I’ve a collection of stories editors of medical publications coming unstuck, often in bizarre ways, but the story of Lazar Greenfield departing Surgery News and causing a whole issue to […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: A thousand year old village in China
My first inkling that this wasn’t going to be a routine village visit was when I noticed that our coach had a police escort. Then when we arrived at the […]
Richard Smith: My boots – an obituary
My boots died last week as I walked the Cornish coastal path from St Just to St Ives. One comfort was that they died together. The sole of one boot […]
Richard Smith: Twenty tips for leaders
Some years a go a young friend who had worked with me became the head of a big organisation and asked for my tips on leadership. I’ve had some interest […]
Richard Smith: Lunch with 90 health ministers in Moscow
Last week I enjoyed myself facilitating a lunchtime meeting of 90 health ministers at a meeting in Moscow on non-communicable disease. The meeting, like all global meetings, was something of […]
Richard Smith: Waiting for Putin
Along with about 600 other people, 90 of them health ministers from all over the world, I spent two hours recently waiting for Vladimir Putin, prime minister of the Russian Federation, […]
Richard Smith: Review of “bring back browsing”
Although I bemoan prepublication peer review, I do a fair bit of reviewing. I’m never quite sure why, but it’s probably that I’m still insufficiently practised at saying no. I […]
Richard Smith: What is post publication peer review?
I’ve been tramping from stage to stage arguing that pre publication peer is slow, expensive ($1.8 billion a year), ineffective, biased, and anti-innovatory and should be dumped in favour of […]
Richard Smith: Might copies of PLoS ONE change journals forever?
I continue to be amazed that despite the appearance of the internet, which some have compared with the invention of fire, our methods for disseminating scientific studies are essentially the […]
Richard Smith: Working towards universal health coverage
Some one billion people have no access to health care, while each year 150 million experience financial catastrophe and 100 million are pushed into poverty because of having to pay […]