Published 17 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3813
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3813

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The crooked timber of humanity

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

Putting the finishing touches to an editorial some years ago, I decided at the last minute that "Wanted: guidelines that doctors will follow" was a better title than "Wanted: doctors who will follow guidelines." My thinking was that doctors aren’t automata. You can’t just write a few lines of code to achieve the desired outcome; human beings are more complicated than that.

I wish I’d gained further insight into behavioural change since that midnight revelation, but I haven’t. Ruminating on the difficulties of getting people to do the right thing, I console myself with Immanuel Kant’s claim that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."

The crooked timber of humanity was much in evidence at last week’s congress on peer review and biomedical publication. There seems no limit to what some researchers will do to come up with a publishable paper. They will include . . . [Full text of this article]

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The Crooked Timber of Humanity

Hugh Mann
bmj.com, 1 Oct 2009 [Full text]

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