We are familiar with the dark semantic arts employed by any successful medical researcher to ensure the fruits of their underpaid and underappreciated labour are published.

The dramatic-sounding title that manages to stay within the bounds of the study’s more mundane truth, the conclusion promising an imminent breakthrough, and that unsubtle plea for more grant funding in the common declaration that “more research is needed”. 

But what of the references to “recent research” and the way the author’s own findings should be seen as pushing beyond what recent research has been telling us? 

This year, The BMJ’s Christmas edition explores this topic, publishing the results of its “festive horological investigation” examining just how recent ‘recent’ really is.