My last blog started with the observation that it’s impossible to investigate research fraud unless you have the raw data. While that may seem obvious, it leads logically onto another, subtly different, point which often seems to be missed: that it’s impossible to spot many types of research fraud unless you have seen the raw […]
Category: Columnists
William Cayley: Resistance is futile (?)
Recent years have seen a lot of optimistic talk and writing about the “Patient Centered Medical Home”, the promise of population registries and electronic health records for preventing and managing chronic disease, and the ideals of training the personal physician for the 21st century. The goal of integrating personal care with the best that technology […]
Liz Wager: Show us the data
It’s almost impossible to investigate suspected fraud unless you have access to the raw data. That may seem pretty obvious, but it raises the more interesting question of who should be responsible for looking after these data and making sure they are available, if needed. Cases that frustrated journal editors brought to COPE (the Committee […]
William Cayley: Continuity—in and out of hospital in the US
We’re seeing a resurgence in primary care in the US—or are we? In a recent post, Domhnall MacAuley comments on the way primary care seems to have “emerged from the shadows as central to the development of universal and sustainable healthcare in the US.” While the resurgence of primary care seems to get much press, […]
Mary E Black: Do we really need to have so many meetings?
It’s my fourth month working for public health in the local authority and I’ve had yet another request to join a stakeholder meeting. This time it’s from NHS England to hear about a new immunisation pilot … and the meeting will be held in Wimbledon. Wimbledon? We work 30 miles away in Havering… I have […]
Paul Glasziou: Beware the hyperactive therapeutic reflex
Nearly 15 years ago when I first presented the results of our systematic review on antibiotics for acute otitis media, one paediatrician snarled, “You’re making it too complicated. It’s simple: otitis media is an infection; the treatment of infection is antibiotics.” So that was that. The art of therapeutics could be boiled down to a […]
Richard Smith: Doctors and the “three body problem”
Paul Valéry, the French poet and polymath, believed that we all have three bodies and suffer because we cannot bring them together. The best doctors, I suggest, pay attention to all three bodies, but most doctors, I fear, restrict themselves to one of the three. The first body, argued Valéry, is the one we live […]
David Kerr on Google Glass and big brother medicine
Recently in the UK, the General Medical Council (GMC) faced a barrage of criticism following the publication of new guidance on the use of social media by doctors. The main point of contention was the recommendation by the GMC that doctors should avoid anonymity on line. This was perceived by critics as an infringement of […]
Martin McKee: Coalition u-turns and how the EU is leading the way on smoking legislation
Is the UK coalition government losing its touch? It has just revealed how weak it is when faced with demands from its own supporters in big business and, specifically, in the alcohol and tobacco industries. Firstly, it announced a u-turn on the pledge to introduce minimum unit pricing of alcohol made personally by the prime […]
Richard Smith: Race relations in Florida
Those of us outside the US think of holidays, sun, Disney, and orange juice when we think of Florida. We don’t even think of it as part of the slavery, blues, and cotton South, and so I was shocked to read in the magnificent, Pulitzer prize winning book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the […]