Introduction

It is more than 15 years since I ceased clinical practice.  I have since consolidated and published many reviews of psychopharmacology relating to my expertise in serotonin toxicity and the MAOI drugs.  I have also refereed many papers for journals; thus, I have a multifaceted appreciation of science-publication issues.

This process has made me increasingly aware of the profound difficulties inherent in interpreting the literature, because of adverse influences on the quality, probity, and objectivity of the science which is published.  Such issues have become ever more important, due to factors which include (inter plurimos alios): undue financial influence of drug companies, profit-over-quality policy of publishers, financial pressures on university academic departments from funders who are usually drug companies, combined with commercialisation of university research, and regulatory agency problems.  And more

Such influences are strongly antithetical to a culture that nurtures balanced and objective science (witness the disputes over tobacco harms and anthropogenic climate change). 

Ten years ago, the Lancet editor, Richard Horton, stated in evidence to the UK parliamentary inquiry on drugs and the pharmaceutical industry:

The compromised integrity of medicine’s knowledge base should be a serious concern to politicians and public alike. It is surprising and disappointing that this danger does not seem a serious priority within medicine itself

Going on about this is tedious and dispiriting: none-the-less, we are obliged to recognise that it is vitally important to understand how profoundly such influences reduce the quality and objectivity of almost everything that is published in science, and much of what is done to patients in the name of evidence-based medicine (EBM).

In a lifetime of reading scientific papers, you will, from time to time, if you are lucky, encounter a paper that is honest, accurate, unbiased and useful, and stands up to the ultimate scientific test of replication by others who find the same result — when you do: 1) open a bottle of champagne, 2) let me know.

These assembled commentaries are intended to help people hone their critical analytical faculties and learn to take everything they read with an appropriately sized pinch of salt — it might be easier to buy a share in a salt mine.

Happy hunting — and may your watchword ever be ‘Caveat lector’.