Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Journals, like the mass media, have a major part to play in exposing scientific fraud and other kinds of misconduct. In contrast, as I’ve argued many times, there are better ways now to disseminate science. Yet sadly and ironically, exposing fraud is risky and expensive, whereas publishing science is often highly profitable. The incentives are all wrong. […]
Ask doctors for the causes of heart failure or any disease, and answers will pour from them. Ask them about the causes of health or wellbeing, and they will go blank. Doctors are trained to think about disease not health. Sir Harry Burns, formerly chief medical officer for Scotland, asks doctors about the causes of […]
Why does prevention always come behind treatment of disease? Derek Yach, the chief health officer of Vitality, put this question to many people, and these are the answers he got from Don Berwick, formerly head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a familiar figure […]
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 […]
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 […]
We may like to think with websites that allow us to compare prices and get feedback on books, plays, and restaurants that transparency is empowering us, but is the balance of information fair? Do we know more about Google, Tesco, and the government than they know about us? Clearly not, and, argued Roger Taylor and […]
A friend has pointed out to me that I am listed as an “exemplary professional” on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. Others on the list include Florence Nightingale and the Nobel prize winner Sydney Brenner. I clearly don’t belong in such exalted company, but another on the list is Andrew Wakefield—yes, […]
SMACCDUB is the conference of young critical care doctors, with a few mature ones thrown in for the mix, and the most energetic I’ve been to in a long time, perhaps ever. In a plenary session I sat on a white sofa drinking a 25 year old Irish whiskey next to Jeff Drazen, the editor […]
I’ve never been depressed. I’ve been down, sad, blue, but never depressed. But many family and friends, people I love, have been depressed. Some have tried to describe it to me. I learnt about depression as a medical student, but I’ve felt my understanding to be shallow. I wanted to know more about this pernicious […]
For the first two million years of humans there were no doctors. People were born, flourished, became sick, suffered, and then died without doctors. Probably there were healers who danced, sang, rattled skulls, and used herbs but managed without microscopes and randomised trials. “Scientific doctors” appeared recently, and quickly—according to Ivan Illich, the critic of […]