‘When we cannot act as we wish, we must act as we can’

We must--and we can--do better.

Are we as depressed as we think we are?

MEDICAL attitudes to psychotropic drugs in general and antidepressants in particular tend to be casual, and their effects seen as innocuous. Indeed if used as recommended by their manufacturers tricyclic antidepressants are not very effective drugs, although some of their side effects and interactions can be very serious. It has been stated that tricyclics generally have a margin of superiority...

Antibiotic stewardship: Why we must, how we can.

Improving our antibiotic use is critical to the safety of our patients and the future of medicine. This can improve patient outcomes, save money, reduce resistance, and help prevent negative consequences such as Clostridium difficile infection. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is undertaking a nationwide effort to appropriately improve antibiotic use in inpatient and outp...

What We Can and What We Cannot Infer

What We Can and What We Cannot Infer

We cite as we communicate

Building on ideas from linguistics, psychology, and social sciences about the possible mechanisms of human decision-making, we propose a novel theoretical framework for the citation analysis. Given the existing trend to investigate citation statistics in the context of various forms of power and Zipfian laws, we show that the popular models of citation have poor predictive ability and can hardl...