Is conflict prevention a science, craft, or art? Moving beyond technocracy and wishful thinking

Teaching communication skills: beyond wishful thinking.

Communication skills tend to decline with time unless they are regularly recalled and practiced. However, most medical schools still deliver clinical communication training only during pre-clinical years although the clinical environment is considered to be ideal for acquiring and teaching clinical communication. The aim of this article is to review the barriers that prevent communication skill...

Surrogate endpoints: wishful thinking or reality?

Wishful Thinking

and we will write to you when there is a bed available yes I know it's painful, and six months is a long time to wait, but I am afraid we have already lost two wards this year because of the cuts. Mrs Thatcher keeps taking money away from us to spend on Trident Missiles Yes I wish you would write to your Member of Parliament about it. Hello Sister, is it tea time yet? Sister: Not yet I'm afraid...

Wishful Thinking

An experiment tested whether and in what circumstances people are more likely to believe an event simply because it makes them better off. Subjects observed a financial asset’s historical price chart, and received both an accuracy bonus for predicting the price at some future point, and an unconditional award that was either increasing or decreasing in this price. Despite incentives for hedging...

Is Synaptic Homeostasis Just wishful thinking?

The bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are secreted polypeptides of the TGF-beta family, whose diverse functions include primary neural induction and the dorsoventral patterning of the neural tube. In this issue of Neuron, Aberle et al. (2002) and Marqués et al. present evidence that BMP receptors may also influence the development of synapses. The results suggest a novel mechanism for regulati...