BMJ  2008;336 (22 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39524.482535.47

Editor's Choice

Editor’s Choice

The confidence to doubt

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

In the documentary The English Surgeon reviewed this week (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39511.711227.3A), English surgeon Henry Marsh debates with his Ukrainian colleague whether success in medicine is about dedicating your life to saving patients or accumulating academic honours. Why should it be one or the other, I found myself asking. So I’m intrigued to find this conflict between academic and clinical medicine as a subplot in our Head to Head article on metabolic syndrome (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39484.636586.94, doi: 10.1136/bmj.39477.500197.AD).

Edwin Gale, an academic clinician, argues that we should dump the syndrome because it has no clinical value. In the syndrome’s defence, George Alberti and P Z Zimmet, both also academic clinicians, say its value lies in its ease of use in primary care. Gale says it has spawned a flourishing academic industry but is hardly used by practising clinicians. Alberti and Zimmet characterise the syndrome’s critics as living in a . . . [Full text of this article]

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