Slashdot Mirror

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!

That's interesting. This paper on the aftermath of Chernobyl on Finland, which was in the zone of greatest fallout, indicates no increase in the incidence of childhood leukaemia.

It's not a scientific journal parody, the majority of the articles published are genuine research, just research that could be regarded as improbable and amusing, like functional MRI images of people chewing gum. In fact, lots of journals carry light-hearted or off-the-wall research (check out the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal) but with AIR it's the rule rather than the exception.

They also used young teenagers to test it as well.

They also demonstrated a much higher than 2% energy consumption increase, a number that the BBC appears to have completely misrepresented from the "Discussion" section of the report, which had concluded that "In a typical week of computer play for these participants, active gaming rather than passive gaming would increase total energy expenditure by less than 2%". In other words, everything you do the rest of the week dwarfs the amount of energy that you used by playing games for a few hours, or in layman's terms: "no shirt, shitlock". The BBC ignored the first sentence of the section: "Predicted energy expenditure was at least 51% greater during active gaming than during sedentary gaming."

Is it a replacement for exercise? Not really, but that's not based on the "only" 2% increase in energy consumption.

2% is better than nothing.

a 2% increase in the amount of energy burned versus the Xbox 360 players

Predicted energy expenditure was at least 51% greater during active gaming than during sedentary gaming. This equates to an increase in energy expenditure of 250 kJ (60 kcal) an hour during active gaming compared with sedentary gaming. In a typical week of computer play for these participants, active gaming rather than passive gaming would increase total energy expenditure by less than 2%; although this figure is trivial it might contribute to weight management.

[T]he monitor does not detect arm movements well. Energy expenditure may therefore have been underestimated during active gaming, which involves arm movements.

Activity promoting new generation active computer games significantly increased participants' energy expenditure compared with sedentary games

This is a hoax. The original research "appears" at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1282

It is worth noting that BMJ regularly provides joke studies on Christmas.

Further explanation from the Language Log: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005246.html

Seriously, if there's one thing you take away from this discussion, do not allow anyone you care about to give birth at home. It's just not worth the risk.

Check out:
"Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America"
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/330/7505/1416
"Planned home birth for low risk women in North America using certified professional midwives was associated with lower rates of medical intervention but similar intrapartum and neonatal mortality to that of low risk hospital births in the United States."

Or, less official, but I am getting lazy here as we drift off-topic:
http://www.willothewisp.org/html/home_birth.html
"Let us set one myth to rest right away. A hospital is NOT the safest place for most women to give birth, in fact many studies have shown that mother and infant mortality rates are much lower in those countries that pursue a policy of encouraging home birth. While some very high risk pregnancies most certainly do not to happen inside the hospital all low risk and nearly all medium risk births can take place in the safety and comfort of a woman's own home, and as long as she is supported by a professional midwife service mortality rates will be lower than those for the same birth taking place inside hospitals.In the Netherlands nationally 45% and rising of births happen in the home, with most of the remainder taking place in local birth clinics and a minority in hospitals. In the USA and Canada only 0.9 per cent of women gave birth at home in 1991 (some of them unplanned), compared with 1.7 per cent in Britain. The argument against home birth focuses on the fact that it may subject mother and/or baby to avoidable risks and that even in seemingly healthy, normal pregnancies things can go wrong at the last minute. However birth cannot be made risk free, it is a risky time for both mother and child, but it should always be kept in mind that it is still a Natural process. Experience shows that most emergency birthing situations can be handled by a well trained midwife / birth attendant at home or that transfer to hospital can be arranged in time to avoid risks to mother or baby. In Holland Midwives carry some emergency equipment and will arrange for speedy transfer to hospital if needed. Of course Holland is a highly urbanised country and hospital care is rarely more than just a few minutes away. ...In fact, study after study conducted on the issue has shown that for healthy women with low- to moderate-risk pregnancies, giving birth in a hospital is actually less safe than giving birth at home with a trained midwife. So perhaps this is a major factor in the mortality rates. A particularly large Dutch study so comprehensively endorsed home birth for low risk and even many medium risk mothers that the the declined in home birth has been arrested and is now march towards 50%. A great many studies throughout the westernized world support these findings. No study has ever proven hospital birth to be safer than planned, midwife-attended homebirth. ... The familiar comfort of home makes it the safest birthplace for healthy, low-risk women. In the safety of their own homes, women are less likely to experience complications of labor, such as hypertension and muconium staining, which may be brought on by stress. The freedom to move about as desired decreases both length of labor and the need for pain medications, therefore lowering the risk of maternal exhaustion, fetal distress, and caesarean section. Whereas a woman's home usually contains only microbes to which she and her baby are immune due to daily exposure, where as hospitals are full of disease-causing microbes, many of which are resistant to most antibiotics. ... We have conducted trials and studies all over Holland, but here I w

Here are several studies on vaccines and autism

From Pediatrics, indicating that Autism is not caused by Mercury preservatives in vaccines

From the Lancet, indicating that there is no relation between getting the MMR vaccine (the one usually accused of causing Autism)and autism

from BMJ, another study suggesting that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism

From JAMA: no link between Autism and the MMR vaccine in California

I could keep going on, but I leave you with this link on Google Scholar.

Knock yourself out.

http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/263994

According to the Canadian Press (news agency), Taser sues anyone who claims their device causes death. It must be admitted that they have done a masterful job of managing public opinion; or at least cops' opinions. Now all the cops believe that all crazy people have superhuman strength and all need to be treated with nearly lethal force because they might be able to kill several armed cops with their bare hands. (slimy stupid cowards)

After the guy in BC died, the first stories were all about excited delerium. Then we started to hear from real (not company owned) mental health professionals calling BS. One guy who runs a loony bin clearly said that they almost never had to rely on force to control the nut cases therein. Confronting these people with force is the worst way to handle them. They can almost always be calmed. Here's an example: http://careerfocus.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7563/64?etoc

Not in the least, are you, and what does that have to do with it?

No, you just come across that way.

Show me some numbers.

Okay, you asked for it, here are some links. There are thousands of entries in the databases and journals that are not outdated research. Many of which you can not access directly form the web (subscription required). Here are a few links I glossed over quickly:

• Research
• More research
• More Research
• Oblig wikipedia
• Someone almost any father should know about
• More research

Do you really want me to go on? As I had said before, there is a ton of research that shows this. There are many reasons, poverty being but one. Children of single parent households are at greater risk (risk means chance, as in it might be, but might not be), but not doomed. And, I was not making a comment on yourself (just the language you used and the attitude which you came across with.) I have studied and worked in psychology, sociology and recovery. Have you? If you have, what has caused you to believe that economics are the sole foundation of family's woes. That sounds like a very narrow and personal understanding of the issues at hand. I have seen mental health, drugs, accidents, abuse, life crises, market changes, job shifts, marital issues, and many others things cause the issues you so conveniently blame poverty for. On the flip side, I have seen outstanding leaders, students, writers, managers, researchers, etc come from poverty stricken homes. Our world has a fine history of great individuals growing up in poverty to lead and become icons of success.

Poverty is a societal crime anymore in my opinion, but it is not the cause of all of these issues. Having worked in schools, I can tell you from first hand experience that it is the attitude of the parent(s) that make the crucial difference. And, there is also a great deal of research out there to explain to you as well.

It's a cycle, and the cycle typically begins with (drum roll...) Poverty!. Your making a gross exaggeration here.

And you are making a gross simplification of an enormous problem touching on a multitude of issues from mental health to parent's values. How do you explain so many children of well off parents winding up in poverty, so many children of poverty stricken parents winding up great successes? Poverty has something to do with it, but not as much as things have to do with poverty. One of the reasons I support public education over private is poverty discrimination inherent in private educations. Your language reminds me of the teenagers I deal with. That is another reason I asked if you were bitter about your life. The way we use language and the way we disparage others is a very big clue. The more bitter we are on the inside, the more we lash out on the outside. At others we do not know and even more so at those who are close to us.

Honestly I don't think you read what I said, nor do I think you have any fucking right saying that kids with two parents are better off than kids with one.

I read what you typed. there is but one root factor here dipshit[And you wonder why I asked if you are bitter?!?!?], it's money, poor couples are about 40% more likely to argue and split up, the kids are more likely to wind up being yelled at excessively/getting-the-shit-beaten-out-of. this has nothing to do with two working parents, single parents, mixed homes, etc Uh, yes it does. If you have experience researchin

Less than one percent of smokers die of lung cancer. 90% of lung cancer is caused by smoking.
About twenty percent of smokers will get COPD (chronic bronchitis and emphysema). 90% of COPD is caused by smoking.

Most people will not get lung cancer or COPD no matter how much they smoke. It is very likely those affected have some sort of susceptability triggered by smoking.

These situations are exactly the same. And newer journal articles do not agree with this blogger.

Fourier Transform rulez!one!1

Moderate evidence was concluded for a positive association between the duration of mouse use and hand-arm symptoms." (from a related study, http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/64/4/211 ) constitutes evidence for my pet theory that right-hand usage for 'right'-handed people is not appropriate, as it constrains the well trained hand two only simple movements (I am retraining 'lefthandedness' but did not change the keyboard/mouse layout for that reason, so there is at least single case evidence :)

You know you can have more than one mouse, right? I have one one each side of the keyboard, to 2 different usb ports, and they both work find. Grab the one that's the most convenient each time you need to use a mouse, or give each hand a break.

... because the layout of the studies seems to simple (I suspect that the risk of CTS is (extremely) increased by covariates - amount of exercise, quality of 'general posture' etc.).

Besides, the finding "Moderate evidence was concluded for a positive association between the duration of mouse use and hand-arm symptoms." (from a related study, http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/64/4/211 ) constitutes evidence for my pet theory that right-hand usage for 'right'-handed people is not appropriate, as it constrains the well trained hand two only simple movements (I am retraining 'lefthandedness' but did not change the keyboard/mouse layout for that reason, so there is at least single case evidence :)

CC.

This is a slightly confusing issue in dementia. The early stages of dementia, even the pre-clinical stages, lead to weight loss for various reasons. So rapid weight loss is associated with increased dementia risk over a couple of years, which is the finding of the short follow-up studies you have quoted.

Conversely, being overweight or obese in midlife is strongly associated with and increase in dementia risk in old age. For references and a discussion of the misinterpretation of the kind of studies you have quoted see Obesity in middle age and future risk of dementia: a 27 year longitudinal population based study and The epidemiology of adiposity and dementia.

The consensus is that breastfeeding is good, and circumcision isn't beneficial.

Actually, there's no consensus on the latter. First, circumcision is actually beneficial in helping to prevent HIV by removing tissue that acts as an easy point of entry. Second, a small (40 person) study was performed that showed that strongly suggests that sensitivity is not significantly impaired in circumcised men despite commonly held beliefs to the contrary.

For the first, there is: http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/euro pean/summary.htm

For the second statement I advice you to read the British Medical Journal, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/335/7613/248

Even though this is about abstinence and the effect on sexually transmitted diseases (NIL), I was carelessly extrapoliting this to teenage pregnancy (because the methods to avoid both are the same).

"I don't disagree with you about the concept of screening healthy people, in most cases, it's a bad idea."

"But don't tell me somebody have been using CT for screening - was that in the US ?"

"I live in Denmark where there was a minor debate a couple of years ago regarding screening mid-aged women for brest cancer. Your exact argument was the primary reason a lot of doctors opposed the idea. But even if they use X-ray for screening it's nowhere near as risky as doing full body CT. And the primary proponent of the screening was suggesting Ultrasound as the screening technique - which makes sense since modern ultrasound is almost as accurate , and in some cases more accurate, than X-ray mammography."

Funny how Britain, that has seriously resisted the introduction of GM crops, does not have honey bee colony collapse(s) - innit?

Must be co-incidental then?

Just a statistical 'glitch' or 'quirk' - uh huh.

Well - if history is anything to go by - just wait until they discover or accidentally create a brand new and improved, super resistant, hyper-immune agent that is rapid acting on the old immuno system.

And - hey - the Nobel Prize for 'discovering' the "Newest Variant AIDS (strains P,Q,R & S)" like - say - MRSA and new variant TB!

Ah ha! We're all safe, because it's only carried by extinct honey bees.

Whilst we are at it, if a few a million hits of autism keeps the proles in their place - who needs ovens? http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/330/7483/112-d#934 02 As Bush just VETOEWD a ban on Thimerosal for kids ... apparently they're all left behind.

Ah ha! The downside of progress, is the upside of big pharma shares?

RR

TROLL CREDO: "I don't care how you mod me, just as long as you do."

US health care system is similar to their economical system - it is easy to find dramatic and glaring cases of failure but overall it provides better care than for example EU or UK.

For a "broken system" these are pretty darn good statistics.
To summarize them, if you suffer from a serious illness , you are better off in USA than practically anywhere in the world, REGARDLESS of your income.

I am not going to comment on sicko because it brings nothing new to the table - it is simply a clever compilation of cherry picked examples of failures in US vs idealized "theoretical" status quo in EU.

As someone who emigrated from EU to USA I will tell you that in my case, the reality looks much more different than presented in Sicko.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/05/10/ncancer10.xml

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_3 07614.html

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstrac t/106592618/ABSTRACT

http://www.startoncology.net/capitoli/interno_capi toli/default.jsp?menu=professional&ID=67&language= eng

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20 030914/ai_n12516915

http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/news/0503/151.htm

http://gut.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/54/2/268?c k=nck

http://www.bmj.com/archive/7072ww3.htm

- A

What country has sane gun laws? Japan? Australia?

If you care do do a bit of research you'd find that Australian gun laws changed after the Port Arthur Massacre, and semi-automatic weapons were banned. The results? No mass shootings since 1995.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-deaths-in- rapid-decline-since-buyback/2006/12/13/11656857524 21.html

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/14/australia -gun.html

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/ 12/6/365

http://www.physorg.com/news85298565.html

Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.

7 real studies have been done.

The "electrosensitive" crackpots couldn't detect a mobile phone signal even after 50 minutes of continuous exposure.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/bmj.38765.519850.5 5v1

It could be psychosomatic, it could be some other mental or physical illness, but it isn't EM radiation that's making them ill.

How about candy cigarettes? Should we ban those because it might desensitize kids to the idea that smoking is bad for them?

Candy cigarettes have reportedly been restricted or banned in many countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Australia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In the United States, legislation banning candy cigarettes has been proposed unsuccessfully at the federal level in 1970 and in 1990, in 11 states, and in New York City. Only one US jurisdiction, North Dakota, has ever banned candy cigarettes. (That ban in 1953 was repealed in 1967.)

drug companies took advantage of the act by filing frivolous new patents designed to extend their hold on the market, the two senators say. "Drug companies are not spending all their time innovating new drugs. They're innovating new patents," Senator Charles Schumer of New York told a Senate subcommittee.

This drove up the average length of market exclusivity of drugs from 9.0 years in 1982 to 10.1 years in 1999.

> And I suppose bad parents aren't an easy target or equally as often used as a scapegoat?

Well, unlike video games, there's (credible) evidence supporting the idea that bad parenting is at least partly responsible for "Antisocial behavior and conduct disorders". Signing up parents for 12-week training course resulted in their children behaving better than the control.

Paper and editorial summary

> And I suppose bad parents aren't an easy target or equally as often used as a scapegoat?

Well, unlike video games, there's (credible) evidence supporting the idea that bad parenting is at least partly responsible for "Antisocial behavior and conduct disorders". Signing up parents for 12-week training course resulted in their children behaving better than the control.

Paper and editorial summary

Actually it allows you to do things to the organism which are impossible with its original genome. Since you can put genes into the organism where were never present in that species of organism before.

So what? It can happen naturally as well, and has happened.

Whenever a cell divides, there is the chance of mutation .. this is a probability that DNA in the cell would be arbitrarily modified.

FACT: Maize is widely believed to be a domesticated plant that was artificially selectively bred thousands of years ago in Mesoamerica by the natives. It also contains genes from other species, this is called cross species hybridization and happens in nature. In fact even the human genome contains DNA from multiple viruses that apparently infected and integrated (non harmful/useless?) DNA into us. Also look up how bacteria can transfer drug resistance genes across species via bacteriophages. Here's a link on that http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7159/657 .. but google around

FACT: Selective/artificial breeding allows you to bring about features in a plant that are extremely unlikely to have existed in nature.

Example, let's say you want a combination features brought about by the presence of genes A B C D E F G H I J (that's 10) to exist simultaneously in a wheat plant, but the probability of a mutation occurring to bring about any one of those (A or B or C etc.) is 1 in 1000 offspring. That means just to get a plant with feature "A" you have to plant 1000 crops. Big deal? Ok, well to get a plant that has BOTH features A and B you have to plant 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 plants. Oh, so you want A B C D E F G H I J...? Guess what? That means you need to have 10^30 plants! That's more plants than would have been in existence if you grew acres of that plant only for billions of generations (years?)!

However with selective breeding .. you can just plant 1000 crops .. select out a gene A. Then ONLY plant the seeds of the plant containing gene/feature A, so then .. your next generation will mostly have gene A, and 1 out of 1000 will have gene B in addition to gene A. Then you select out the plant with both gene A and B, and plant 1000 of those. After just ten years, you will have a plant that has genes A B C D E F G H I J simultaneously .. a plant that has a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of existing in nature.

This is also the theory behind why combinations of drugs have a greater chance of curing a disease than giving one drug at a time (it prevents resistance co-evolving).

Anyway whatever this crap is well known .. greenpeace just wants money and power .. they're uninterested in the truth.

As someone who works in a gait lab (in the other half of my life) and presents at the Gait and Clinical Motion Analysis Society Conference, I am highly skeptical of any claims that accelerometer data can be correlated with energy expenditure. As an example of a small study that showed no correlation between the two, see here. Essentially, there are too many other variables involved in energy expenditure, the most prominent of which is lean body mass. Accelerometers are blunt instruments compared to the gold standard of oxygen uptake (we use the Cosmed K4).

In other words, the defunding of the study is not surprising as other studies have been unable to show relationships between energy expenditure and activity counts. If on the other hand, the UK government wished to defund physical education, that would be a very different thing.

Part of the PEAR project's problem was their use of statistics. A classical p-test is guaranteed to eventually reject the null hypothesis (no ESP) if enough data is collected. This is related to the famous Lindley's paradox. A criticism of a particular PEAR analysis on these grounds may be found here from astrostatistician Bill Jefferys. There was a response from the study's author, which I don't have a link to, and a counterresponse here.

Jefferys advocates the Bayesian approach as an alternative to their p-value test (as do I), but even non-Bayesians admit such problems with p-values can happen (they just think the alternatives are worse); see here for some references, and here for some criticisms of and non-Bayesian alternatives to classical accept/reject significance testing. This paper (PDF) is an opinion piece which reviews the issue from a medical research perspective.

Mmmmmh! MRI-Porn!

(Probably NSFW unless you're an MD... or maybe NSFW only if you're an MD)

So new drugs targeted exclusively to COX-2 with no COX-1 activity had all of the pain killing effects and none of the side effects.

Possibly none of the same side effects, but a heart attack may make you think twice!

And no - I'm not at all medical, but I am a fucking pedant.

what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling.

Here are the Financial Highlights from the annual reports of Novartis, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. They all spend around 15% of their revenues on research. The number is typical for the industry. The other 85% go to other things, according to their own figures. More than half their revenues are spent on marketing and profits.

So the standard argument for granting patent monopolies and allowing the pharma companies to charge whatever they want for the patented drugs - that they spend the excess revenues on research for new drugs - is simply not true.

The organization Doctors Without Borders gives an example of how pharmaceutical patents affect prices i a recent press release:

The case of AIDS illustrates the trend. While fierce generic competition has helped prices for first-line AIDS drug regimen to fall by 99% from $10,000 to roughly $130 per patient per year since 2000, prices for second-line drugs - which patients need as resistance develops naturally - remain high due to increased patent barriers in key generics producing countries like India.

To the western world, pharmaceutical patents mean an enormous waste of money. In the third world, it's lives that are wasted instead. It's time to think about an alternative.

And alternatives exist - plenty of them, in fact. Nobel prize winner Joseph E Stiglitz has made one proposal. The Swedish Pirate Party has made another (or essentially the same, actually). Economist Dean Baker has collected four others, that also run along the same lines.

It's time to open up a global discussion about the effects of pharmaceutical patents, and the alternatives. Today's system is not only grossly immoral, it is also expensive and wasteful. It's time for a better way. Pharmaceutical patents kill.

>> Is the ticketting reducing the number of accidents?

if you are referring to the tailgate-detector tickets, nobody knows yet as there hasn't been enough time to find out.

if you are talking about speeding tickets and red light camera tickets. the answer is absolutely. many studies have shown that with higher enforcment of speed limits and red lights people DO change their driving habits, slow down, and obey signals. Further it has been proven that whith the slower speed of traffic not only are there fewer collisions*, but they are also less likely to involve injuries and death. I know the public perception is that it's a tax, but this is a really simple tax to avoid, don't break the law, and you will NEVER be caught doing so.

reference:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_rdsafety /documents/page/dft_rdsafety_029193.hcsp
http://ip.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/302
http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/pubs/05048/index.htm
http://www.esafety-effects-database.org/applicatio n_15.html
and others... (google is your friend)

*I won't use the word accident in this context because the majority of the time it is no accident and any intelligent person can see exactly why it happened

My old boss was a first generation German immigrant

only the wealthiest 10% of the population has access

quality isn't one of them

The Oregon petition was sent out was basically misleading and full of half truths/untruths. It was assembled by a crackpot (Arthur B. Robinson). This info was in the previously included link. You can also follow the associated cross links through source watch. Also there is no vetting on the listed signatures, when examined they contained duplicates and obviously false entries. There is no credentials listed or affiliated institution.

Frederick Seitz, wrote a cover letter endorsing it. While perhaps is not a crackpot, is well past his prime (he was born in 1911), previous work after retiring from university duties was working for the tobacco industry. In fact he is pretty much a general purpose supporter of any polluting industry, currently belongs to several Oil funded lobby groups. ... in turn, was one of the funders of the George C Marshall Institute in Washington DC.54 In 1994 the institute published a report called "Global warming and ozone hole controversies. A challenge to scientific judgment," written by its board chairman, Dr Frederick Seitz. While introducing the subject Seitz also listed a dozen other environmental substances whose dangers he considered controversial, including nuclear wastes, asbestos, acid emissions from burning coal, toxic waste disposal, genetic engineering, pesticides, and passive smoke. Referring to the latter he wrote, "there is no good scientific evidence that passive inhalation is truly dangerous under normal circumstances."

http://tc.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/10/4/375

I suspect you joined just to add more FUD to the fire, so it is not a surprise th you would bring this largely meaningless poll.

BTW Consensus, is majority, not everyone. Clearly there will always be people of the caliber of the above that will disagree with anything, especially when being funded by industries who would benefit from that disagreement.

Several journals are already implementing Open Access with different levels of success. I develop and publish a relatively successful online Open Access journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (apologies for the plug), and we use the author-pays model based on a $750US fee to cover (most of) the costs. Often this amount can be written into or otherwise covered by a grant supporting the research in question.

We also have additional sources of revenue, including advertising (albeit very little), and one of the most promising areas is what would traditionally be called "value-added" content. While the full-text of all articles is freely available, "extra" things like PDF versions, on-demand printed versions, etc. are on a fee/membership basis. This seems to work quite well in covering costs while not restricting access. As well, other journals such as BMJ use time-delayed access (ie. articles older than 6 months become open), which is just another way of creating "premium" content. Another interesting publisher is PLoS, who have several resources on the costs of OA publishing.

As some have said in other threads, the main cost is in the actual process of reviewing/copyediting/proofing, not the actual hosting/bandwidth. Open Source journal publication software such as OJS is lessening this barrier, as are other tools. For example, we use OpenOffice to convert articles to the NLM XML schema, automating XML/layout editing and decreasing the cost. By finding alternative, "non-traditional" sources of revenue (like tiered access/content), and using Open Source tools to simplify and automate the publishing process, bringing the overall cost of online academic publishing down to a level where Open Access is cheap is already being realized.

I'm a med student. The British Medical Association has made its journal, BMJ, available for free for a number of years. This is a world-leading medical journal - up there with The Lancet and NEJM - provided completely gratis to anybody and everybody. You can search, download PDFs, do anything you want really. Doctors (and students) still pay their membership fees. If the BMA can manage it, the IEEE certainly can.

On the Oncolytics web site, they only list Phase I and Phase II trials. That's just to evaluate safety and dosing. In Phase III, they finally get around to testing for effectiveness, and they haven't done that yet.

I've seen lots of drugs that did this well in Phase II trials but flunked Phase III. I remember seeing Fortune magazine with the headline on the cover, "Cure for Cancer!" 20 years ago. Unfortunately not. (They got over-enthusiastic about cancer vaccines.)

Phase III is a randomized controlled trial. They randomly assign half the patients to the drug, and half the patients to a placebo. If it really works, you should see the difference. A lot of times it doesn't work and you know the drug is useless. Until the RCT you don't know anything for sure.

Another distinction you have to make is the end point. It's one thing to shrink a tumor, but the main thing most cancer patients are interested in is whether they're going to die. There are a lot of drugs that shrink tumors, but have no effect on how long they live.

Here's a discussion, "Levels of Clinical Evidence in the Primary Literature" which describes the different levels of evidence. Or look at BMJ Or if you want to search Google look for "Evidence-based medicine."

I hope this will encourage investors to throw lots of money at basic research and give us a better understanding of why cells become cancerous. It makes the New England Journal of Medicine more fun to read. Who knows? Maybe they'll come up with something useful some day. But not today.

Iq Nobel Prize this.

Now, thanks to MRI, we get to see pictures of very interesting things such as sex in an MRI tube...

Apologies for being offtopic...

Right, because second-hand smoke CAUSES cancer/death. All the hype that ended up bashing smokers was based on a seemingly flawed study. Well, not flawed, but researchers at the time were apparently quite eager to conclude that second-hand smoke == death.

http://bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/326/7398/1057

Also, just as a tip, if you are going to use deadly force on a smoker, don't do it on their way out for a smoke break. At that point their nicotine craving is so strong that they'll do anything, including kicking your deadly-force-emitting ass to get their long-awaited drag on their Camel Light.

Ok back on topic. I use SpamBayes and it works pretty well.

There's no jury out,

Actually, with science, there's always a jury out.

However the data sets used in these studies are so small they aren't statistically relevant.

The dataset in the BMJ article began with over 118,000 people 30+ years ago, including 35,000 nonsmokers living with smokers. This huge, long-term dataset resulted in, you guessed it, a very tiny correlation, but not the 20-30% usually quoted.

One flawed EPA study is the basis for almost all passive smoking bans.

Got a link?

Here's mine.

Some diseases do produce characteristic smells.
Uncontrolled diabetes makes the breath smell a bit like nail varnish. Infections, liver disease and cancer also make distinct smells.

There is a big danger in using a test like this inappropriately for screening, as has already been aluded to.

Breast screening, prostate screening and even cervical cancer screening are all not good screening tests (as they stand at the moment). For cervical cancer, which is probably the best of the three for screening, you have to screen 1000 women for 35 years to prevent one death. You think about the extra cost, extra tests and all the pain and anxiety of all the people who get false positive results.

Screening is like wearing an elastic seatbelt. It gives you illusion of security, when in fact it gives you no real protection, and just adds inconvenience. Unlike an elastic seatbelt, there is no 'real' substitute. yet.

Just to make it more difficult, their is an entire industry set up around producing and promoting these 'elastic seatbelts'.

Some diseases do produce characteristic smells.
Uncontrolled diabetes makes the breath smell a bit like nail varnish. Infections, liver disease and cancer also make distinct smells.

There is a big danger in using a test like this inappropriately for screening, as has already been aluded to.

Breast screening, prostate screening and even cervical cancer screening are all not good screening tests (as they stand at the moment). For cervical cancer, which is probably the best of the three for screening, you have to screen 1000 women for 35 years to prevent one death. You think about the extra cost, extra tests and all the pain and anxiety of all the people who get false positive results.

Screening is like wearing an elastic seatbelt. It gives you illusion of security, when in fact it gives you no real protection, and just adds inconvenience. Unlike an elastic seatbelt, there is no 'real' substitute. yet.

Just to make it more difficult, their is an entire industry set up around producing and promoting these 'elastic seatbelts'.

The arXiv is not designed for discussion of results, which suggests that you are badly informed. But it is easy to envisage an arXiv-like system in which submitted papers are left 'open' for a period of several months for other scientists to comment on these papers. The British Medical Journal is currently unique in that it operates a similar "Rapid Response" system. I know a number of doctors who think this method of online comment is extremely useful. Such forum-based electronic peer-review of papers will surely work; if you think there is no chance of reasoned discussion on a forum such as Slashdot, why are you posting here?

I'm a medical writer so I can comment on the medical content of the sites in the Consumer Webwatch reports. I don't think they're good enough.

(Since I write for the web, I found the programmer comments very useful. OK, I'll change that code in my site RSN).

I agree completely that (my) content doesn't matter if you can't find it, and without good graphic design, backed up by good programming (thanks guys), you can't find anything on those web sites (which have thousands of pages). Everything you want to know about medicine is on the Internet many times over, but the problem is (1) finding it (2) in a form that you can understand and (3)evaluating its accuracy and validity.

Here's a good example: I went to a doctor for a checkup, and he didn't perform a digital rectal examination, although he did give me a guiac test. A DRE is a way of screening for prostate cancer and rectal cancer, and the American Cancer Society among other well-known organizations recommends it for everyone above 50, like me. A guiac test samples the stool for blood, which is often a symptom of colon cancer. Various organizations also recommend sigmoidoscopy (a fiber optic scope that goes through the rectum and up the colon about a foot) and colonoscopy (which goes up the colon even farther) as screening for colon cancer. My medical textbooks were either out of date or ambiguous on these issues.

So, here's my question for the medical web sites:

Should my doctor have performed a DRE on a 50-year-old man in a routine physical?

My first stop was the web site rated No. 1 by the experts National Institutes of Health. Once I got there, I realized that I had to refine the question. What I really wanted to know is,

would a DRE have lowered my chances of dying of cancer?

As it turned out, there are scientific studies with control groups that found that there was no good evidence that patients who had screening DRE, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy lived longer than patients who did not. However, patients screened with guiac tests did live longer (endpoint of death, they call it). I found this on the professional side of the site, not the consumer side, couched in technical language. Not easily accessible or understandable -- for something that your life depends on.

So when I read the Consumer WebWatch report, I decided to see how the expert's No. 2, MayoClinic.com handled it. To my surprise and dismay, the Mayo Clinic web site, in its extensive discussion of screening for colon cancer, did not make the point that only guiac testing had been shown to save lives. There is criticism in the medical literature that doctors don't provide enough hard information to their patients to enable patients to make an intelligent decision. I think the fact that the life-saving ability of 3 of those 4 screening tests is not supported by evidence-based medicine is an important fact for patients that the Mayo clinic should have provided for patients who are trying to decide whether to take an uncomfortable and (for the scopes) expensive test with a risk of perforating the bowel.

Evidence-based medicine, BTW, is a term of the art, and a good Google search. It means practicing medicine on the basis of scientific evidence, when it exists (the catch: you wind up saying, "science doesn't know" too much of the time).

EBM started when 2 doctors in Canada were having trouble keeping up with all their reading, and said, "Hey, let's just read the stuff that's supported by scientific evidence." That cut down the pile significantly.

A good explanation is on the Bandolier web site, from Oxford, UK. This will reduce medicine to the rationality that engineers and other geeks are used to thinking in.

What is series:
Evidence-based Medicine

Bandolier

Forms of evidence
Evidence is presented in many forms, and it is
important to understand the basis on which it
is stated. The value of evidence can be ranked
according to the following classification in
descending order of credibility:

I. Strong evidence from at least one
systematic review of multiple well-designed
randomised controlled trials.

II. Strong evidence from at least one properly
designed randomised controlled trial of
appropriate size.

III. Evidence from well-designed trials such as
non-randomised trials, cohort studies, time
series or matched case-controlled studies.

IV. Evidence from well-designed
non-experimental studies from more than
one centre or research group.

V. Opinions of respected authorities, based on
clinical evidence, descriptive studies or
reports of expert committees.

BTW, when people ask me where to find medical information on the Internet, I recommend peer-reviewed sources, starting with the Merck Manual Home Edition , then British Medical Journal, then Medicalstudent.com.

But you can't do it on the Internet alone without professional guidance -- medical librarians explained to me how to search the medical literature. And very often what you want to know is only available on paper.

I went into this in more detail when I taught a class in medical journalism. I interviewed a medical librarian and posted her explanation in an article on my web site. That's why brick libraries are so valuable -- they don't just have paper, they have librarians.