Rather than arguing about the suitability of natural experimental methods to inform decisions we need to focus on refining their scope and design, say Peter Craig and colleagues Natural experiments have long been used as opportunities to evaluate the health impacts of policies, programmes, and other interventions. Defined in the UK Medical Research Council's guidance as events outside the control of researchers that divide populations into exposed and unexposed groups, natural experiments have greatly contributed to the evidence base for tobacco and air pollution control, suicide prevention, and other important areas of public health policy.1 Although randomised controlled trials are often viewed as the best source of evidence because they have less risk of bias, reliance on them as the only source of credible evidence has begun to shift for several reasons. Firstly, policy makers are increasingly looking for evidence about "what works" to tackle pervasive and complex problems, including the social determinants of health,23 and these are hard to examine in randomised trials. In Scotland, for example, legislation to introduce a minimum retail price per unit of alcohol included a sunset clause, which means that the measure will lapse after six years unless evidence is produced that it works. This has resulted in multiple evaluations, including natural experimental studies using geographical or historical comparator groups.4 Similarly, the US National Institutes of Health has called for greater use of natural experimental methods to understand how to prevent obesity,5 and a consortium of European academies for their greater use to understand policies and interventions to reduce health inequalities.3 Secondly, a wider range of analytical methods developed within other disciplines, mostly by economists or other social or political scientists, are being increasingly applied to good effect. A good example is the use of synthetic control methods …

Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, they would be wrong.

After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic.

Richard Smith spent some time reviewing two scientific papers, and the experience has made him wonder if it is time for peer reviewers to rise up in rebellion.

Progress has been made towards reducing the 85% of wasted effort in medical research-and the huge amounts of money misspent and harm caused to patients - but there's still a long way to go, say Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers.  

If clinicians are expected to change their practice based on their reading of medical journals, they need to know that the evidence in published papers can be verified.

The leaders of Elsevier have now decided that the epoch of journals will soon be over, argues the former editor of the BMJ.

Acceptance rates of articles is higher when first authors come from English-speaking high income countries; and articles from high income countries have higher citation rates. 

Will F1000Research and Wellcome Open Research be replacing journals and editors?

Accessible data are not enough. We need to invest in systems that make the information useful, say Elizabeth Pisani and colleagues.

There are better solutions to the “reproducibility crisis” in research