I’ve just spent five days—yes, five days—talking about health literacy. Before my five day conversation I’d never thought much about health literacy, but now I see myself as an expert. […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: The beginning of the end for impact factors and journals
Something has just happened that will almost certainly end the tyranny of impact factors and may well mark another step towards the extinction of most scientific journals. Did you notice […]
Richard Smith: We don’t know what to eat
WHO is currently setting priorities for research in chronic or non-communicable disease, and generally the first research question is “Will what has worked in rich countries work in low and […]
Richard Smith at last has access to his medical records online
At last I have online access to my medical records. I wrote a blog some six months ago about how a talk by Harold Shipman’s successor had convinced me that […]
Richard Smith: Remember “the disappeared”
The most interesting, and certainly the most chilling, experience I had in four days in Buenos Aires was to visit the memorial to “the disappeared.” […]
Richard Smith: A crime against knowledge
Firsthand personal experience of a great crime can make it real in a way that full intellectual understanding will not. Spend two hours in close contact with an African AIDS […]
Richard Smith: Sixty years of discoveries in nutrition
Imagine being at the 60th anniversary of an organization and hearing from the first head of the organisation. It seems impossible, but I’ve just had that experience – listening to […]
Richard Smith feels the shame of the monoglot
Today I feel deeply the shame of a monoglot. I’m at a meeting in Guatemala, and the organisers of a meeting of perhaps 200 people have had to hire two […]
Richard Smith asks: Is it unpatriotic to criticise the NHS?
I’m worried that in the highly charged atmosphere created by the extraordinary US debate on health care my published anxieties about the NHS might brand me as unpatriotic. Perhaps Fox […]
Time to ignore all surveys, says Richard Smith
Recently in Bangladesh I had breakfast with a Harvard professor of economics who told me: “Economists pay no attention to what people say, only to what they do.” Now I […]