I’ve worried that disclosing conflicts of interest may be counterproductive ever since we did an experiment that showed that readers of articles with declared conflicts discounted not only the believability of the results, but every aspect of the paper, including its importance and originality. Now my worries are increased by a paper in JAMA and […]
If I had one thing in healthcare to banish to my room 101, the choice would be easy: waste, inefficiency, and delays. “That’s three things”’ I hear you shout. Yes OK, but: in the NHS they go hand in hand; they are part of the guise that Andrew Lansley used to push through his dubious […]
The BMJ tends not to commission obituaries of non-doctors. I can understand why. The journal’s print obituary section is already awash with the lives of distinguished doctors from the UK and overseas. It would need to be a lot larger if coverage was extended to eminent nurses, former health ministers, academics, and campaigners, But if its […]
It’s that time of year again when exams rear their ugly heads. Not for me though—this year’s exams are long over. Instead, the third years are facing their first OSCEs (objective structured clinical exams). Last week, I volunteered for one of the numerous mock OSCEs organised for them by various well-meaning educational student societies. I […]
I spent last Wednesday afternoon with seven 3-4 year olds from Levenhall nursery in Musselburgh, East Lothian, just outside Edinburgh. They were taking part in an immersive theatre production by the children’s theatre company Licketyspit. I have known the company’s director, Virginia Radcliffe, for 18 years, since we met at a post natal group soon […]
Tackling the global pandemic problem of non-communicable disease (NCDs) is a complex problem that needs clockware and swarmware. I imagine that most BMJ readers have no idea what that sentence means, but read a few more paragraphs and you may learn something useful. Problems, said Sian Williams, executive officer of the International Primary Care Research […]
JAMA 25 Apr 2012 Vol 307 1717 Any budding young cardiology academic wishing to set up a publication of her own could do worse than start a Journal of Negative Stem Cell Trials in Heart Failure. There are enough of these to fill a volume every quarter-year or so, and editorials could reflect on all […]
In an attention-grabbing presentation, Paul Walker, of the US affiliate Green Cross International, engrossed delegates at the World Congress of Public Health in Addis Ababa with his skillful exposition of the burden on humanity represented by warfare and the preparations for it. Tying the issues neatly into the concerns of Africa, he noted that the […]
This week I attended and participated in a panel discussion at the Council for Health Research and Development (COHRED)’s 14th Global Forum for Health Research in Cape Town, South Africa. Last year the Global Forum merged with COHRED, and this year’s forum has had a distinctly different focus from the thirteen previous meetings. Whereas in […]
The author Philip Gourevitch once wrote: “Oh Congo, what a wreck. It hurts to look and listen. It hurts to turn away.” Exploited and misruled for much of its modern history, this country has spent more than a decade in a state of semi-permanent civil war. 5.4m people have died, mostly from disease and starvation, […]