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Richard Smith: What is science for?
Robert Boyle, Ireland’s most famous scientist, thought that the first aim of science was to develop practical applications to make life better. Earlier in his life he wrote in ecstatic […]
Kieran Walsh: Can you crunch the numbers better than a medical calculator?
Medical risk calculators should not be a step towards cookbook medicine, but help to tease out patients’ thoughts and worries and prejudices […]
New plan to tackle the global shortage of health workers fails to address economic constraints
The Five-Year Action Plan for Health Employment and Inclusive Economic Growth from the World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was recently adopted. It was developed […]
Nathaniel P Morris: US medical licensing applications ask too much about mental health
Asking about applicants’ mental health history risks driving physicians and trainees away from self care and deeper into distress […]
Peter Taylor: Health, SDGs, and public policy—the role of policy research institutions
The start of a journey In January 2016, shortly after 194 countries signed on to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and an ambitious, universal, and transformational vision for global development, […]
Junaid Nabi: Voting rights are a public health issue
Last week the Republican party’s attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) collapsed before promptly being revived again. The new bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), had previously received […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—24 July 2017
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the top medical journals […]
Chris Simms: Brexit and the vengeance of unintended consequences
Decades before the advent of complexity science, H L Mencken wrote that “For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple, and wrong.” These solutions typically complicate […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Interconnectedness
As I discussed last week, the physicist Alan Sokal has pointed out that “ . . . well tested theories in the mature sciences are supported in general by a […]