Staying with astrophysics (qv), let’s think about dark matter and light years. As the Wikipedia entry states, “Dark matter is a hypothetical kind of matter that cannot be seen with […]
Columnists
Desmond O’Neill: Wheelbarrows, transport, and health
There is an old joke about a man who goes through a customs post with a wheelbarrow of sand every day. The increasingly frustrated customs officers make intensive searches of […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Breaking worse
There is a bewildering number of ways to break a word. In metanalysis you reinterpret the form of a word, creating a new one. An umpire, for example, was originally […]
William Cayley: Diagnosis—what it’s not . . .
“Phew! At least you don’t have something bad.” “I know doc, but what is it?” I’m afraid that in medicine, we too often focus on the former, and not enough […]
David Lock: Who has a legal duty to fund post-trial treatment?
If someone has been in a clinical trial, do they have a legal right to ongoing treatment for as long as treatment is clinically appropriate where the clinical trial was […]
Richard Smith: Do dreams have meaning? The great divide
The other night in a dream I saw my father, who died 11 years ago. He was very clear, recently shaved, with his hair combed and in full colour. He […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Breaking bad
Metanalysis is when you break a word badly. It’s defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the reinterpretation of the form of a word, resulting in the creation of a […]
William Cayley: Planning for uncertainty
Martin Marshall could not have said it better in his recent blog—the idea of the 10 minute consultation is a travesty . . . except that sometimes it is not. […]
James Raftery: Ever higher cancer drug prices—driven by US policies and genetic sequencing
The high prices charged by companies for cancer drugs has led to lots of speculation, but very little explanation. The most interesting attempt to explain these high prices has been […]
Julian Sheather: Forty years of the Declaration of Tokyo
Medical involvement in torture looks like a category error. Medicine has to do with the healing of bodies and minds; torture with their destruction. It is now forty years since […]