The trouble with medical journals

Medical journals, which many imagine to be as dull as telephone directories and twice as obscure, influence the lives of everybody-and not always for the better.Not only do they affect how doctors treat patients and the actions taken by public health authorities, they also influence how we think about birth, death, pain, and sickness.It may therefore make sense for you-the thoughtful but not necessarily expert reader-to pay attention to the ways of medical journals, particularly as many of those ways are deficient and need reform.That is the thesis of this series of articles.