BMJ  2006;332 (15 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7546.0-f

Editor's choice

April fools

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

It can now be revealed that our news story on motivational deficiency disorder (1 April, p 745) was a hoax. Apologies to all those who were fooled, especially New Zealand's Dominion Post. "Credibility is hard earned," its editor lectured us; "You damaged yours and ours as a result."

Subsequent questions about how often we have published hoaxes had me flicking through previous 1 April issues. A discussion of the use of aeromedical blimps for emergency transport certainly qualified in 1989, as possibly did a letter on lottery distress disorder in 1995.

But what really caught my eye was the familiarity of the political themes in BMJs published 17, 11, and 6 years ago. The issue of 1 April 1989 read like an extended critique of Working for Patients, the UK government's white paper on the internal market, self governing trusts, and the like. The Joint Consultants Committee . . . [Full text of this article]

Tony Delamothe, deputy editor

(tdelamothe@bmj.com)


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