Stating the obvious

There’s an aphorism (an ‘old’ one if you’ll excuse the lapse into tautology), in the medical literature world which states that ‘everything, even the obvious, needs to be proved (and published) once’.

It’s a surprisingly good rule of thumb, the authors’ genius being in the appreciation that the ‘obvious’ has never been formally proven. If you take Newton’s observations on gravity as an analogy, the argument gains torque. The corollary, of course, is that much research effort is spent unnecessarily replicating previous work, but that’s another, altogether more complicated story.

The theme linking my choices this month then is that each paper, one way or another, takes an association we assumed to be obvious and finally proves (or disabuses us of) it.

This month’s journal is also the first of a larger Archives, 8 pages longer, and I’d like to think correspondingly broader, as the new sections and international health papers gain momentum. I really hope you enjoy it.

Extremes of stature

Managing extremes of stature has been driven as much by societal expectation as any other factor, Adult heights have increased as …