“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research […]
Month: November 2010
James Raftery: What’s happening with NICE? The cancer drugs fund and “value based pricing”
The reports that NICE is to be stripped of its powers to recommend against NHS use of drugs prompts questions about the Coalition Government’s health plans. Some indication of what […]
Richard Smith: informed and uniformed consent
Informed consent has degenerated from an important and respectful act to a cumbersome, meaningless regulatory process that impedes research. That bluntly is the opinion of many researchers, and so a […]
Mike Clarke: Core outcomes for autism, COMET, and the Cochrane journal club
Autism spectrum disorders place a tremendous burden on the sufferers and their families and carers. Parents are often desperate for treatments that might help, but are not receiving the best […]
Elizabeth Loder on sharing SPIRIT
A diverse collection of people, ranging from medical journal editors to the head of the clintrials.gov trial registration website gathered at the third meeting of the SPIRIT initiative in Toronto on […]
Andrew Burd on the World Association of Plastic Surgeons of Chinese Descent
I have just returned from a fascinating meeting in Taiwan. This was the second world congress for plastic surgeons of chinese descent which is a biannual meeting of the World […]
Annabel Bentley: Information overload…are you waving or drowning?
Information is out of control. Whether it’s a bulging email inbox of journal alerts or an unread pile of medical journals, we’re all drowning in unread and out-of-date information. But […]
Richard Smith on editors’ conflicts of interest
We are all more interested in the conflicts of interests of others than we are in our own, and editors are no exception. Having preached to authors and reviewers on […]
Domhnall MacAuley on rowing glory and cruel irony
They asked me to go on the radio. Andy Holmes, double Olympic gold medallist rower had just died of Leptospirosis. After a long break away from the sport, he returned two […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 1 November 2010
JAMA 27 Oct 2010 Vol 304 Perhaps the greatest prize in preventive medicine this century will be the discovery of an effective non-surgical intervention to cure obesity. This study doesn’t […]