I think I’ve joined a gang. I’m not sure only because it was first billed as a cabal. I’ve since looked up what cabal means and I suspect it’s too […]
Columnists
Penny Campling: Thoughts on a healthcare culture—part 3
Why do good staff become bad? This seems a particularly pertinent question for those of us interested in healthcare in the aftermath of Mid Staffordshire, Winterbourne View, and the repeated […]
Richard Smith: Perhaps I could live forever
I’m sitting in first class on the train to Edinburgh with two glasses of red wine inside me when I look across the water to Lindisfarne and suddenly think “Perhaps […]
Tiago Villanueva: Does it matter where you do your medical training?
The standards of both undergraduate and postgraduate medical training vary widely around the world. This partly explains why the medical profession is so fiercely regulated when a doctor wishes to […]
Julian Sheather: Doping in sport—thoughts on another Olympic legacy
Every once in a while I dust off my old road bike and head out onto the North Downs to take in a few hills. Panting up a short sharp […]
Richard Smith and Nataly Kelly: Global attempts to avoid talking directly about death and dying
English speakers have been very inventive in finding words and phrases that allow them to avoid the words death and dying, and so we have discovered are people who speak […]
Desmond O’Neill: Humour at one hundred
The study of centenarians is one of the fastest evolving fields of gerontology. In a seemingly paradoxical counterpoint to their almost inevitable tally of frailties, this group is simultaneously endowed […]
Edzard Ernst: The “natural” equals “safe” fallacy
Things that are natural must be safe—this fallacy is deeply ingrained in our minds; it almost seems that, as human beings, we are hard-wired to believe this myth. An entire […]
Richard Smith: Did the future of scientific publishing happen?
Ten years ago editors and publishers from the BMJ produced four scenarios on how the future of scientific and medical publishing might look. After I read Des Spence’s column arguing […]
Richard Smith: An open blog to Prime Minister David Cameron
Dear prime minister, I heard you give an inspiring speech earlier this week about how Britain was “open for business,” particularly in the life sciences. But when I arrived home […]