Medical Writing & Evidence
How to read studies without being misled, how to weigh claims, and how to write about medicine clearly — for anyone who reads health content, not only people who produce it.
How to Read a Medical Paper Without Being Hypnotised by the Abstract
Read methods first, numbers second, the authors' opinions third, and the abstract last — because the abstract is the paper's advertisement, not its evidence.
Medical Content Review in the Age of AI: Accuracy Is Not Enough
Reviewing health content for safety is a different discipline from fact-checking it, and AI has made the whole-page failure modes cheap to produce at scale.
The NHS Tone: Why Calm Medical Writing Works Better Than Hype
The flat NHS register is disciplined risk communication: it keeps conditionals attached, sizes uncertainty, and saves its dynamic range for what is urgent.
Screening Is Not Always a Gift: The Arithmetic That Flatters Early Detection
"Early detection saves lives" is the most intuitive sentence in medicine — and one of the easiest to prove without proving anything at all.
Write Medicine in Plain English: Keep the Precision, Lose the Priesthood
Plain English in medicine is not simpler writing — it is the writer doing the work so the reader doesn't have to.
The Case Report Is Medicine's Smoke Alarm — Stop Ranking It Against the Census
It sits at the bottom of the evidence pyramid because the pyramid measures the wrong thing.
The Limitations Section Is the Honest Bit
The abstract is written for the press release. The limitations are written for the three people who can end the authors' careers.
Conflicts of Interest Don't Work the Way You Think
The most effective conflicts of interest produce papers that pass every integrity check — because the money was spent before the study began.