Yesterday morning the BMJ’s press officer needed to locate a rapid response about Tamiflu from Peter Doshi, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Doshi’s response accuses the drug’s manufacturer Roche of “all talk and no action” following its promise to share full clinical study reports (CSRs) for 10 treatment trials.

Our Tamiflu open data campaign page was a logical starting point. It wasn’t there. Doshi had in fact responded to this news story, posted last week: Roche says it will not relinquish control over access to clinical trial data. more…

The horsemeat scandal has triggered calls for the UK’s food safety watchdog to have stronger regulatory powers. The Food Standards Agency was stripped of its nutrition and labelling roles in a cull of quangoes shortly after the coalition government entered office in 2010. Isn’t it time they were returned, to restore public confidence in the food chain?

Food campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall certainly thinks so. He told journalist Rachel Sylvester in an interview in Saturday’s Times that reducing the power and responsibilities of the FSA has put British shoppers at risk. “Self-regulation is a popular theme with this current government, whether you are talking about the press or the supermarkets. more…

This blog is the first in a series about you, our readers. Fiona Godlee, the BMJ’s editor in chief, suggested I write a regular blog explaining some of our policies and procedures. Many of them have been in place for decades, but our readership of practising physicians and academic researchers may not be aware of many of them. I’ll aim to choose topics based on recent questions from readers around the world who see the journal in print, online, and on the iPad. more…

My last encounter with a JK Rowling novel was an abortive attempt to get through a Harry Potter boxed set given to me as a present ten years ago (why did nobody have the guts to tell the world’s most successful author to make the Goblet of Fire and subsequent volumes shorter?).  more…

A year ago today the BMJ’s new website went live. We launched with an explanatory video and a dedicated email address for you, our readers, to provide feedback. This blog is a summary of the many changes—some big, some small—that we’ve made over the last 12 months. more…

 The editor emailed me this to seek my views about how to make her weekly Editor’s Choice more relevant to the journal’s online readers. 

The article gets posted on bmj.com every Wednesday and appears in print two days later (all BMJ articles appear online ahead of print). Editor’s Choice helps busy print readers navigate that week’s issue, pointing out articles that have caught her eye as editor. more…

At a conference I attended in Washington DC last week we discussed innovation in scholarly publishing. One activity was to fast forward to 2022 and imagine what would have changed in the industry. Would print be dead, replaced by tablet and other mobile apps? Will journals still exist in their current form? Might authors bypass them entirely and self-publish? If so, what can journals offer instead? more…

In a hot Washington DC two days ago I needed the toilet. I was on Wisconsin Avene in Georgetown. My English reserve suddenly overcame me. I dreaded the thought of pushing past clean-cut American families waiting outside restaurants to get a table for Sunday lunch and trying to spot signs for a washroom.  In the end I found a Starbucks with nobody queueing to use the loo. more…

I have a good memory. Actually I’m being modest. I have an amazing memory, according to friends and family. 29 June 1974. A Saturday. I was eight. We went on holiday to Hopton-on-Sea. 1 September 1977, a Thursday. My first day at secondary school. There was a girl in my class called Sarah Lowe. She was 12 that day, the oldest child in our year.

If I met Sarah now I’d tell her I still remembered her birthday, despite having almost nothing to do with her after that first day at school. On second thoughts, probably not. She might find that a bit freaky. Or flattering. I don’t know. more…

In a Guardian newspaper article this week Juliette Jowitt caught up with four MPs—including the former GP Sarah Wollaston, who stood up in the House of Commons last month to talk about their mental illnesses.

Wollaston had described her experience of postnatal depression and panic attacks previously, but Conservative MP Charles Walker had only confided in one other Parliamentary colleague about his obsessive compulsive disorder. He stood up and announced to his fellow MPs he was a “practising fruitcake.” His local paper reported the story under a headline: “Fruitcake MP praised for bravery.” more…