Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Letters

Bravo, brave BMJ, for the rapid response section

BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7357.223 (Published 27 July 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:223

Rapid Response:

A matter of opinion, mate.

Dear Joseph or is it Joe,

I am not surprised by your response, as my
iconoclastic 'réponse rapide' strikes terror into the very heart of the
true believer in medical monotheism, its reverence for divine scientific
truth, and its reductionist view of Homo sapiens as a genetic string ball
just waiting to be unravelled by the learned apeman. I am not so much
outside the believer's square, but one who does not believe there is a
square at all.

I have just thrown out or given away about 100 old textbooks (dogma
defunct) and have a mountain of medical journals to which I hardly ever
refer once they are opened and scanned ( by my cerebral cortex,not my
scanner).I subscribe both to anglophone and francophone medical journals
to keep me from anglophonic bias (dare I say this word) and do so, not
only to 'keep up' but to reassure myself that most of it is 'bull' and
will soon be buried in the local tip or be recycled as cardboard egg
cartons.

Yes, opinions are opinions and should be labelled as thus, on the packet
as non-organic and not approved by our scientific idiosavants,even though
free thought and opinions, not just science are the true engines of
societal change. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution
and even the white settlement of this human garbage dump then called, New
South Wales or New Holland, are all the progeny of opionions and not P
values; those man-made, often misleading tools we have made to control the
chaos of the cosmos and to find a pattern that reassures us fragile humans
we can gain control of it.

I notice you are a student and gained Honours in your degree. I also have
First Class Honours in Medicine, am a University Medalist and have a
Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine from the University of Melbourne (on
sarcoidosis) and speak as one who has done the hard yards at scientific
boot camp. I readily acknowledges that these are only Australian degrees.

However, on Friday nights I much prefer to share in the opinions of fellow
clinicians about their adventures in the art of healing, and I may add,
over a pot of Guinness (cold for the Poms) at the pub across the road,
than sit alone in my rooms reading Thorax or Chest whose contents are full
of soon to be forgotten trivia written by poor blokes searching for the
Holy Grail of the triple-zeroed P value.

By the way,just call me, Roger, and not Mr Allen, as it sounds too formal
and we are both Aussies, mate. The Pommy Doctors and Misters who read this
may not understand this.

Competing interests: No competing interests

19 August 2002
Roger K.A. Allen
Consultant Thoracic and Sleep Physician, Private Practice
Suite 299,St Andrew's Place,33 North St, Spring Hill, Brisbane,Qld 4000, Australia