Dodgy statistics on airport security
I wonder if I should start a "dodgy statistic of the month" competition? I've just seen a good candidate for the prize this month, namely a story that "Nine out of 10 British people are happy to use full-body scanners being rolled out at UK airports".
Continue reading→Open access publishing
Yesterday's big health story was the news that 5 portions of fruit and veg per day probably doesn't have much of an impact on cutting your cancer risk after all. As regular readers of this blog will know, I don't much like taking such stories at face value, and always prefer to read the original research. Quite often, that shows that the headlines in the popular media are at best incomplete and at worst downright misleading, as we saw only the other day with the hideously misleading stories about breast cancer screening.
Continue reading→Breast cancer screening and peer review
I've been thinking some more about the paper on breast cancer screening that I blogged about last week.
Just to recap, a paper was published last week claiming that the benefits of breast cancer screening comfortably outweigh the harms. This paper was picked up by the media, who reported its conclusions almost entirely without any critical evaluation, simply taking the authors conclusions as established fact.
Continue reading→Breast cancer screening part 2
I blogged yesterday about how a story about the latest research in breast cancer screening had hit the news, even though the research had not yet been published. I noticed later in the day that there were huge numbers of tweets about the study on Twitter, almost all of which seemed to say that it had now been "proven" that breast cancer screening did more good than harm. It's disappointing to see so many people uncritically believing what they hear in the media.
Continue reading→Breast cancer screening
When I listened to the news on the radio this morning, the lead story was about a "major new study" that had found that breast cancer screening does more good than harm.
It's an important question. There are certainly women who are alive today who would not have been alive today if their cancers had not been detected via breast screening. Screening save lives, and that's undeniably a good thing.
Continue reading→Evidence based footcare
I'm training for a marathon at the moment (and it's in aid of Cancer Research UK, which is an excellent cause, so please sponsor me here), and all the running has given me some nasty blisters on my feet.
So I went to see a podiatrist yesterday to try to make sure that the blisters are under control in time for the big day. She put a dressing on which seemed to make my blisters pain free on my run this morning, which is a good start.
Continue reading→Facebook does not give you syphilis
There is a beautiful aria in Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville" called "La calunnia รจ un venticello". Watch it on YouTube here if you don't know it. It tells of how easy it is to start a rumour very gently and for the rumour then to take on a life of its own and get totally out of control.
Continue reading→What skills do medical writers need?
What are the skills needed to be a medical writer? Teamworking and diplomacy, definitely, and a thorough understanding of the science is also essential. But what about language skills? Continue reading→CDISC protocol representation model released
Regular readers of this blog may remember that I was quite excited when the draft of the CDISC protocol representation model (PRM) was released last year. I am delighted to be able to tell you that the final version of the model was released last month. Again, I am quite excited.
Continue reading→ICR conference 2010
We will be exhibiting at the ICR conference on 19-20 April. Please come and see us on stand 7 if you're going to be there.
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