Complicated questions—difficult answers

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7523.0-f

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Jane Smith, deputy editor (jsmith@bmj.com)

Scientific thinking gives a special place to simple solutions and explanations, but getting to those solutions is often messy. This week's journal offers a rich crop of complicated questions—and even more complicated answers.

Take, for example, the question of how many patients bring MRSA with them when they are admitted to hospital? In their study of admissions to Oxfordshire hospitals over seven years David Wyllie and colleagues found that a quarter of cases of MRSA bacteraemia occur in patients who have just arrived from the community, that this proportion is increasing, and …