Sir, I have felt very uneasy about the uncritical publication of reports in the News section of the BDJ of studies published elsewhere. Most notably, the journal has published a string of reports in recent issues about possible links between periodontal diseases and other systemic conditions. In the absence of any critical attempt to appraise the clinical and scientific importance of these papers the journal risks giving undue prominence to research which while interesting and important is not in any way groundbreaking. I think it is important that more careful editorial consideration about the scientific and clinical importance of these news articles should be assessed. However, the papers suggesting no causal link between periodontal disease and other diseases, which are regularly featured in the 'Abstracts in other journals' section selected by Dr T. Watts, seem to inadvertently act as a nice balance to the News section.

In keeping with my general concern, I am sure that very many of your readers would have been extremely surprised, as was I, that a report that the gingival tissues produce cytokines which can cause bone resorption could be considered as 'News' suitable for a three column article. This particular information has been known for perhaps 35 years or more, as I am sure generations of dentists and hygienists will attest to having learned during their training.

I have no doubt that Dr Palmqvist's work (BDJ 2007; 202: 119) may likely have made a novel contribution to the over 2,000 existing papers in this field related to cytokines and the periodontal tissues, but what this is, is not stated in the article that you published. The weblink provided is for the Swedish Research Council, and I was only able to find details of projects in Swedish, which was not very helpful for me!

I appreciate that the choice of News articles is a difficult editorial issue, but please can we ask for more careful scientific appraisal when selecting articles for the News section, and avoid the uncritical publication of articles?

The Editor-in-Chief responds: I thank Professor Hughes for his comments on the research items which we provide for readers' information and interest in the 'news' section. Reportage is by its nature 'uncritical', which is why the items are in 'news' and not in 'research'. However, the majority of items used in this way are derived from scientific journals with peer reviewing systems so that some element of judgement has been made on their worth before the content ever nears the BDJ.

Additionally one has to remember that the BDJ is read by the whole range of the profession from dental students to eminent academics, from general dental practitioners through to specialists and from DCPs to consultants; not everyone is at the same stage of learning and knowledge and we need to include content that will appeal across such diverse requirements. As Professor Hughes points out, in the same issue, 'balance' is provided by information elsewhere in the journal in a different style again in the form of abstracts.