Joy of rapid responses: Readers read articles more closely when they can respond

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7440.645

BMJ 2004;328:645 (13 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7440.645

Letter

Joy of rapid responses

Readers read articles more closely when they can respond

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

EDITOR—Fazel is a reluctant rapid responder.¹ I oftenread through whole articles on bmj.com because there is theopportunity to send a rapid response. If the rapid responsefacility were not there, I would read the abstract or conclusionand skip the rest.

To write a rapid response you have to read the whole articleseveral times, digest it, and then draft the response. It isuntrue that rapid responses are like spinal cord reflexes. Becausethe response is rapid it may be emotional and not entirely scientific.It is, as described by Delamothe and Smith, a conversation.²People may be offended, but surely not so much as to kill therapid response facility altogether.

Manan Vasenwala, consultant cardiologist

K K Heart Centre, Aligarh-202002, India mananvasenwala@hotmail.com

Competing interests: None declared.

Fazel M. Why I'm a reluctant rapid responder. BMJ 2004;328: 413. (14 February.)[Free Full Text]
Delamothe T, Smith R. Twenty thousand conversations. BMJ 2002;324: 1171-2.[Free Full Text]