WHY DO YOU WRITE?

Sir: The number of medical papers published is monstrously large. How much has one really learned from last year's erratic efforts to read journals? And think of all the work involved in producing the published and the unpublished papers, the millions of blood samples, and the laboratory tests, and of all the assistants, medical and paramedical, who had to be employed; and think of all the people who were measured and tested as controls. Was the primary object of all this to improve the treatment of disease or to publish papers? If the former, then publishing is only a secondary object—that of letting other doctors know something that may be of use to them. But if publication is the primary object, then one naturally suspects that the work is being done for advancement and benefit of the author(s); it is scarcely being done for the benefit of other practitioners. It seems to me that we should, for an experimental period of a year, declare a moratorium on the appending of authors' names and the names of hospitals to articles in medical journals. Just print the article. If the dissemination of information is the reason why papers are submitted for publication, there will be no falling-off in the numbers offered. If the honest search for better treatment is the object of trials, there will be no lessening of the amount of tests and measurements performed in hospitals. But if there is a big saving in costs in the Health Service and far less material is offered to the journals, we shall have unmasked ourselves.