This week’s Nature has run yet another publication condemning the evil of predatory publication. However, there is a twist in the tale as the authors have found that authors from high-income countries […]
#VisualAbstracts: Humans, Bats, Trees, Culture and Nipah Virus Transmission
A recent publication in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal talks about the factors related to the emergence of zoonotic infections. They have studied Nipah virus infections in man. This is another […]
Penile Transplantation: No, this is not Spam mail – this is real!
Anyone with an email account has received tips on how to augment their male anatomy. And while this might sound like content right out of such an email, it is, in fact, […]
Visual Abstract: Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in USA (2015-2016)
This week’s NEJM has published the results from the Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Network’s estimates of the effectiveness of the influenza vaccines in the United States of America in 2015-2016. The paper highlights […]
Predatory Open Access: Part 3 – Research Spoofs and Publication Faux-Pas
Ever since the Science paper came out earlier this week, the world of academia has been a-flutter with excitement and controlled outrage. In the midst of all this, I decided to do a series […]
Predatory Open Access: Part 2 – Peer Review in OA and Ethics of “Sting Op Research”
Ever since the Science article about a sting operation to reveal the murky business that goes on in the name of Open Access journals came out, the academic world has been thrown into a […]
Predatory Open Access: Part 1 – A Sting Op and Indictment of the OA Model
In the last couple of days, an article from Science has literally gone viral in the scientific circles. It is yet another indictment of what Jeffrey Beall has termed as Predatory Open Access. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
