Replies to letters to editor

Research-agenda Bias: letters to the editor

Adequacy of authors’ replies to criticism raised in electronic letters to the editor: cohort study

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether substantive criticism in electronic letters to the editor, defined as a problem that could invalidate the research or reduce its reliability, is adequately addressed by the authors. DESIGN Cohort study. SETTING BMJ between October 2005 and September 2007. Inclusion criteria Research papers generating substantive criticism in the rapid responses section on bm...

Letters Letter to the Editor

The good name of TEX One of the many wonderful things about TEX is that its behaviour is essentially the same, no matter where it runs. TEX is a fixed point, identical on all machines. The same goes for METAFONT and the Computer Modern fonts. The author of TEX, Donald Knuth, has made it perfectly clear that he does not object to anyone revising TEX(or METAFONT) just as long as the resulting pro...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Paracetamol and asthma

The study by Shaheen et al rightly pointed out that some patients with asthma deliberately avoid aspirin and are more likely to use paracetamol, hence a “consumer selection bias”. However, they failed to mention the “professional’s selection bias”. Any standard textbooks or prescribing references state that aspirin and other non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) could potentially worsen...

Unjustified Restrictions on Letters to the Editor

Douglas G. Altman Editors of medical journals accept that published research should be open to comment and correction in published correspondence ([1]; Box 1). “Post-publication peer review” enables comments on, clarifi cations of, and corrections to published research. All journals should have a correspondence page for this purpose. I previously criticised the effective “statute of limitations...