proportion of its grants led to a publication. “I’ve no idea,” he answered, “but it’s probably 20-30%. What bothers me the most is that it’s the positive stuff that gets published. You do an experiment day after day until it ‘works.’ You then publish […]
So, we now know the results of the referendum, and the government will have to decide how to proceed to the next stage of negotiations. I am talking, of course, not about 52:48 but about 58:42—in other words, the referendum on the junior hospital doctors’ contract. To understand the word “referendum” requires an understanding of […]
One of the few things that almost everyone, whichever side of the Brexit argument they are on, can agree on is that the NHS would face severe problems if the large number of EU citizens working in it were to leave. However, a combination of uncertainty about their future status and a rising tide of […]
Recently while driving to work, I was bemused (or should I say, dismayed) to pass yet another presidential campaign poster promising to “make America great,” just as I was hearing on the radio a story about the worldwide 2016 Social Progress Index, which rates the US as 19th overall on measures of social and environmental performance […]
Peter Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and researcher, has written a book arguing that 97% of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good. Allen Frances, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University and chair of the committee that produced DSM IV, says that 70% of Gøtzsche’s book is right but the big problem is that patients […]
Last week I discussed the various forms of patronymics that are formed by adding prefixes or suffixes meaning “son/child of,” concentrating on UK varieties. Now I go further afield. The suffix -son is common in English speaking, Scandinavian, and Teutonic countries, spelt –søn and -sen in Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, and -sohn in Germany. […]
No one can be in any doubt, after the referendum campaign, that large parts of the British print media have abandoned any attempt at balance. A detailed study by academics at Loughborough University has described in detail how much of the tabloid press ran a relentlessly negative campaign against the EU, but more especially against […]
When I wrote my last BMJ blog it was within hours of the result of the EU referendum. I admitted freely that, despite having studied the EU extensively for three decades, I had no idea what the implications of Brexit would be for health. This was because I was unable to ascertain what it would […]
What just happened? Sitting in my clinical office in rural Wisconsin, the outcome of the “Brexit” vote seems quite far away—yet the day after 23 June’s vote, the shock and surprise emanating from the news stories is almost palpable. While I can’t claim to know much about the inner workings of British domestic politics, as I’ve […]
Of the different types of surname origins, patronymics are the most common. A patronym or patronymic (Greek πατήρ father + ὀνομα name) is a name that derives from the first name of your father, or more generally from that of a forebear. Originally, people’s names took the forms that we see in the Bible, like […]