What are medical journals doing to combat ghostwriting?

Posted on November 9, 2011 by

Adam

Adam set up Dianthus Medical in 1999. He is an experienced medical writer and statistician, has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in medical statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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I have recently written a 2-part guest blogpost for Pharmaphorum about medical ghostwriting. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. If you haven’t read them, you might want to do so now. I’ll go away and have a cup of tea while you do. OK, are you back? Right, let’s carry on. One of the points I made was that it doesn’t seem to me that medical journals are doing all they could to combat ghostwriting. While … Continue reading →

Malaria vaccine

Posted on October 19, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Clinical research Leave a comment

One of the most exciting papers I have seen for a long time was published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday. This describes a randomised controlled trial of a malaria vaccine in African children. This is important. Malaria is a terrible disease, which kills almost a million people a year, most of them children, and almost all of them in developing countries. And over 200 million a year suffer non-fatal, but still thoroughly miserable malaria infection. Although various … Continue reading →

DIA Clinical Forum 2011

Posted on October 6, 2011 by

Adam

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We’ll be exhibiting at the DIA Clinical Forum in Basel on 12-14 October. If you’re going to be at the conference, please come and see us on stand 25. If you’re not going to be there, we’ll do our best to keep you up to date with all the fun if you follow us on Twitter (@dianthusmed).

Always read the full paper

Posted on October 6, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Pseudoscience Statistics 1 Comment

My attention has just been drawn to a paper which reviews basic research in homeopathy. It’s bollocks, of course, as is most research in homeopathy, but it does provide a useful little lesson in the importance of reading the full paper and not relying on the abstract. In the abstract, we are told that their literature search identified 830 basic science experiments (ie experiments in labs, rather than clinical trials) of high potency homeopathic dilutions. For those not familiar with … Continue reading →

The medical ethics of an 80 mph speed limit

Posted on September 30, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Medical ethics 3 Comments

Can you put a price on a human life? The instinctive answer of many people to that question is “no”, but most health economists would say that not only can you put a price on a human life, you absolutely need to do so. Certainly when running a health service, the only rational way to decide whether interventions make economic sense is to do exactly that. Health Technology Assessments from NICE use the principle of valuing a human life when … Continue reading →

Strategic MedComms Forum 2011 part 2: guidelines and transparency

Posted on September 27, 2011 by

Adam

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This is the second in a 2-part blog post. If you missed part 1, you can read it here. So, on to the 3rd session of the day, “Good Practice Guidelines. A Triumph of Hope over Experience?”, which was led by Charlie Buckwell from Complete Medical Group. There are many guidelines which define good practice in pharma industry publications (which for the most part are remarkably consistent with each other), and yet there is still a widespread perception that pharma … Continue reading →

Strategic MedComms Forum 2011 part 1: marketing and data sharing

Posted on September 22, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Medical ethics Medical writing Publications Leave a comment

Last week, I spent a fascinating day at the Strategic MedComms Forum 2011. This event, subtitled “Trust and Transparency – Myth and Reality” and expertly organised by Peter Llewellyn of Network Pharma brought together a range of people working in medical communications for the pharma industry, as well as others with an interest in the field, to discuss the issues of trust and transparency in the way that the pharma industry communicates with the wider world. The day was split … Continue reading →

Exciting development in antiviral research

Posted on August 30, 2011 by

Adam

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I recently heard, via the BBC’s excellent Science in Action programme, about an exciting new development in the fight against viral diseases. The research, published in PLoS One, describes a radical new approach to antiviral treatment. It relies on the fact that most viruses produce long sequences of double-stranded RNA, which is rare in mammalian cells: our cells generally only produce short sequences of double-stranded RNA. In an ingenious technique, the researchers have found a way of killing cells with … Continue reading →

Student tuition fees

Posted on August 12, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Statistics Leave a comment

Forgive me for writing 2 non-medical posts in a row, but this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 contained such an egregious schoolboy error in statistics that I just couldn’t resist. They were discussing student tuition fees, and some new estimates that students starting university next year will graduate with about £50,000 worth of debts. UK readers will doubtless be familiar with the background to this, but for those of you from further afield, this results from a decision to … Continue reading →

London riots

Posted on August 9, 2011 by

Adam

and filed under Not work Statistics 1 Comment

London is under attack. Last night’s scenes of violence and destruction are worse than anything I remember in my lifetime. What I think was most scary was that the police were simply overwhelmed, and did not have the resources to deal with the rampant criminality. I got to see some of this first hand. I happened to be in Colliers Wood yesterday evening. One shop had been set on fire, and other shops had had windows smashed and were being … Continue reading →