Laika's MedLibLog

The Scatter of Medical Research and What to do About it.

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:29:01 +0000

Paul Glasziou, GP and professor in Evidence Based Medicine, co-authored a new article in the BMJ [1]. Similar to another paper [2] I discussed before [3] this paper deals with the difficulty for clinicians of staying up-to-date with the literature. But where the previous paper [2,3] highlighted the mere increase in number of research articles over time, the current paper [...]

Can Guidelines Harm Patients?

laikaspoetnik — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:15:15 +0000

Recently I saw an intriguing “personal view” in the BMJ written by Grant Hutchison entitled: “Can Guidelines Harm Patients Too?” Hutchison is a consultant anesthetist with -as he calls it- chronic guideline fatigue syndrome. Hutchison underwent an acute exacerbation of his “condition” with the arrival of another set of guidelines in his email inbox. Hutchison: On reviewing the level [...]

What Did Deep DNA Sequencing of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs) Really Reveal?

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:04:13 +0000

A recent study published in PLOS genetics[1] on a genetic audit of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs) was widely covered in the news. The headlines are a bit confusing as they said different things. Some headlines say “Dangers of Chinese Medicine Brought to Light by DNA Studies“, others that Bear and Antelope DNA are Found in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and still others more [...]

Health and Science Twitter & Blog Top 50 and 100 Lists. How to Separate the Wheat from the Chaff.

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:58:36 +0000

Recently a Top 100 scientists-Twitter list got viral on Twitter. It was published at accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog.* Most people just tweeted “Top 100 Scientists on Twitter”, others were excited to be on the list, a few mentioned the lack of scientist X or discipline Y in the top 100. Two scientist noticed something peculiar about the list: @seanmcarroll noticed two fake (!) [...]

Silly Sunday #50: Molecular Designs & Synthetic DNA

laikaspoetnik — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:58:14 +0000

As a teenager I found it hard to picture the 3D structure of DNA, proteins and other molecules. Remember we didn’t have a computer then, no videos, nor 3D-pictures or 3D models. I tried to fill the gap, by making DNA-molecules of (used) matches and colored clay, based on descriptions in dry (and dull 2D) [...]

Friday Foolery #49: The Shortest Abstract Ever! [2]

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00:03 +0000

In a previous Friday Foolery post I mentioned what I thought was the shortest abstract ever. ”Probably not”. But a reader (“Trollface”) pointed out in a comment that there was an even shorter (and much older) abstract of a paper in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. It was published in 1974. The abstract simply says: [...]

Friday Foolery #48 Brilliant Library Notices

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:05:15 +0000

Today’s Friday Foolery post is handed on a silver platter by my Australian friend Mike Cadogan @sandnsurf from Life in the Fast Lane Yes, aren’t these brilliant librarian notices from the Milwaukee Public Library?! Note: @Bitethedust, also from Australian rightly noticed: there’s no better place to stick @sandnsurf than in Friday foolery Indeed at Life at the Fast Lane [...]

“Pharmacological Action” in PubMed has no True Equivalent in OVID MEDLINE

laikaspoetnik — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:09:28 +0000

Searching for EMBASE Subject Headings (the EMBASE index terms) for drugs is relatively straight forward in EMBASE. When you want to search for aromatase inhibitors you first search for the Subject Heading mapping to aromatase inhibitors (aromatase inhibitor). Next you explode aromatase inhibitor/ if you are interested in all its narrower terms. If not, you search [...]

Grand Rounds: Evolving from Link-♥♥ to ♬♫-Links?

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:03:22 +0000

Grand Rounds is “the weekly summary of the best healthcare writing online”. I’ve hosted this medical blog carnival twice and considered it a great honor to do so. I have submitted a lot of posts to the Grand Rounds. Often I even wrote a special blog post to fit the theme if there was one. [...]

Friday Foolery # 47 WTF, the True Spirit of Christmas

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:35:42 +0000

The true spirit of Christmas is in “loving” and to “do good for others”, “ thinking of” and “helping the less fortunate”. However, many of today’s children, weaned on luxury goods and gadgets, consider themselves as the “less fortunates” and thus are on the ”receiving” rather than the “giving” site. And are easily disappointed… and crossed if they don’t get the [...]

Friday Foolery #46 Bad Science: The Psychology Behind Exaggerated & False Results

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:21:32 +0000

Very up-to-date infographic about Bad Science: it includes (or was inspired by?) the recent fraud by Diederik Stapel, a well-known psychologist in the Netherlands.(e.g. see NY Times.com (2011/11/03/). I am not sure though, that I agree with the 3rd solution to make research more honest: anonymous publication. Created by: Clinical Psychology Hattip: @nutrigenomics, @Vansteenwinckel, @kitteybeth & @rawarrior via Twitter Related articles [...]

Jeffrey Beall’s List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers, 2012 Edition

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:20:36 +0000

Perhaps you remember that I previously wrote [1] about non-existing and/or low quality scammy open access journals. I specifically wrote about Medical Science Journals of the http://www.sciencejournals.cc/ series, which comprises 45 titles, none of which having published any article yet. Another blogger, David M [2] also had negative experiences with fake peer review invitations from sciencejournals. He even noticed plagiarism. Later I occasionally found [...]

Happy Anniversary Highlight HEALTH, ScienceRoll & Sterile Eye!

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:49:15 +0000

Starting a blog is easy. But maintaining a blog costs time and effort. Especially when having a job/while studying (and having a private life as well). This blog almost celebrates its 4th year (February 2012). I’m happy to notice that many established (bio)medical & library blogs, that inspired me to start blogging, are still around. [...]

Friday Foolery #45. What have you got in your head?

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:12:03 +0000

What have you got in your head? I hope it is not Barley, Chilli, Hemp seeds, Candies, Black Rice, Food for canaries, Brain sandwich, Sugar or Hay. (No, are you nuts?) But these foods do make beautiful, sometimes even tasty-looking “brains”. The composition below is from the project “What have you got in your head?” (series 2, 2010) by the Italian [...]

Experience versus Evidence [1]. Opioid Therapy for Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain.

laikaspoetnik — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:53:35 +0000

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic auto-immune disease, which causes inflammation of the joints that eventually leads to progressive joint destruction and deformity. Patients have swollen, stiff and painful joints. The main aim of treatment is to reduce swelling and inflammation, to alleviate pain and stiffness and to maintain normal joint function. While there is no cure, it [...]

Friday Foolery #44. The Shortest Abstract Ever?

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:13:25 +0000

This is the shortest abstract I’ve ever seen: “probably not” With many thanks to Michelynn McKnight, PhD, AHIP, Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University, who put it on the MEDLIB-L listserv, saying : “Not exactly structured …. but a great laugh!” According to Zemanta (articles related to this post) Future Twit also blogged about it. Related articles Friday [...]

Things to Keep in Mind when Searching OVID MEDLINE instead of PubMed

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:44:25 +0000

When I search extensively for systematic reviews I prefer OVID MEDLINE to PubMed for several reasons. Among them, it is easier to build a systematic search in OVID, the search history has a more structured format that is easy to edit, the search features are more advanced giving you more control over the search and translation of the a [...]

Silly Sunday #43 Know Your Numbers

laikaspoetnik — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:45:07 +0000

As I touched upon in Grand Rounds 8.5 the Mayo Clinic Center held the 3rd Social Media’s Health Care Social Media Summit a few weeks ago. Lots of good information and resources were shared, including the video below. The video has already gone viral (it has been viewed appr. 24,000 times), but most important is that its message gets viral. [...]

Friday Foolery #42 So You Think You Can Dance Your PhD Thesis?

laikaspoetnik — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:39:56 +0000

It’s hard to explain your research to non-scientists. My PhD defense was preceded by a slide show (yes, that was once-upon-a-time that we didn’t use Powerpoint). It was the only part the public could follow a bit. But it is too long, static and detailed. That cannot be said of these videos, where PhD’s from all over the [...]

Grand Rounds Vol 8 nr 5: Data, Information & Communication

laikaspoetnik — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:40:35 +0000

Welcome to the Grand Rounds, the weekly summary of the best health blog posts on the Internet. I am pleased to host the Grand Rounds for the second time. The first time, 2 years ago, was theme-less, but during the round we took a trip around the library. Because, for those who don’t know me, after [...]