'Colleague bashing' is unprofessional behaviour

New house-officers' views on unprofessional behaviour.

AIM To determine the views of new house officers (HO) on professionalism and unprofessional behaviour following dismissal in January 2007 of a HO who was caught video-taping nurses in the shower. METHODS An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was administered during new house officers' orientation. Using a Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), HO were asked to rank...

Bioassay bashing is bad science.

The Spheres of Influence, “Assessing Assays” (Schmidt 2002), in the May 2002 issue of EHP criticizes the National Toxicology Program rodent bioassay (NTPRB) without discussing its importance in regulation and public health. The Spheres article (Schmidt 2002) does not express concern for the validity of alternative transgenic methods proposed to replace the NTPRB for detecting carcinogens. By fo...

Margaret McCartney: is Jeremy Hunt our colleague?

When the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, emailed all junior doctors with his contract proposals, he began, “Dear colleague.” So let’s consider Hunt as a colleague, a team mate, a coworker, an ally—a doctor. The NHS’s “duty of candour” policy requires doctors to apologise for and reflect on errors that they make. A photograph that Hunt tweeted of himself in a hospital contained identifiable patie...

Dear Colleague

Science Bashing: Is it a global In-thing?

Ridiculing the well established knowledge and norms in the various branches of science like medical science, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, genetics etc. has become a new fashion all over the world. There is always a place for constructive critics and scientists will be grateful to anybody who finds any other ways of knowing things and they will be greatly relieved to say good bye to the exi...