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Student Editorials

Research: what's the point?

BMJ 2004; 328 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.040246 (Published 01 February 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;328:040246
  1. Polly Brown, assistant content editor Clinical Evidence1
  1. 1BMJ Publishing Group, London

Much emphasis is placed on doing research, but why bother? Polly Brown explains

On first reading, “Research: what's the point?” seems a perverse question; without research we would never have come up with most of the medical interventions we take for granted in practice today, and we would never improve on them. Can anyone seriously question the importance of clinical and academic research in the development of medical care? A cynical point of view may be that the point of research is to add weight to the CV of the researcher, to help the marketing strategy of drug companies, or to keep medical publishers in business. To inform, research needs to be well done, unbiased, considering the right questions, and applicable to practice. This is not always the case.

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In vitro fertilisation: frozen sperm and human embryos

Allegations of fraud or bias often bring research to the public eye-for example, the case of Anjan Banerjee who in 1990 admitted to submitting an abstract to the British Society of Gastroenterology, the results of which were all based on his own urine samples.1 The 2002 report of the Committee of Publication Ethics highlighted eight key areas relating to misconduct in research, including publication of poorly done research, authorship misconduct, …

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