Addressing the credibility gap in general practice research: better theory; more feeling; less strategy.

A substantial international network of general practice researchers has grown up over the past 30 years, and the literature of the discipline is now extensive and diverse. Nevertheless, there is considerable ambivalence within the profession about what research can offer, where its weight should be being put and how best the opportunities its insights create can be taken advantage of. The sometimes disappointingly low credibility of research and researchers needs to be addressed. The issues of the adequacy of underlying 'theory' and of ownership of research agendas may contain the basis of a way forward.