Dr Stephen Lock, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, 1975-90, discusses his family background, early studies, entry to medicine, first clinical appointments, disillusionment and uneasy transition to a career in medical journalism. His recollections of medical school life, house and registrar appointments provide a critical dissection of established hospital practice in the 1940s and 1950s and a number of senior clinicians. Similarly forthright is discussion of early attachments to The Lancet and BMJ, especially the editors under whom he worked, Sir Theodore Fox and Hugh Clegg. The major challenges and hazards of medical journalism are then considered in some depth, including such issues as editorial pressures, peer review and libel. There follows an account of the founding of the 'Vancouver group' of medical editors, set up to assist standards. In a final section the interview turns to such issues as journalistic campaigning, problems of confidentiality and plagiarism.
Medical journalism, British Medical Journal, medical fraud, peer review, the Vancouver Group, Sir Theodore Fox, Hugh Clegg
Medical journalism, The BMJ,
vid-137, MSVA_070
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/000078
Lock, StephenBooth, Christopher
Learning Resources
Original artefact: 1992 RADAR resource: 2017
Oxford, UK
© Oxford Brookes University; The Royal College of Physicians; The Australian Academy of Science; Optus Australia; The Wellcome Trust Published by Oxford Brookes UniversityAll rights reserved.