EDITORIAL
The language and our scientific production
Human beings are distinguished by two elements: intelligence and articulate speech. The language is a not instinctive and exclusively human method to communicate ideas, emotions and wishes through a deliberately produced system of symbols.
Language essential function is communication, to communicate with each other. It is also the foundation of our thinking, of the analysis of our feelings, and has an esthetic function associated to communication and expression functions.
In a special and more regional character, language becomes idiom, expression of a people, a nation or an ethnic group. It will always be a major social integration tool, especially enabling unifying, identifying and survival functions, which go beyond simply cultural facets.
Language is a human mind achievement, truly an instrument of its power. However, the opposite is also true: men make language and language makes men. There is no best way to understand pain than carefully listening to the self-report of those feeling it. Even so, we know that the subjectivity of the matter always brings us some difficulties. Whenever we use interpretations or indirect parameters to evaluate pain, we are moving away from its real meaning and measure. The pain process contemplates modulation since peripheral stimulations transduction, to neural network transmission until its conscious perception. Modulation may be intense enough for individuals to feel pain in the absence of painful stimulations, or not feel any discomfort in the presence of severe painful stimulation.
Remarkable differences are found in the richest, more accurate and understandable vocabulary of nociceptive pains, which is opposed to the scarce, imprecise and without collective consensus vocabulary of neuropathic pains.
In pain research, clinic and therapy, more than in any other area, we are totally dependent on patients' information, in summary, on their language.
No complementary exam, even the most modern and sophisticated, may agree or disagree with patients' claims without giving margin to doubts. Pain is before all a complaint, a testimonial. Patients feel pain and state that. Certifying pain means endorsing a testimonial and we are not competent for such, at least to date. Pain science is to evaluate patients' reliability.
The language for those producing documents such as theses and scientific articles is a system of blind, arbitrary and even tyrannical signs, very often becoming tools at the service of daily needs and tasks, or at the service of reason and science.
The language, substrate of thoughts, consolidates knowledge and enables our progress. It is impossible to exclude from our evolution and progress what is going on in medicine. The journal of our Brazilian Society for the Study of Pain (SBED), which you now read, humbly but seriously tries to contribute to this whole process.
The Brazilian medical language has essentially wording and naming problems. Wording is the most difficult and important. However, since naming ends up supporting wording, and is slightly less complex to solve, editors are more dedicated to it.
The fact that our scientific journal belongs to a Brazilian society, thus necessarily having a compatible representation, implies the publication of production works distributed throughout Brazil. The difficulty is the heterogeneity of scientific production's quality and quantity. Articles from more developed centers are sometimes disregarded in favor of others with lower production. Some capitals do not even have acute or chronic pain services, let alone specialized multidisciplinary and multiprofessional centers. SBED acts by minimizing such differences and by encouraging changes needed for such.
Men are talking animals. Many of them write and they are writing more and more. However, few are authors of good scientific articles.
Good authors submit their articles giving preference to publications with the highest impact and, as a consequence, the highest visibility to the community interested in studying the pain phenomenon in international level. Since early this year, SBED board of directors is proud of having indexation to attract a good flow of submitted articles, in addition to making them electronically available in English.
Be one of our collaborators! When the subject is medical literature, on one side we may say that quantity is not quality, but on the other, it is from quantity that quality is extracted. Prestige us, don't be shy, produce and leave censorship to our editorial committee.
José Oswaldo de Oliveira Júnior
Neurosurgeon; SBED Administrative Director; Director of the Pain and Stereotaxis Center, A C Camargo
Hospital; Head of the Department of Antalgic Therapy, Functional Surgery and Palliative Care, Scholl of Oncology, Antonio Prudente Foundation.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
10 Feb 2012 -
Date of issue
Dec 2011
