Hans Rosling Brings Humor to Global Health Statistics February 4, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Data, Health, science, Video.add a comment
Hans Rosling public health guru and data enthusiast shines again:
The most amusing medical story ever: How not to communicate new scientific information January 15, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Fun, science.add a comment
I’ve recently come across the most amusing story of medicine I have ever read. A paper published in the British Journal of Urology describes how Professor G.S. Brindley demonstrated during a presentation in 1983 that vasoactive agents injected into the corporal bodies of the penis can induce an erection. He experimented on himself and well, showed the “results” live to the audience. A must-read, very funny story!
The Professor wanted to make his case in the most convincing style possible. He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.
Rorschach Test Scandal on Wikipedia and the Aftermath January 11, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in science, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.add a comment
The Rorschach test is used for examining the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of patients as their perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed. In 2009, the New York Times had a report about Dr. James Heilman who posted all 10 pictures on the site, along with research about the most popular responses to each. Of course, it led to a heated debate whether this information should be accessed on Wikipedia or not. Here are the details of this scandal.
Now, 2 years later, a study came out with the title “Challenges since wikipedia: the availability of rorschach information online and internet users’ reactions to online media coverage of the rorschach-wikipedia debate.“. The abstract:
In the first study, the authors conducted 2 Google searches for Web sites containing Rorschach-related information. The top 88 results were classified by level of threat to test security; 19% posed a direct threat. The authors also found Web sites authored by psychologists that divulged sensitive Rorschach information.
In the second study, 588 comments to online news stories covering the Rorschach-Wikipedia debate were coded as expressing favorable or unfavorable opinions regarding the field of psychology, psychologists, and the Rorschach. Eight percent of comments described unfavorable opinions toward psychology, 15% contained unfavorable opinions toward psychologists, and 35% portrayed unfavorable opinions of the Rorschach.
Common themes and popular misconceptions of the Rorschach contained in these comments are described. Implications and recommendations for practice are discussed. Limitations, including the second study’s narrow sample and self-selection bias, are also detailed.
My Open Access Success Story November 7, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in About me, Interview, Open Access, science, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
An interview with me focusing on how open access changed the way I conduct my research in genomics was published on Open Access Success Stories. An excerpt:
So what happened when he published his first paper? Naturally, Dr Mesko chose to publish it in an open access journal and to use his expertise with social media to share it as widely as possible.
“As I’ve been a medical blogger for years, it was clear to me I would like to get as much feedback as possible for my work so we decided to publish the paper in an open access journal. I wanted to get suggestions, I wanted to hear the opinion of respected scientists, some of whom were also bloggers,” explains Dr Mesko.
From Information Therapy to Facebook for Pharma: News October 24, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Photography, Robotics, science, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
Scientists, artists, writers, and philosophers once flooded the cafés of Vienna and Paris. These days, you’ll likely still find these same types in the cafés, but instead of getting into heated political arguments or passionately espousing their artistic beliefs, they’re absorbed by their laptop screens. Don’t let the silence fool you, though. They may very well be engaging in comparable lively discussions and exchanges of ideas. They could just be doing that in a Google+ Hangout.
In an effort to address information inequality around the world, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) will now be offering free subscriptions through the HINARI initiative to developing countries in South America, Asia and Africa.
Social Media For Scientists: Win-Win October 15, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in science, Web 2.0.2 comments
I gladly realized I was mentioned in the blog of the Scientific American in an article they wrote about how scientists use social media for facilitating communication, collaboration and research itself.
But even more importantly, a percentage of those online interactions will blossom into more. I know firsthand that this can occur – one of my collaborators on my PhD first met me through blogging. Others have shared similar stories. Bertalan Mesko ofScienceroll.com feels that “blogging and Twitter don’t just help me in my research but totally changed the way I interact with other researchers and collaborators.” Similarly, for John Fossella, who blogs at Genes to Brains to Mind to Me, social networking has expanded his scientific network. “Instead of getting feedback from the same handful of folks I regularly see in the lab, I’m getting comments and new ideas from folks who I used to work with 5, 10 and even 20 years ago, not to mention new folks who I’ve struck up online interactions with.”
Nobel winner died days before award announced October 3, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in science.2 comments
This is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard in science. Today,the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the Nobel Prize to Bruce A. Beutler (USA), Jules A. Hoffmann (France) “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity” and to Ralph M. Steinman (USA or Canada) “for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity”. Later today they found out Steinman died of pancreatic cancer last Friday. From the news:
The Nobel committee had been unaware of Ralph Steinman’s death and it was unclear whether the prize would be rescinded because Nobel statutes don’t allow posthumous awards.
Steinman, 68, who shared the prize with American Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann, died on Sept. 30 of pancreatic cancer, acccording to Rockefeller University, which said he had been treated with immunotherapy based on his discovery of dendritic cells two decades earlier.
Picture of the Month: Left brain-right brain October 1, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in science.5 comments
This is one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen. I’m almost totally a left brain… What about you?
Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.
Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.
From self-reported Patient Data to Mobile predictions September 2, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, Ted Talks, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.1 comment so far
- TEDxOverlake – Dr. H. Jack West – Self-Educated Patients and The Future of Cancer Care
“Don’t believe those that say you can’t measure the return on investment (ROI) of digital and social media programs – if you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be doing it…”
He said some GPs already offer consultations via Skype and may interest many others. ‘Then I find myself thinking that’s the sort of thing that will appeal to some people. It would appeal to me,’ he said. He argued it would be much more convenient for patients and GPs.
The Internet was reported to be the second source of health information after physicians, due to its accessibility and “easiness” of use. The most commonly searched types of online health information are treatment/therapy (62% rated it as always or often), detailed (58%) and general (53%) disease descriptions, drug information (51%), side effects (51%) and scientific articles (50%).
Everyday we find PLoS ONE papers in the news. Whether it’s a science blogger in the United Kingdom, an online newspaper in China, or a national news channel in the United States, we see a lot of media coverage on our research articles. In an effort to better track the coverage these papers receive, we’ve begun a Media Tracking Project.
Online patient communities structured around quantitative outcome data have the potential to provide an observational environment to monitor such drug usage and its consequences. Here we describe an analysis of data reported on the website PatientsLikeMe by patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who experimented with lithium carbonate treatment.
iPhone preventing ER visits and other stories this week August 24, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
As Facebook prepares to force pharma marketers to include comments on most pages, Google is actively courting the highly-regulated industry. Working directly with extremely risk-averse drug makers, the company developed a new YouTube feature for them that also can be applied for other marketers. For AstraZeneca’s Medimmune, the change was the difference between having a YouTube channel and scrapping the project all together.
In its April 2011 survey, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that 11% of US healthcare consumers use social networks to find or share health information and 8% use blogs. The respondents who use blogs and social networks for health purposes do so to comment about the healthcare system, to comment about doctors and hospitals and to share personal healthcare experiences with others.
- Anonymity in the Healthcare Professions
Epilogue: The patient was contacted by phone after reviewing this information. He as told he did not have to go to the Emergency Room. Instead, significant adjustments were made to his medication regimen over the phone. He was seen the next morning in our device clinic to reset the alarm that was triggered when his device exhausted all its therapies in one event. No further arrhythmias had transpired and discussions regarding alternate medical or ablative therapies are pending.
- Mediari is an app that empowers you to take better notes and communicate more effectively with physicians on healthcare needs for you and your loved ones. A patient-centered app designed to help you take notes on medical issues faced.
He said: ‘We may decide that we want to offer an entry to our services via the social media channel and under those circumstances, similar to the way that we have with our use of third party websites for access to our health and symptom checkers, we would make sure that we held patient information and any advice given in a confidential way, under appropriately signed off terms and conditions.’
Scientific Reports is committed to providing an efficient service for both authors and readers, and exists to facilitate the rapid peer review and publication of research. With the support of an external Editorial Board and a streamlined peer-review system, all papers are rapidly and fairly peer reviewed to ensure they are technically sound. An internal publishing team works with the board, and accepted authors, to ensure manuscripts are processed for publication as quickly as possible.
