BMJ, 30th September

Tomorrow's BMJ includes:

a clinical review article on management of meningococcal disease in children - http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/bmj;333/7570/685

a news piece on the current outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 associated disease in the USA, caused by spinach - http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/short/333/7570/673-c?etoc

another news piece, this time reporting a survey of doctors that indicated that most did not feel the government was prepared for an "avian influenza pandemic" - http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/short/333/7570/674-a?etoc

an article arguing that reliance on RCTs is not helpful in resource poor settings. For example, when studies (which were not RCTs) began showing that oral rehydration therapy was effective to counter dehydration caused by diarrhoea, the WHO started an ORT programme. There were no RCTs until ten years after this date. The authors argue that clinical experience and other sorts of studies can be an effective evidence base. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/short/333/7570/701?etoc

And then there are some letters about extreme drug resistant TB (which I have mentioned before) and about plagiarism. One of those looks at keeping records of studies in a field, and how that can help spot studies that don't quite fit, or which repeat already known data; another looks at citations - where it is not clear how a citation supports an assertion, and where it is not clear if an assertion is supported by any citation; and the last looks at using Google to detect plagiarism.

Entire table of contents is at present at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/current.shtml