BMJ  2005;331:695 (24 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7518.695

Letter

Five futures for academic medicine

Wine presses of academia produce young wines that don't cellar well

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Godlee writes that academic medicine lacks vision and leadership in relation to the report from the International campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine.1 2 Universities are no longer intellectual arenas or places of scientific debate. Drug company money salts most departments. Machines can analyse whatever DNA probe until a "significant" correlation is squeezed like grapes in a wine press. The next scientific meeting is only six months away; abstracts have to be in next week. You can't rush a robust red. The label is hardly on the bottle, and we are all imbibing the next season's Beaujolais.

I recently quizzed a doctoral student by his poster why he chose that interleukin to study. He had lots of data, no real hypothesis, and admitted that his department was just "doing" this cytokine—minutiae with a P value, destined to scientific oblivion in six months.

If you stay in a department long enough . . . [Full text of this article]

Roger K A Allen, consultant thoracic and sleep physician in private practice

Spring Hill, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia rogerallen@internode.on.net


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