It’s the smile that gives it away. The Olympic smile. Couch potatoes, academic nerds, fashionistas, computer geeks, and sporty types united. All bewitched. With life on hold for the last […]
Month: August 2012
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 […]
Ruby Siddiqui: Emergency epidemiology—what does this mean?
“Mortality rates in a refugee camp in South Sudan are nearly double the threshold for an emergency, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned” said a BBC report on 6 July […]
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 […]
Toby Pitts-Tucker: Reining in the euphoria—the public health legacy of London 2012
The success of the London 2012 Olympics rather took the country by surprise. Not only did team GB amass an unprecedented pile of gleaming gold, silver, and bronze, but also […]
Emma Rourke reviews Horizon: Eat, Fast, and Live Longer
There’s a new intervention being trialled. It will help you lose weight, it will delay the potential onset of dementia, and best of all it will enable you to live […]
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 Lehman’s journal review—13 August 2012
JAMA 8 Aug 2012 Vol 308 575 When Stephen Lock was editor of the BMJ, he banned the expression “further research is needed” on the grounds that further research is […]