It’s not just tabloids that are having their pants pulled down at the moment. Medical journals are too.
A few weeks the BJGP – Europe’s leading general practice journal – heralded apparently ground-breaking research on the benefits of acupuncture. On closer inspection, the research was poorly constructed, drew dubious conclusions and biased in extremis.
I wrote an outraged letter, complaining of how such a ‘peer-reviewed’ periodical could promote such utter tosh as ‘ground breaking research’. Two months have passed and the editors have had the humility to publish not just my correspondence, but that of nine others(!) Clearly I wasn’t the only one hacked off.
To readers, the deconstruction and utter lambasting from doctors, professors and lay-readers was conclusive. It’s was a shame then that the editor’s ‘response’ was so utterly lacklustre… Read more