Research Blogging
Penile Cancer: Another Reason to Stop Banging Animals: (Insert Zoophilia Joke)
First up, I cannot believe the numbers! This is awe-inspiring. I read the abstract three times in order to convince myself that I was not seeing things. More than the results of the study itself what intrigues me no ends is how the researchers got the participants to open up about screwing with Billy. Billy […]
National Conference on Students’ Medical Research
The Community Medicine department of Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram is organizing the 5th National Conference on Students’ Medical Research. The theme for this year is: Translational Medicine. Their website has more details. Here is their brochure: Their website (which is very chic, easy to navigate and user friendly, something we are not accustomed to while browsing […]
Why the BMJ Should Not Follow NEJM Author Ban Policy
Fiona Godlee has written a very interesting Editorial in the BMJ and this tweet of hers made me think on this issue: For a while in the 90s NEJM banned editorials and reviews from authors linked to industry. Should the BMJ try this? http://bit.ly/rczXJt— fiona godlee (@fgodlee) August 11, 2011 I oppose the blanket ban […]
Are patients really “worse off” with older docs?
In what appears to be a largely counter intuitive result, research by the American Journal of Medicine has unearthed that patients end up faring worse when treated by older doctors or more experienced doctors. This Reuters article delves into the issue and discusses several aspects of the study in great lengths. This study has also […]
Aaron Swartz: The Robbing Hood of Open Access?
Let me make it clear at the very outset that I am aware that AS is being indicted for hacking by the federal government on charges of “wire fraud, computer fraud”, etc and not for downloading too many journal articles off JSTOR (4.8 million, to be precise). Here is what the prosecution had to say: […]
Move Over Penis Captivus, Cello Scrotum and Guitar Nipple, we have TEXTER’S THUMB!
The medical mind has pondered and pondered on the existence of maladies of the body and mind which are real, and sometimes, not so real. While the cynics say that the latter exist only in the realms of medical lore, us medical history nuts always beg to differ. A number of exotic diseases have sprung […]
Harry Potter and the Missing Trauma Cases
With the last Harry Potter movie in the piping (due for a global release this weekend), it is understandable if the Potter craze gets a little irked this time around. And in true keeping with my Pottermania, in this post, I am going to examine the effect the release of Potter books/movies has on us. […]
My F1000/PLoS Bag of Swag
So remember how I was the winner of the May Blogging Contest of Science3point0.com? It was on Open Science and I got a bag of goodies from PLoS and F1000 and they contained a bunch of awesome stuff. Here is a pic of me in my lair. Please don’t get all over on me, I […]
Super-Bugs in Bugs and A Media Scare
This e-pub ahead of print has sent the media into a tizzy, and why would it not! Consider the power of this headline in your morning newspaper: Bed Bug: Cimex lectularius Image via Wikimedia. “FLESH EATING BACTERIA ISOLATED FROM BED BUGS” Now that the zombie apocalypse has failed, there must be some new fad to […]
Prophylactic Adrenaline for Anti Snake Venom Induced Anaphylaxis
I had just started working in Critical Care when we got informed that a patient was wheeled into the ER in a state of severe hypotensive shock. It was a person who had traveled to his village home for the weekend and in course of his stay there, had got bitten by a snake. The […]
House M.D. 1.02: Denialism
Once you have read the plot, you will understand what I am going to deal with in this post. The key to understanding how House reached a diagnosis of SSPE in the adopted kid was in a funny encounter he had in the clinic. A yummy mummy had brought in her kid who she was […]
House MD 1.01: Dignity in Death
This is the first post in the new series on the blog where I analyze House MD episodes based on the content and scientific interpretation of the same. It is going to be a difficult ride trying to analyze a crazy medical drama in true scientific light, but then again, who said that the things […]
Cochrane Students’ Journal Club: An Introduction
Why this Journal Club?Three simple reasons.. To provide students with an opportunity to critically read literature outside their key area of study: To provide students with an opportunity to critically discuss scientific papers. To sensitize them to EBM. Okay. So this is how it goes..A clinical scenario asking a question on the potential management of […]
Conversational Learning Networks in Healthcare
Biswas T, Chatterjee P, Biswas R.( 2010 December) Conversational learning networks in healthcare, an insight into avenues of user-driven healthcare, Paper E-presented at the meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine on e-Health and Telemed, Exploring modalities of communication with limited access: What can work in developing world contexts?London, UK
Get That Heroin Rush, Safely
Clinical observations and lesion based studies have long shown that the brain is an important adjunct for sexual functions. Although the role of the brain in ejaculation and orgasmic sensations is not well understood, the impairment of these functions in patients with strokes or parkinsonism have long shown that the brain has some role to […]
The Open Reviews Debate
The point-counter-point articles by Karim Khan and Trish Groves published on November 2010 caught my attention when the latter tweeted a link to her side of the story a couple of days ago: http://twitter.com/#!/trished/status/53044806108188672 At the outset of this post, let me make one thing clear: I know that open peer review is a good […]
Buck-teria!
First up, a disclaimer. I know one of the researchers who conducted this short study personally and professionally. I admire their work and what they have done to further the cause of promoting research by medical students in India. So, this post may be a little biased, but anyways, I decided to go ahead with […]
Sex and the Senile
Geriatric sexuality is a very sparsely explored domain in the medical arena. With the developing world getting top heavy on the age pyramid, this has become a rather timely question to ask. This study conducted in Australia takes a look at the prevalence of sexual activities in people ages 75 years and above (upto 95 […]
BMJ Open: New Open Access Journal
This journal has been in the piping for quite some time as it had already been declared in the BMJ Blogs. It went live quite some time ago (February 24th) but I just managed to procrastinate posting this till now! http://twitter.com/#!/BMJ_Open/status/40541838293078016 The new journal works on the principle of the author paying system, much like […]
Tears = Turn Off
How many of us have been reduced to blubbering idiots by the tears of a distressed damsel? I am sure the casualties are too many to put a number. Almost all of us have come across a time when we were moved by the tears of a lady. Often the center of male chauvinism, the […]
Did Chopin Have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy?
Frederick Chopin is not only one of the greatest composers this side of history, but also, a paleopathologist’s delight. He died at the age of 39, which, even by the standards of those days, was quite young. There were several interesting correlated family ailments which has sparked the minds of the medical folks. In this […]
Death Drug on the Death Row
In the lethal injections used to execute prisoners on the death row, one of the major components is an important anesthetic drug called sodium thiopental. Under a three drug protocol, sodium thiopental is used to anaesthetise the prisoner, then pancuronium bromide paralyses him, before potassium chloride is administered to cause a fatal heart attack. (1) […]
Florbetapir: Making AD A Costlier Affair
The FDA has conditionally approved the novel contrast agent, Florbetapir, to help in the diagnosis of amyloid beta plaque build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s (or, for that purpose, any damn dementia) patients. Now there are several reasons why I am not over the moon with this, but I will come to them later. […]
About the HIFA2015
This is in continuation of a previous post on my blog. I had talked of how the HIFA2015 group played an instrumental role in saving the HINARI for the time being HERE. I stumbled across this video on YouTube showing more information about the HIFA2015 and why we need it. Here’s the video:
The Student BMJ Cartoons Wakefield
The Student BMJ is by far the most popular medical student publication in the world. It has just run a cartoon on the issue of the Wakefieldian MMR-Autism mishap. Take a look. To see the high res version of the cartoon, and find more reading links and stuff, click on the image to go to […]
Did the HIFA2015 Save HINARI?
Alongwith a multitude of other health bloggers, I blogged about publishers pulling out nearly 2500 titles from the HINARI. You can read more about that here. Now, it was followed by an article in the BMJ which raised a storm in the email discussion forum called HIFA 2015 (Health Information for All by 2015). Now […]
Editor’s Selection on Research Blogging
This is the first time, so I am sure the enthusiasm is well-explained! One of the posts I wrote here was selected as the Editor’s selection on the Research Blogging team. Click on the logo alongside to go check it out. Also, read the other fantastic posts which got similarly selected. Another mention of note […]
PLoS vs Nature: The Open Access Showdown
So, remember, a few days ago I had talked about the launch of an Open Access journal from the NPG stable? If you were too busy having a life, go, check out the post here. Anyways, in what seems like an almost sarcastic repetition of history, PLoS welcomes the latest addition to the OA field. […]
Who Will Guard the Guardians?
In a grove of trees in the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, is a statue in memory of Albert Einstein. On it are engraved three of his sayings. One reads: “The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has […]
Blogging Styles Analyzed
What is your personal blogging style by Dr Shock MD PhD is a refreshing take on a contentious issue. He has brought to the notice of the science bloggers of actual hard research which takes a look at blogging styles. If you are interested in reading about the original paper or want a link to […]
