“We live in a world of competing sorrows,” said Daniel Moynihan, the American senator. How can policy makers choose among sorrows? One way is with the help of the Copenhagen […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Of human bubbles
Financial history is full of bubbles, driven by “our innate inclination to veer from euphoria to despondency.” As I read an account of how bubbles happen in Niall Ferguson’s excellent […]
Richard Smith: Perhaps I could live forever
I’m sitting in first class on the train to Edinburgh with two glasses of red wine inside me when I look across the water to Lindisfarne and suddenly think “Perhaps […]
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 […]
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 Smith: An open blog to Prime Minister David Cameron
Dear prime minister, I heard you give an inspiring speech earlier this week about how Britain was “open for business,” particularly in the life sciences. But when I arrived home […]
Richard Smith: An ex-editor on the receiving end
After 25 years as an editor, I’ve learnt in my eight years as an ex-editor that it’s mostly miserable being at the author end of a very unequal power relationship. […]
Richard Smith: You might have had a heart attack or you might not; we forgot to tell you
Complaints against doctors feature communication more than anything else, which is one reason why communication skills have become universal in medical education. Unfortunately we still have some way to go—as […]
Richard Smith: “I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty, and my legs are thin.”
It’s been a bad week. I’ve flown 6000 miles to attend two meetings where not only did I not manage to say anything useful but I also came across as […]
Richard Smith: Homesickness—my most serious “disease”
Last week I walked from Poole to Chapman’s Pool along the South West Coastal Path, and as I passed through Swanage memories flooded back, some of them very painful. This […]