RT Journal
A1 Ioannidis JA
T1 USefulness of medical conferences—reply
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2012
FD July 4
VO 308
IS 1
SP 31
OP 33
DO 10.1001/jama.2012.6378
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.6378
AB 
In Reply: Mr Cumberworth and colleagues claim that medical conferences are useful for medical students and junior physicians because they can help launch research and clinical careers. Such reward systems are indeed enforced in many countries. They make conferences popular, but sometimes they promote equation of research with massive production of junk. As a result, medical students claim scores of conference abstracts, applicants for purely clinical consultant posts list hundreds of posters in their curricula vitae, and some congress-prolific professors may display their names in thousands of meeting items. Serious science probably has little to do with these “disappointing pieces of over-hyped research, all destined for oblivion,” as Horton described them recently.1