Turning data into knowledge while writing a scientific paper

DrAli A Smith is a senior consultant working at a north west hospital. This is not his real name.

- Dr Ali A Smith

I write a lot these days.

This column is a weekly feature of my life. I write for some online medical journals too. The things I write are mostly my opinions on things.

You can agree with me or not. It's fine both ways. Sharing opinions allows us all to broaden our outlooks. Understand the world from another point of view. Last week was a bit different though. I published a peer reviewed scientific article.

When I write my opinions about things, I reserve the right to be wrong and change my mind a bit later.

When I write a scientific paper, I am writing scientific evidence for a particular thing. It's not OK to be wrong and it's not OK to change my mind a bit later. This must be correct and I must demonstrate exactly how we reached the conclusions.

Writing such a scientific paper takes a lot of time. We have been working on the paper for over a year.

Through the last five years we have published such a paper about once each year. The process is long and it's complex. It's not at all like writing a weekly column.

Part of my work has been to develop digital services within our organisation and with other organisations.