Published 23 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a919
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a919

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Drug Tales and Other Stories

Not a silly story

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

UK researchers: beware the end of July. With it comes the onset of the long summer recess of parliament and, therefore, the media’s "silly season." MPs disappear for extended holidays (sorry, "fact finding missions"), leaving the country to struggle on, somehow. The resulting lack of political initiatives, relaunches, analysis, speculation, and gossip means that other, supposedly more trivial, items are freer to jostle for coverage. Cue the reporting of medical studies that might not otherwise cut it as stories.

Yes, the season presents more opportunities for research to get noticed—but also to have it lampooned as too esoteric ("Look what they’ve wasted money on"), unnecessary ("Now tell us something we didn’t know"), or a direct contradiction of previous evidence ("Why can’t scientists make up their minds?").

Of course, some research is too important to rubbish. Such is that in The Counterfeiting Superhighway, a report published, sensibly, early this month . . . [Full text of this article]

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