At a meeting on the politics of marriage last week at the London School of Economics three protagonists of very different stripe—the founder of the Marriage Foundation, a feminist philosopher, […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Doctors and patients heading in opposite directions
Doctors and patients are heading in opposite directions: patients increasingly have multiple conditions, while doctors are specialising not just in organ systems but in parts of organs. What are the […]
Richard Smith: The hypocrisy of medical journals over transparency
Medical journals generally favour transparency, but we’ve recently discovered that when there’s a trade-off between transparency and their financial interest they opt for the money. The International Committee of Medical […]
Richard Smith: The corruption of medical language
A young doctor friend sends me a link to a piece he has written in the Guardian newspaper. I praise the simplicity and clarity of the language and suggest that […]
Richard Smith: A Big Brother future for science publishing?
There have been big changes in science publishing in the 25 years since the appearance of the internet, but at the same time science publishing is still dominated by journals, […]
Richard Smith: Little global progress in countering non-communicable disease
In 2011 the United Nations held a high level meeting on preventing and controlling non-communicable disease (NCD) and produced a declaration on what countries should do. In 2018 it will […]
Richard Smith: Migrant health—political hysteria but insufficient attention to an issue that will increase substantially
Although there is political hysteria about migrants in Europe, the health of migrants receives insufficient attention. That was the main message to emerge from Imperial College’s Institute of Global Health […]
Richard Smith: Celebrating the Dutch global health doctors programme
The Dutch, an outward looking people, have long had a unique programme for training what were called “tropical doctors” and are now called “global health doctors.” The two years and […]
Richard Smith: A public health witch hunt—bad for everybody
At the end of last week I received this email: “Greetings from India, and I hope this finds you well! My name is Anoo. I’m a journalist based in Delhi, […]
Richard Smith: Strong evidence of bias against research from low income countries
I have taught classes on how to get published in scientific journals in many low and middle income countries, and just about every participant in every class has thought that […]