Top medicine articles for June 2014
A collection of some interesting medical articles published recently:Online heart age calculators can be misunderstood and disregarded (study) http://buff.ly/1kXxSHRTelemedicine Spreads Rapidly: Can sending a "selfie" of your sore throat help diagnose strep? A diagnosis and a prescription, usually in 15 minutes or less, for $40 to $50. In 2013, 11% of large employers offered telemedicine services to their employees and 28% were considering it. Cleveland Clinic invites patients to upload their medical records for a second opinion from anywhere in the world http://buff.ly/1g1XB36The saddest goodbye: cartoonist account of his...
Source: Clinical Cases and Images - Blog - June 26, 2014 Category: Universities & Medical Training Tags: Health News of the Day Source Type: blogs
Should metrics be used to assess research performance? A submission to HEFCE
Conclusion
There is no good evidence that any metric measures quality, at least over the short time span that’s needed for them to be useful for giving grants or deciding on promotions). On the other hand there is good evidence that use of metrics provides a strong incentive to bad behaviour, both by scientists and by journals. They have already started to damage the public perception of science of the honesty of science.
The conclusion is obvious. Metrics should not be used to judge academic performance.
What should be done?
If metrics aren’t used, how should assessment be done? Roderick Floud...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 18, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia metrics Research Councils Research Funding altmetrics assessment bibliometrics Source Type: blogs
Should metrics be used to assess research performance? A submission to HEFCE
Conclusion
There is no good evidence that any metric measures quality, at least over the short time span that’s needed for them to be useful for giving grants or deciding on promotions). On the other hand there is good evidence that use of metrics provides a strong incentive to bad behaviour, both by scientists and by journals. They have already started to damage the public perception of science of the honesty of science.
The conclusion is obvious. Metrics should not be used to judge academic performance.
What should be done?
If metrics aren’t used, how should assessment be done? Roderick Floud...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 18, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia metrics Research Councils Research Funding altmetrics assessment bibliometrics Source Type: blogs
Online lectures and previews
For many years, I've been producing online lecture presentations as previews and supplements to the classroom experience in my A&P courses. Sometimes, I use these to keep "teaching" while away at a conference or meeting.About a decade or so ago, long before "flipping" became a common phrase among professors, I decided to make my classroom more interactive by putting some of the "you don't really need me in person for this" material online for preview before coming to class.I summarized my case of putting interactive, narrated PowerPoints that include built-in self-testing quizzes in an online presentation on our ...
Source: The A and P Professor - June 13, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Bad financial management at Kings College London means VC Rick Trainor is firing 120 scientists
This article, by Bruce Alberts, Marc W. Kirschner, Shirley Tilghman, and Harold Varmus, should be read by everyone. They observe that ” . . . little has been done to reform the system, primarily because it continues to benefit more established and hence more influential scientists”. I’d be more impressed by the senior people at Kings if they spent time trying to improve the system rather than firing people because their research is not sufficiently expensive.
10 June 2014
Progress on the cull, according to an anonymous correspondent
“The omnishambles that is KCL management
1) We were told we woul...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 7, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia assessment HEFCE management bollocks managerialism metrics Rick Trainor science UUK Anne Greenough bibliometrics Karen O’Brien Robert Lechler Shitij Kapur Simon Howell Universities UK vice-chancellors Source Type: blogs
Bad financial management at Kings College London means VC Rick Trainor is firing 120 scientists
This article, by Bruce Alberts, Marc W. Kirschner, Shirley Tilghman, and Harold Varmus, should be read by everyone. They observe that ” . . . little has been done to reform the system, primarily because it continues to benefit more established and hence more influential scientists”. I’d be more impressed by the senior people at Kings if they spent time trying to improve the system rather than firing people because their research is not sufficiently expensive.
10 June 2014
Progress on the cull, according to an anonymous correspondent
“The omnishambles that is KCL management
1) We were told we woul...
Source: DC's goodscience - June 7, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia assessment HEFCE management bollocks managerialism metrics Rick Trainor science UUK Anne Greenough bibliometrics Karen O’Brien Robert Lechler Shitij Kapur Simon Howell Universities UK vice-chancellors Source Type: blogs
Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: a review
This is a web version of a review of Peter Gotzsche’s book. It appeared in the April 2014 Healthwatch Newsletter. Read the whole newsletter. It has lots of good stuff. Their newsletters are here. Healthwatch has been exposing quackery since 1989. Their very first newsletter is still relevant.
Most new drugs and vaccines are developed by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry has produced huge benefits for mankind. But since the Thatcherite era it has come to be dominated by marketing people who appear to lack any conscience. That’s what gave rise to the Alltrials movement. It was founded in January 2...
Source: DC's goodscience - April 16, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Academia badscience Big Pharma blogosphere Martin Keller Peter Gotzsche Pharmaceutical Industry Richard Eastell Source Type: blogs
On the hazards of significance testing. Part 2: the false discovery rate, or how not to make a fool of yourself with P values
What follows is a simplified version of part of a paper that will shortly be submitted. If you find anything wrong, or obscure, please email me. Be vicious: it will improve the eventual paper.
It’s a follow-up to my very first paper, which was written in 1959 – 60, while I was a fourth year undergraduate.(the history is in a recent blog). I hope this one is better.
‘". . . before anything was known of Lydgate’s skill, the judgements on it had naturally been divided, depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit of the stomach, or in the pineal gland, and differing in its...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 24, 2014 Category: Professors and Educators Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: false discovery rate statistics Bayesian P values significance Source Type: blogs
On the hazards of significance testing. Part 2: the false discovery rate, or how not to make a fool of yourself with P values
Jump to follow-up
What follows is a simplified version of part of a paper that has now appeared as a preprint on arXiv. If you find anything wrong, or obscure, please email me. Be vicious: it will improve the eventual paper.
The paper has now appeared in the new Royal Society Open Science journal. There is a comments section at the end of the paper, for discussion. The first comment is from me, a correction of a typo that was spotted within hours. Luckily it’s pretty obvious.
It’s a follow-up to my very first paper, which was written in 1959 – 60, while I was a fourth year undergraduate (the history is ...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 24, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: false discovery rate statistics Bayesian P values significance Source Type: blogs
Long term exposure to air pollution linked to coronary events - BMJ video
You can read the research study at the BMJ website: http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.f7412Throughout the world particulate air pollution is estimated to cause 3.1 million deaths a year and 22% of disability adjusted life years (DALY) due to ischaemic heart disease. Several cohort studies have reported that long term exposure to air pollution is associated with mortality, in particular cardiovascular mortality. The ESCAPE Study (European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects) was conducted between 2008 and 2012 to quantify the associations between exposures and health outcomes. The study design included prospective c...
Source: Clinical Cases and Images - Blog - March 20, 2014 Category: Professors and Educators Tags: BMJ Cardiology Pulmonology Source Type: blogs
On the hazards of significance testing. Part 1: the screening problem
This post is about why screening healthy people is generally a bad idea. It is the first in a series of posts on the hazards of statistics.
There is nothing new about it, but the problems are consistently ignored by people who suggest screening tests, and by journals that promote their work. It seems that it can’t be said often enough.
The reason is that most screening tests give a large number of false positives. If your test comes out positive, your chance of actually having the disease is almost always quite small. False positive tests cause alarm, and they may do real harm, when they lead to unnecessary surgery ...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 10, 2014 Category: Professors and Educators Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Screening statistics false positives Source Type: blogs
On the hazards of significance testing. Part 1: the screening problem
Jump to follow-up
This post is about why screening healthy people is generally a bad idea. It is the first in a series of posts on the hazards of statistics.
There is nothing new about it: Graeme Archer recently wrote a similar piece in his Telegraph blog. But the problems are consistently ignored by people who suggest screening tests, and by journals that promote their work. It seems that it can’t be said often enough.
The reason is that most screening tests give a large number of false positives. If your test comes out positive, your chance of actually having the disease is almost always quite small. False positiv...
Source: DC's goodscience - March 10, 2014 Category: Science Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: Screening statistics false positives Source Type: blogs
State of Cleveland Clinic 2013 - CEO's annual report
Quite a few things about the U.S. healthcare system can be learned from this 40-minute presentation from the Cleveland Clinic YouTube channel:Their previous and new empathy videos are definitely worth-watching:Patient care is more than just healing -- it's building a connection that encompasses mind, body and soul. If you could stand in someone else's shoes . . . hear what they hear. See what they see. Feel what they feel. Would you treat them differently? CEO Toby Cosgrove, MD, shared this video, titled "Empathy," with the Cleveland Clinic staff during his 2012 State of the Clinic address on Feb. 27, 2013.When you're in t...
Source: Clinical Cases and Images - Blog - March 8, 2014 Category: Professors and Educators Tags: Cleveland Clinic Source Type: blogs
Some pharmacological history: an exam from 1959
Last year, I was sent my answer paper for one of my final exams, taken in 1959. This has triggered a bout of shamelessly autobiographical nostalgia.
The answer sheets that I wrote had been kept by one of my teachers at Leeds, Dr George Mogey. After he died in 2003, aged 86, his widow, Audrey, found them and sent them to me. And after a hunt through the junk piled high in my office, I found the exam papers from that year too.
George Mogey was an excellent teacher and a kind man. He gave most of the lectures to medical students, which we, as pharmacy/pharmacology students attended. His lectures were inspirational.
...
Source: DC's goodscience - February 6, 2014 Category: Professors and Educators Authors: David Colquhoun Tags: B.L. Welch George Mogey H.O. Schild Pharmacology statistics University of Leeds inference J.W. Trevan UCL University College London Source Type: blogs
