A rigorous and comprehensive bibliometric analysis of South Africa's scientific outputs over the last two decades was recently published. On a listing of scientific fields, according to publication counts, psychiatry moved from position 120 during the 1990-1994 period, to position 21 in the 2004-2008 period. The ratio of 120:21 was 9.4; the highest noted for any scientific field. Infectious disease and virology were the fields with the next highest ratios, perhaps unsurprising in view of the opportunities and need for research in relation to our HIV and TB epidemics. Beyond indicating that psychiatry was an "outlier", there was no further comment on this particular finding.
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