My application for a job in homoeopathy

Those of you who follow homoeopathy stories in the blogosphere will be aware that NHS Tayside are currently advertising for a "Specialist Doctor in Homeopathy". If you are not familiar with this story, and some of the excellent job applications it has generated, you might want to catch up with it here, here, or here (and probably many other excellent blogs as well, apologies to anyone I've missed out).

More on industry vs non-industry publications

Yesterday I wrote about a recent paper in Annals of Internal Medicine, comparing publications funded by the pharmaceutical industry with those from different funding sources. The main focus of that post was on the reasons why industry publications were more likely to report favourable results.

Research on industry vs non-industry publications

An interesting paper, by Florence Bourgeois and colleagues, was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last week (sadly behind a paywall, but the abstract is available here).

The paper looked at outcomes of trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov, and compared those funded by the pharmaceutical industry with those funded by other sources. The results make interesting reading.

An economic analysis of which journal to choose for your publication

I saw a fascinating question asked on Twitter the other day about choosing a journal for submission of your latest research paper. The question was asked by @deevybee (aka Prof Dorothy Bishop from Oxford University), who had been discussing the best target journal with a colleague (let’s call him “Al”, as we all know that a great many co-authors on papers seem to have that name).

More dodgy statistics

Back in April, I wrote that perhaps I should start a "dodgy statistic of the month competition". OK, May and June have been and gone with no more nominations, so I'll make up for it by nominating 3 for July.

The first nomination goes to Vince Cable. This surprises me, as he is one of the few politicians we have who more often than not actually talks sense. Nonetheless, earlier this month he gave a speech in which he gave the statistic that "graduates, on average, could expect to earn £100,000 more in their life-time than non-graduates".

Plagiarism hurts

First of all, for blindingly obvious reasons, I should acknowledge that the title of this blog post is not original. "Plagiarism hurts" was the title of an article in EMWA's journal The Write Stuff by Elise Langdon-Neuner, its editor-in-chief (page 13 of this issue, 1.6 MB pdf). I'm sure that Elise won't mind me re-using her title, with proper attribution.

UK Biobank part 4

For anyone who hasn't yet read the first 3 parts of this story, they are here, here, and here. Just to recap, my main concern is that the NHS disclosed my confidential data (and the data of about 5 million other people) to the UK Biobank team without my consent.

Internships available

Are you trying to get a job in medical writing but finding it difficult without experience?

We currently have internships available for bright and motivated individuals wanting to start a career in medical writing. You will be helping with a research project in medical writing, and seeing the day-to-day work in a medical writing company at first hand. All our recent interns have found full-time jobs in medical writing since doing internships at Dianthus Medical.

New Lancet policy on systematic reviews

The Lancet have recently introduced an interesting new policy. They now require anyone submitting the results of research (not just randomised trials, apparently, but all research) to The Lancet to include a systematic review with their research. This can be a reference to a recently published systematic review, but if no such review exists, then the authors are required to do their own systematic review and report it within the paper.

History of medicine walking tour

In the 12 years or so that I have been a member of EMWA, I have travelled all over Europe attending their conferences. At most conferences, the social programme includes a walking tour of the city. It's always a popular event, and is a great way to see something of the conference's host city (sometimes the only time you get to see any of the city at all).