This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
It is seldom that one is given a public platform with an invitation to write about anything that is on one's mind. I shall take advantage of the opportunity here to reflect upon the modern relationship of the general press to the scientific and, more specifically, the medical literature. The marvelous technological advances of our time in the communications field have altered the old relationship in a number of ways. I wish here to address two of these alterations: the timing of the release of newly printed medical articles to the general public via the printed or electronic press and the posture of the medical journal and its editors in relation to the press.
Scientific progress, and I include clinical medicine here, moves slowly through the gathering, sifting, and analyzing of data, and through the opportunity for debate and conflicting opinions among peers. We expect that truth,