Twenty years ago this week the statistician Doug Altman published an editorial in the BMJ arguing that much medical research was of poor quality and misleading. In his editorial entitled, […]
Columnists
William Cayley: Evidence based medicine and practice change—get out front and push!
We’d hoped evidence based medicine (EBM) would improve patient oriented outcomes and clinical processes, but some fear the “EBM” movement is broken. However, it may not be just “EBM” as […]
Jim Murray: Some MEPs work very hard
I sometimes feel sorry for MEPs, and not just at Christmas. I’m thinking of those who do a good job as rapporteur on important dossiers, such as the revision of […]
Simon Chapman: When will the tobacco industry apologise for its galactic harms?
Last week, four US tobacco companies finally reached agreement with the US Department of Justice to fund large scale corrective advertising about five areas of tobacco control. Each advertisement will […]
Richard Smith: Doctors and the Hollande affair
It’s hard not to be fascinated by Francois Hollande’s alleged (why do we keep bothering with this word?) affair with an actress with stories of two Parisian love nests, bags […]
Richard Smith: Taboo over the private sector limits health development
In most low and middle income countries the private sector accounts for 60-80% of outpatient care and 40-60% of inpatient care. Yet aid agencies have largely ignored the private sector, […]
Richard Smith: What is the future for hospices?
As I walked beside Clapham Common towards Trinity Hospice a famous BMJ phrase was ringing in my ears: “Hospice care is deluxe dying for the few looked after by dowager […]
Richard Smith: NCD among the bottom billion
My main job these days means thinking about non-communicable disease (NCD) in low and middle income countries (LMIC), but a paper in the Lancet suggests that I may be thinking […]
Richard Smith: Work from the 1950s that can help us reform healthcare today
One of the questions that occurred to many after the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust was “How could nurses and doctors behave like that and not do anything?” […]
William Cayley: Evidence based medicine—it’s time to be critical
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” goes the aphorism—and so would say any who trust complacently in the exponential growth of “evidence based” this or that in medicine. Des […]