The recent commentary in CMAJ on neonatal intensive care units is more likely to produce Orwellian paranoia than any tangible benefits.1 It is just too easy to prematurely reveal incomplete or flawed data analyses, causing immeasurable harm to excellent practitioners. This encourages witch hunts and little else. Unfortunately, we do not live in a fair and just society. It is naive to believe that all public and medical administrators have the best interests of departmental practitioners in mind. Too many personal vendettas are carried out by people in positions of responsibility using imprecise data.
Other methods are available that do no require publicly disclosing imprecise information to a public that lacks the degree of sophistication required to understand it.
In addition, the editors of CMAJ are guilty of misusing their position by threatening not to give equal access to publication of quality work — simply because institutional identities are withheld. Is it not better to know a problem exists (or not) than to have no idea at all? This kind of arrogant superiority is likely to stifle knowledge acquisition and encourage misuse of imprecise information.
Terry J. Stewart Pediatric Anaesthesiologist and Intensivist Alberta Children's Hospital Calgary, Alta.
Reference
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