The pleasure of ignorance

“The great pleasure of ignorance is the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.” So said Robert Lynd in 1959. Hear, hear, say I. In this age of continuing medical education, useless as most of it might be, we are relearning the pleasures of asking questions. The BMJ has many times contemplated joining this bandwagon but so far always desisted. Today, we momentarily give in. …