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Jan 24, 2025 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonLike people, words have birthdays. My definition of the birthday of a word is the year in which it first appeared in a written text, as, for example, documented in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Of course, many words have had a spoken life before their written one, but I count that as the fetal stage in their development.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K Aronson Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Follow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronson My list of 110 medically related anniversaries for 2025 (events in years ending ’25 and’75) includes: ● Fifty two births: Charles Rochemont Aikin, surgeon; William Aitken, pathologist; Sir John Baber, physician; Helen Rae Bamber née Balmuth, human rights advocate and psychotherapist; Charles Cassidy Bass, American...
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Dec 23, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonIn this article I summarise the main results of 10 previous articles in which I have discussed the nature of academic practice, highlighting academic norms and violations thereof, offering definitions of important terms.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonEstimates of the frequencies of the different types of academic felonies (research misconduct), fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, are in single figures, at between 2% and 5% of all publications. Misdemeanours are more common.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Intended for healthcare professionals
News & ViewsWhen I use a word . . ... When I use a word . . .
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K Aronson Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Follow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronson Fraudulent academic activities that I have referred to as “felonies” comprise fabrication (defined by the US Office of Research Integrity as “making up data or results and recording or reporting them”), falsification (“manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such...
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonTo understand how academic science can be violated we must first understand the norms that determine how it should be successfully prosecuted. The work of the sociologist Robert K Merton is informative. In the 1930s and 1940s he described, in three related essays, the ways in which academic norms had developed and what they were.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonAlthough the concept of academic integrity has been long with us, and violations of it not uncommon, formal research into the topic began only in the 1990s, particularly by a pioneer in the field Donald McCabe of Rutgers University, whose main interest lay in the US collegiate system.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonOf five types of skepticism, dogmatic skepticism, nihilistic skepticism, Voltairian skepticism, philosophical skepticism, and scientific skepticism, the first two are irrelevant to academic skepticism and may even be inimical to it.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Jeffrey K Aronson
Jeffrey K AronsonCentre for Evidence Based Medicine, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UKFollow Jeffrey on X: @JKAronsonOf the many attributes that one expects of academics in the practice of whatever subject they choose to study, curiosity is among the most important.
