Richard Horton (editor)

For other uses, see Richard Horton (disambiguation).

Richard Horton
Richard Horton in 2013
Native name	Richard Charles Horton
Born	(1961-12-29) 29 December 1961
Institutions	The Lancet Royal Free Hospital
Alma mater	University of Birmingham (BSc, MBBS)
Notable awards	FRCP FMedSci (1998)
Spouse	Ingrid Johanna Wolfe
Children	one daughter
Website www.theguardian.com/profile/richardhorton

Richard Charles Horton, FRCP, FMedSci, (born 29 December 1961) is the present editor-in-chief of The Lancet, a United Kingdom-based medical journal.

Education

Horton studied at Bristol Grammar School from 1969 to 1980 and at the University of Birmingham from 1980 to 1986, receiving his BSc (in physiology) in 1983, and qualifying in medicine in 1986. He completed his general medical training in Birmingham before moving to the liver unit at the Royal Free Hospital.

Career

In 1990, Horton joined The Lancet as an assistant editor and moved to New York as North American editor in 1993. Two years later he returned to the UK to become Editor-in-Chief.

He has been a medical columnist for The Observer and writes for the Times Literary Supplement and New York Review of Books. His book about controversies in modern medicine, Second Opinion: Doctors, Diseases and Decisions in Modern Medicine, was published in 2003. (In the USA, it was published under the title Health Wars: On the Global Front Lines of Modern Medicine.)

In 2005 he was a member of the working party and subsequently wrote the report for the Royal College of Physicians' inquiry into the future of medical professionalism – "Doctors in Society" (2005). He also chaired the Royal College of Physicians' Working Party on Physicians and the Pharmaceutical Industry; co-chaired a World Health Organization (WHO) Scientific Advisory Group on Clinical Trials Registration; chaired the Board of the Health Metrics Network; sat on the External Reference Group for WHO's Research Strategy; and is an External Advisory Board Member for the WHO European Region. Currently, he co-chairs the independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children' Health. He is also a Council member of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the University of Birmingham.

He was the first President of the World Association of Medical Editors, and is a Past-President of the US Council of Science Editors (2005–06). He is an honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University College London, and the University of Oslo. He is a Fellow of both of the Royal College of Physicians and of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2011, he was elected to the US Institute of Medicine.

In 2007, he received the Edinburgh Medal for scientific and professional contributions to the understanding and well-being of humanity and in 2009 a recognition of contributions to public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2008, he was appointed to a research and analytical management panel as a Senior Associate of The Nuffield Trust, a major independent health policy institution.

Awards and honours

Dr. Horton was elected one of the founding fellows of theAcademy of Medical Sciences in 1998 and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP).

Controversies

See also: The Lancet § Controversies

Peer review

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.

HIV/AIDS

Regarding the role of HIV in AIDS, Horton wrote in the New York Review of Books that "The central role of HIV in the development of immunodeficiency is, in my view, established by the force of epidemiological and laboratory evidence. On this key issue, Duesberg is, I believe, in error," but "Duesberg has predicted, correctly, that the virus alone is not enough to explain all aspects of the immunodeficiency process."

Royal Society

In the May 11, 2005 The Lancet, Dr. Horton criticized the ancient British scientific group, the Royal Society, under Lord Rees for its neglect of medicine. Professor Mark Pepys and thirty other society members responded. A few years earlier the society and the journal had taken different positions in a scientific reporting debate known as the Pusztai affair involving research on genetically modified potatoes.

Professor Sir Roy Meadow

Horton published an article in 2005 supporting Professor Sir Roy Meadow who had been charged with serious professional misconduct by the GMC for giving erroneous and seriously misleading evidence in the Sally Clark trial. This was especially controversial as the article appeared whilst the GMC proceedings were still under away and was published on the first day of Meadow's defence. The article 'incensed" Clark, a solicitor who had been the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice. With the support of erroneous statistical (and other) evidence from Meadow the prosecution wrongly convicted her of murder and she spent over three years in prison before her successful second appeal.

Her husband wrote a rebuttal letter to The Lancet in order to correct Horton's 'many inaccuracies and one-sided opinions' and to prevent them prejudicing independent observers. Dr James Le Fanu, medical practitioner and writer, also wrote to The Lancet in the same issue and described Horton's words as 'mischief'. The Clark family issued a statement addressing and countering with established fact each of the points making up Horton's biased support of Meadow.

Iraq

Main article: Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties

At the Time to Go Demo of 23 September 2006, Horton accused American president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair of "lies" and "killing children" in Iraq. On 11 October, The Lancet published new estimates of the death toll of Iraqi citizens after the US-led invasion in 2003, putting it at a total of 655,000. Some supporters of the invasion of Iraq dismissed it for what they claimed was flawed methodology. Some opponents of the invasion questioned its reliability due to its extreme divergence from other data on the conflict. Some journals and statistical experts were supportive. Other experts in the field were not convinced, saying the estimates were "high, and probably way too high", and that the authors had published a "misinterpretation of their own figures". Others were incredulous that the survey could have been performed as reported under such dangerous conditions.

Iraq's health minister estimated during a press conference in November 2006 that between 100,000 and 150,000 people had died since the invasion in 2003, based on an estimate of around 100 deaths per day brought to morgues and hospitals during 2006, while saying that the Lancet estimates were an "exaggerated number".

U.S. President George W. Bush was asked at a 2005 press conference to estimate the number of "civilians, military, police, insurgents (and) translators" that had been killed in Iraq and gave a number of 30,000 deaths, but the White House declined to provide a source for that estimate.

Open Letter for the People of Gaza

In August 2014 The Lancet published "An Open letter for the people of Gaza", criticising Israel in the wake of the 2014 Gaza conflict.

Horton responded to criticism of the letter by saying that it was "a smear campaign,' and that he doesn't "honestly see what all this has to do with the Gaza letter. I have no plans to retract the letter, and I would not retract the letter even if it was found to be substantiated.” However, Horton subsequently came to Israel's Rambam Hospital for a visit and said that he "deeply, deeply regrets" publishing the letter.

Professor Sir Mark Pepys wrote: “The failure of the Menduca et al authors to disclose their extraordinary conflicts of interest… are the most serious, unprofessional and unethical errors. The transparent effort to conceal this vicious and substantially mendacious partisan political diatribe as an innocent humanitarian appeal has no place in any serious publication, let alone a professional medical journal, and would disgrace even the lowest of the gutter press.” In addition, Pepys accuses Horton personally saying that “Horton’s behavior in this case is consistent with his longstanding and wholly inappropriate use of The Lancet as a vehicle for his own extreme political views. It has greatly detracted from the former high standing of the journal.” In response, Horton said: “How can you separate politics and health? The two go hand-in-hand.”

"Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue"

Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

   “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

John Ioannidis made a similar statement in 2005 ("Why Most Published Research Findings Are False").

Personal life

Horton married Ingrid Johanna Wolfe in 1998 and has one daughter.