Public Health and Changing People’s Minds
.In his Perspective “Why we don’t spend enough on public health” in the New England Journal of Medicine (May 6, 2010;362(10):1657-8), David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health goes beyond the familiar complaint of the field that it is underfunded, particularly in contrast to medical care, despite the fact that it responsible for [...]
Atul Gawande’s The Hot Spotters: Targeted Care Management Is Something New?
During World War II, Luftwaffe General Alfred Gerstenberg had a radical idea. Instead of spreading Germany’s finite military resources in an attempt to protect every potential Allied bombing target, he argued that the Ploieşti oil fields in Romania warranted the flexible concentration of air defenses. Based on the experience of a prior Allied raid and [...]
The false idea that only the “top journals” publish the important stuff
From the former Editor-in-Chief of BMJ: The naïve concept that the “top journals” publish the important stuff and the lesser journals the unimportant is simply false. People who do systematic reviews know this well. Anybody reading only the “top journals” receives a distorted view of the world. Unfortunately many people, including most journalists, do pay [...]
More Tidbits from White Coat, Black Hat
I recently announced Carl Elliott’s new book, White Coat, Black Hat:http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-book-of-interest-from-carl-elliott.html What follows here is a set of brief quotes gleaned from my now having read the complete volume, and then I will end with some summary comments. On ghostwriters who work for medical communications companies: Carl quotes a biology PhD who went to work [...]
Sport Injuries: MRIs of hips of hockey players show abnormalities in 70% – are they clinically significant?
A study included M.R.I.’s of the hips of 21 professional hockey players and 21 college players. They showed abnormalities in 70 percent of the athletes, even though these hockey players had no pain or only minimal discomfort that did not affect their playing. More than half had labral tears, rips in the cartilage that stabilizes [...]
