A fine neuroscience vintage (Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry)

I recently bumped into a cardiologist mate who had just won a silver medal for his first wild barrel ferment Chardonnay from the vineyard he started with a haematologist, their wine label aptly named Blood Brothers. He told me his approach to cultivating a fine harvest. While many factors play a role he said, the raw product and how it is nurtured, remains the key. The grape variety and how it responds to the prevailing climate at the time of harvest are the critical factors in producing a fine wine vintage. After our conversation, I was impelled to draw a parallel between his wine making and the process of extracting practical and elegant medical research from a sea of data. For although there has been a significant increase in the number of new journals covering the clinical neurosciences, the raw product—that is, the original research question and how it...