Science and Social Media News: Nature comments and Wikipedia books April 5, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Facebook, Google, Open Access, science, Statistics, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
- Content rules: Nature opens up content for comments and discussions.
‘Conversation is king’, according to a mantra frequently repeated by enthusiasts of online social media. But we editors and writers tend to give our first allegiance to content — not least because of our labours to research, commission, select, create and otherwise add value to content, and to do so in a way that informs and stimulates our readers: the people who pay for it.
But, unquestionably, conversation can add value to such efforts. Therefore, this week we introduce an online commenting facility that will allow readers to respond directly to any of our content.
- Facebook Summarized In A Single Picture: A huge and useful summary of all Facebook-related statistics and figures.
- Did you know you can create a book from Wikipedia articles in PDF, OpenDocument formats, or ordered for printing via PediaPress?
Existing metrics have known flaws
A reliable, open, joined-up data infrastructure is needed
Data should be collected on the full range of scientists’ work
Social scientists and economists should be involved
Dissemination of health information through social networks April 5, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, twitter, Web 2.0.24 comments
This is the era of evidence-based social media as more and more papers focusing on medicine and social media are coming out. An interesting paper was published a few days ago in the American Journal of Infection Control. Scanfeld et al. tried to reveal the rate of misunderstanding or misuse of antibiotics in Twitter messages in their study (Dissemination of health information through social networks: twitter and antibiotics.)
BACKGROUND: This study reviewed Twitter status updates mentioning “antibiotic(s)” to determine overarching categories and explore evidence of misunderstanding or misuse of antibiotics.
METHODS: One thousand Twitter status updates mentioning antibiotic(s) were randomly selected for content analysis and categorization. To explore cases of potential misunderstanding or misuse, these status updates were mined for co-occurrence of the following terms: “cold + antibiotic(s),” “extra + antibiotic(s),” “flu + antibiotic(s),” “leftover + antibiotic(s),” and “share + antibiotic(s)” and reviewed to confirm evidence of misuse or misunderstanding.
RESULTS: Of the 1000 status updates, 971 were categorized into 11 groups. Cases of misunderstanding or abuse were identified for the following combinations: “flu + antibiotic(s)” (n = 345), “cold + antibiotic(s)” (n = 302), “leftover + antibiotic(s)” (n = 23), “share + antibiotic(s)” (n = 10), and “extra + antibiotic(s)” (n = 7).
CONCLUSION: Social media sites offer means of health information sharing. Further study is warranted to explore how such networks may provide a venue to identify misuse or misunderstanding of antibiotics, promote positive behavior change, disseminate valid information, and explore how such tools can be used to gather real-time health data.
End of Gene Patents? April 4, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in genetics.add a comment
It was just time to end the era of gene patents. About 20% of human genes have patents which is unacceptable. An excerpt from the New York Times story:
A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property.
One of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, Genae Girard, who has breast cancer and has been tested for ovarian cancer, applauded the decision as “a big turning point for all women in the country that may have breast cancer that runs in their family.” Chris Hansen, an A.C.L.U. staff lawyer, said: “The human genome, like the structure of blood, air or water, was discovered, not created. There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas.”
I’m really curious how Myriad will respond to it…
Dose of Digital Dosie Awards: Vote for Scienceroll April 4, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, Scienceroll, Web 2.0.add a comment
Now you can vote for Scienceroll in the Dose of Digital Dosie Awards:
In case you missed it, on Monday I announced the 1st Annual Dose of Digital Dosie Awards. The post from Monday will give you some more details, so please check it out. If you already know the details and are ready to vote, then you can vote below. If you want some more background first, then, jump to that section.
Thank you for the votes in advance!
Top 10 Clinical Medicine Blogs with Scienceroll! April 1, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, List, Scienceroll, Web 2.0.6 comments
Thanks to Dr. Mike Cadogan, Scienceroll.com is included in the list of the top 10 clinical medicine blogs on blogs.com.
Amazingly comprehensive blog covering all aspects of medical education, medical technology, e-learning and virtual medicine. Through his blog, Dr Bertalan Meskó aims to arm all medical professionals with the e-tools required to meet and manage the next generation of e-patients.
Here is the top 10 list in alphabetical order:
33 charts
Academic Life in Emergency Medicine
Clinical Cases and Images
Clinical Correlations
Dr Shock MD PhD
Life in the Fast Lane
Musings of a Distractible Mind
Science-Based Medicine
Scienceroll
other things amanzi
2 Conferences and 3 Days in Berlin April 1, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in About me, Conference, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Pharma, Web 2.0.11 comments
I just got back from Berlin after 3 productive days and 2 conferences. On the 29th and 30th of March, I attended the Digital Pharma Europe and also gave a presentation about the physician’s perspective. The Twitter community was quite active under the hashtag #digpharm, here is the transcript of the numerous messages in PDF. And Mark Senak did an interview with me.
On the 31st of March, I attended the Healthcare Social Media EU Camp which was a real unconference with amazing discussions. The whole day was archived through Ustream and Twitter under the hashtag #hcsmeucamp.
