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Friday, 26 December 2014

Monday, 22 December 2014

Princess Health and Guest Post: Scholarly Mad Libs and Peer-less Reviews. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Guest Post: Scholarly Mad Libs and Peer-less Reviews. Princessiccia

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Health Care Renewal presents a guest post by Marjorie Lazoff, MD, a Board certified internist with a clinical background in academic emergency medicine.  She is currently a full time freelance editor and independent consultant specializing in evidence-based clinical content and medical informatics.

On December 17, 2014, Scientific American published an investigative report by journalist Charles Seife documenting a new and curious form of scholarly publication fraud, For Sale: �Your Name Here� in a Prestigious Science Journal. As an editor and supporter of evidence-based medicine I am both appalled by, and sympathetic to, how such widespread fraud could take place unnoticed.

Seife describes how he discovered the doctored writings:

The dubious papers aren't easy to spot. Taken individually each research article seems legitimate. But in an investigation by Scientific American that analyzed the language used in more than 100 scientific articles we found evidence of some worrisome patterns�signs of what appears to be an attempt to game the peer-review system on an industrial scale�

�This is not a simple case of plagiarism. Many seemingly independent research teams have been plagiarizing the same passage. An article in PLOS ONE may eventually lead to 'our better, comprehensive understanding' of the association between mutations in the XRCC1 gene and thyroid cancer risk. Another in the International Journal of Cancer (published by Wiley) might eventually lead to 'our better, comprehensive understanding' of the association between mutations in the XPA gene and cancer risk�and so on. Sometimes there are minor variations in the wording but in more than a dozen articles we found almost identical language with different genes and diseases seemingly plunked into the paragraph, like an esoteric version of Mad Libs, the parlor game in which participants fill in missing words in a passage.

Another example virtually eliminates the likelihood of coincidence:

There is no such thing as a 'Beggers funnel plot'�the proliferation of 'Begger's' tests [were discovered] by accident. While looking for trends in medical journal articles, papers [were found] that had almost identical titles, similar choices in graphics and the same quirky errors, such as 'Begger's funnel plot.'

Seife�s investigative reporting revealed that China was the source of most of his �fill-in-the-blanks� research. Further,

Much of the funding for these suspect papers comes from the Chinese government. Of the first 100 papers identified by Scientific American [and listed at the close of his article], 24 had received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), a governmental funding agency roughly equivalent to the U.S.'s National Science Foundation. Another 17 acknowledged grants from other government sources.

Seife suspects that most research probably began as legitimate work without intent to deceive, but somewhere an author or service was added to help ensure publication through the necessarily arduous manuscript review process.

The culprit?

A quick Internet search uncovers outfits that offer to arrange, for a fee, authorship of papers to be published in peer-reviewed outlets. They seem to cater to researchers looking for a quick and dirty way of getting a publication in a prestigious international scientific journal.

Seife�s investigation goes undercover, 60 Minutes style:

In November Scientific American asked a Chinese-speaking reporter to contact MedChina, which offers dozens of scientific 'topics for sale' and scientific journal 'article transfer' agreements. Posing as a person shopping for a scientific authorship, the reporter spoke with a MedChina representative who explained that the papers were already more or less accepted to peer-reviewed journals; apparently, all that was needed was a little editing and revising. The price depends, in part, on the impact factor of the target journal and whether the paper is experimental or meta-analytic. In this case, the MedChina rep offered authorship of a meta-analysis linking a protein to papillary thyroid cancer slated to be published in a journal with an impact factor of 3.353. The cost: 93,000 RMB�about $15,000.

Finally, the corrosive effect of this particular fraud on scientific and medical publication is real:

Publishers at the moment are fighting an uphill battle. 'Without insider information it's very difficult to police this,' Clinical Endocrinology's Bevan says. CE and its publisher, Wiley, are trying to close loopholes in the editorial process to flag suspicious late changes in authorship and other irregularities. 'You have to accept that people are submitting things in good faith and honesty,' Bevan says.

That is the essential threat. Now that a number of companies have figured out how to make money off of scientific misconduct, that presumption of honesty is in danger of becoming an anachronism.

Were this the only threat currently facing research journals today! Last month, Retraction Watch published an article describing a known and partially-related problem: fake peer reviews, in this case involving 50 BioMed Central papers. In the above-described article, Seife referred to this BioMed Central discovery; he was able to examine 6 of these titles and found that all were from Chinese authors, and shared style and subject matter to other �paper mill-written� meta-analyses.

Retraction Watch agrees:

It would seem that a third party, perhaps marketing services helping authors have papers accepted, was involved.

Problems with peer review are longstanding editorial fodder. For a description of another recent peer review scam, this one involving authors hijacking researchers� identities, see the article also written by Retraction Watch editors and published last month in Nature.

On Friday, in response to requests by several publishers, The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) posted a statement on inappropriate manipulation of peer review processes 

While there are a number of well-established reputable agencies offering manuscript-preparation services to authors, investigations at several journals suggests that some agencies are selling services, ranging from authorship of pre-written manuscripts to providing fabricated contact details for peer reviewers during the submission process and then supplying reviews from these fabricated addresses. Some of these peer reviewer accounts have the names of seemingly real researchers but with email addresses that differ from those from their institutions or associated with their previous publications, others appear to be completely fictitious.

COPE recommends, among other things, the retraction of articles based solely on fraudulent reviews. Retraction Watch�s announcement earlier today of a MacArthur Foundation grant to help fund a comprehensive and freely available database of retractions could not have come at a better time!

Seife and Retraction Watch have documented new forms of published research fraud among third world researchers. Certainly the solution is not for editors and readers to suspect all papers from specific countries; there are ample instances of research fraud emanating from English-speaking researchers and top U.S. institutions. Research from around the world is critically important, particularly although not exclusively in the basic sciences, emerging infectious disease, and public health/epidemiology. Now that it has been identified, a common screening procedure for manuscripts at a journal can be adjusted to filter out this new form of plagiarism.

Sadly, it seems to me that fraudulent research of all types can flourish within a perfect storm of circumstances and factors: the globalization of science and medicine encourages non-or-limited English-speaking researchers to publish (or perish) in the highest impact English language journals; the proliferation of open-access wannabes, hybrids of every color and degree of sincerity, and other money-over-science journals and companies that rip off desperate and na�ve researchers; a complicated, time-consuming and often author-unfriendly manuscript submission process; and journal editors who struggle with limited staffing and resources, necessarily arduous editorial processes, and the pressure of increasing numbers of worthy manuscripts deserving to reach the scientific and medical communities in near-real time. Research fraud is particularly destructive given traditional publishing�s ongoing struggle to survive the transformational Electronic Age; the pervasive if not perverse marketing of pharma, medical device companies, and self-promoting individuals and institutions using �unbiased� research; and today�s bizarrely anti-science culture.

Health Care Renewal is wonderful at calling out intentionally perpetrated health care events whose importance and implications can be debated, depending on one�s perspective and personal values. Here, I think, we have the reverse: there is near unanimity over the need to prevent fraudulent papers of any type from contaminating our research databases, as best as is humanly and technologically possible. There is also near unanimity among quality medical journals throughout the world, and internationally respected editor and publisher groups, to confront and solve these problems. The enemy identified by HCR is not always unrestrained greed or maliciousness. Sometimes, as in this case, the enemy is a cacophony of small circumstances and extraneous factors that could, if left unattended, invisibly erode something we all hold dear.

Without ongoing attention and support from the entire medical and science communities, we risk the progressive erosion of our essential, venerable research database, until it finally becomes too contaminated for even our most talented editors to heal.

Dr Marjorie Lazoff

ADDENDUM (30 December, 2014) - This post was reposted on the Naked Capitalism blog on 24 December, 2014.

ADDENDUM (7 January, 2015) - See also comments on DSHR's Blog.  

ADDENDUM (19 January, 2015) - This post was reposted by TruthOut on 10 January, 2015.

Sunday, 21 December 2014

Princess Health and2014 Santa PurSuit.Princessiccia

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Well, the 2014 season has come to a close for the team!  We finished it off with a bang at the 2014 Santa PurSuit.  Here's how the team did:



Team Results:

H+P ended ended up winning the event by over 7 minutes average/5K.  RESULTS.

Individual Results (CLICK):

Sean won the race in 17:35

Nick Burt battled hard, and placed comfortably in 2nd place OA with a time of 19:01

Aaron Mailman had a strong race for the team, placing 4th OA, winning his AG with a time of just under 20 minutes

Vicki was the first female in for the team, placing 4th out of all H+P-ers, and 3rd OA for women in a time of 22:18

Michelle and Nicole were in next for the teams with very solid finishes well under 26 minutes

Mike Hewitson was 5th for the team in the official results, finishing in 26:36.

Laura Hewitson was chasing her husband down, finishing in 26:45 and winning her category!

Jessica came in just behind Laura, placing 4th in her category!

Despite not running very much at all in the last few months, Will still managed a Santa PB of 34 minutes!

Andrew and Heather Heij both ran together and had a blast coming in 8th and 9th officially for the team.

Cari and Sam both ran with their kids in the 3K run!  They also both managed 2nd place in their category, nice work!

Onwards to 2015!  

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Princess Health and The Medical School as Hereditary Plutocracy - Retiring Board Chair Sanford Weill of Cornell Weill Medical School Names His Own Daughter as New Chair. Princessiccia

Princess Health and The Medical School as Hereditary Plutocracy - Retiring Board Chair Sanford Weill of Cornell Weill Medical School Names His Own Daughter as New Chair. Princessiccia

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As I have written before, sometimes you just could not have made this stuff up.

The Retiring Board Chairman Appoints His Own Daughter to Succeed Him

The most even handed reporting on this story was in Inside Higher Ed,


Leadership of the board that oversees Cornell University�s medical college is passing from father to daughter, an unusual transition of power for a higher education board.

Weill Cornell Medical College�s Board of Overseers has been chaired for the past two decades by its namesake and major donor, Sandy Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup.

His daughter, Jessica Bibliowicz, is now set to take over Weill's role. She is the founder and former CEO of a major insurance brokerage, and has also been on the board for a decade.

Let me just dissect this a bit.  Weill Cornell Medical College is a large, prestigious medical school located in New York City, and part of Cornell University.  The chair of its Board of Overseers for the last two decades as been one Sanford I Weill.  Mr Weill is a famous finance executive, formerly CEO of Citigroup from 1998 - 2003, remained chairman of the board of Citigroup through 2006, and is now chairman emeritus (look here). 

According to a Cornell press release, the new chairperson, ms Jessica Bibliowicz, is a

Cornell University graduate in 1981 and after working 18 years in financial services, Ms. Bibliowicz became CEO of National Financial Partners in 1999, a financial services firm that specializes in benefits and wealth management. The company went public in 2003 and was sold to Madison Dearborn in 2013.

 Currently,

Ms. Bibliowicz is a senior advisor at Bridge Growth Partners and serves on the board of directors of Sotheby's(NYSE: BID); Realogy (NYSE: RLGY); and the Asia Pacific Fund (NYSE: APB). She is a board director/trustee of Prudential Insurance Funds....

The Inside Higher Ed article noted that

In a statement, Cornell said, Weill Cornell Medical College engaged in a comprehensive process to select its chair of the Board of Overseers by canvassing multiple members of the board in full consultation with senior leadership. The search was headed by a group of senior trustee overseers with extensive knowledge of the institution and Weill Cornell firmly believes it has selected the best choice as chair.'

The New York Times reporting of the succession, oddly in the Dealbook blog, which is focused on finance and Wall Street, not medicine, made it seem, however, that Mr Weill handpicked his daughter to succeed him,

he increasingly felt that the time was nearing to appoint a successor.

'I felt like it was a good time for younger blood,' he said.

Ultimately, he decided upon his daughter,

The Cornell press release lauded Mr Weill, the retiring chair as providing "bold and visionary leadership," having "enduring dedication," exemplifying "benevolence and unwavering resolve to ensure a healthier future," etc, etc.  It called him a "self-made man who exemplifies the philosophy of leading by example."  It quoted the current dean of the medical school, Dr Laurie Glimcher, (whose apparent conflict of interest as a board member of Bristol-Myers-Squibb we discussed here and here) calling his accomplishments "breathtaking."  It quoted the university president, David Skorton, calling him again a "visionary."

In the Dealbook article, Dr Glimcher further praised the chairperson designate, Ms Bibliowicz, as "a person of enormous energy and passion," who will "bring her energy, her connections and her passion for medicine and medical research and education to the role."


The Inside Higher Ed article noted some vague questions about the position of chair of the board of trustees of an important medical school being passed from father to daughter,

'On the other side of the coin, within-family succession planning adds complexity to the issue -- it just raises certain questions,' [former vice president for programs and research at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges Peter] Eckel said.

However, Mr Eckel did not really list these questions.

Later, the article referred to "nepotistic arrangements," presumably in part referring to this father - daughter transition, but then found someone to defend them. 

The Real Questions

Weill Cornell Medical College is part of a non-profit organization.  Nonprofit organizations have no owners. Non-profit organizations are formed to support particular missions, under the stewardship of boards of trustees (or directors or overseers).  These boards have three basic duties [italics added]

 Duty of care: Board members are expected to actively participate in organizational planning and decision-making and to make sound and informed judgments.
Duty of loyalty: When acting on behalf of the organization, board members must put the interests of the nonprofit before any personal or professional concerns and avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Duty of obedience: Board members must ensure that the organization complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and that it remains committed to its established mission.

Thus, the transfer of the position of chair of the board from parent to offspring, apparently directly under the control of the parent, is questionable on its face, suggesting that family interests came before the "interests of the nonprofit."  Such transfers may commonly occur on the boards of privately family held for-profit companies, but are basically unheard of for medical schools or other large academic medical nonprofit organizations, where they certainly could appear nepotistic.

That concern is amplified when neither parent or child have any appreciable background or training in the work of the nonprofit.  Neither Mr Weill nor Ms Bibliowicz seem to have any training or background in health care, biomedical research, or specifically medicine.  Yet Weill Cornell Medical School's basic mission is to train students to be physicians.  So how well either or their personal judgments about the policy and operations of a medical school are "informed" is not exactly clear.  

Further concerns are raised by the background of the father in this father daughter transaction, the part of the background that was entirely ignored by the rather fawning public discussion of the transaction in the Cornell press release, and also the NY Times Dealbook article.

In fact, Mr Weill's leadership in the past was of Citigroup during the lead up to the global financial collapse of 2008.  Citigroup, the poster child for the too big to fail bank, nearly went bankrupt, and required a huge government bailout.  Its near collapse, again apparently only prevented by government action, is widely considered to have been a major cause of the finance disaster starting in 2008.  As we noted in a 2009 blog post about Weill Cornell,   The Sellout, by Charles Gasparino, featured vivid portraits of the bad leadership that lead to the collapse, including specifically Mr Weill,

But in reality, Will never really ran anything. He was a visionary, to be sure, but one whose vision was so myopically focused on building the empire had lusted for for so long and on its share price that he ignored just about everything else. (p. 144)

Furthermore, this was Mr Weill's listing in the "key people" section of the book,

Former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, Weill created the idea of the one-stop-shopping mega-financial conglomerate, engineering a series of mergers ... and in the process created the world's largest financial company.  Famously obsessed with his firm's stock price, Weill announced his resignation in 2003 after investigators discovered he'd pressured a stock analyst, Jack Grubman, to raise his rating on AT&T, where Weill was on the board, in return for ensuring that Grubman's children got into an exclusive preschool.

Furthermore, in the Time magazine series on the "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis," Mr Weill is listed as  "blameworthy" because,

Who decided banks had to be all things to all customers? Weill did. Starting with a low-end lender in Baltimore, he cobbled together the first great financial supermarket, Citigroup. Along the way, Weill's acquisitions (Smith Barney, Travelers, etc.) and persistent lobbying shattered Glass-Steagall, the law that limited the investing risks banks could take. Rivals followed Citi. The swollen banks are now one of the country's major economic problems. Every major financial firm seems too big to fail, leading the government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to keep them afloat. The biggest problem bank is Weill's Citigroup. The government has already spent $45 billion trying to fix it. 

In a post on the Baseline Scenario blog, Simon Johnson, author of another authoritative book on the financial crisis, 13 Bankers, wrote this about Citigroup leadership,

Citigroup is a very large bank that has amassed a huge amount of political power. Its current and former executives consistently push laws and regulations in the direction of allowing Citi and other megabanks to take on more risk, particularly in the form of complex highly leveraged bets. Taking these risks allows the executives and traders to get a lot of upside compensation in the form of bonuses when things go well � while the downside losses, when they materialize, become the taxpayer�s problem.

Citigroup is also, collectively, stupid on a grand scale. The supposedly smart people at the helm of Citi in the mid-2000s ran them hard around � and to the edge of bankruptcy. A series of unprecedented massive government bailouts was required in 2000-09 � and still the collateral damage to the economy has proved enormous. Give enough clever people the wrong incentives and they will destroy anything.

Physicians are supposedly rigorously trained, and tasked with upholding important ethical principles.   So did it make sense to entrust the stewardship of a premier American medical school to the man who engineered the expansion of Citigroup that turned out to be "stupid on a grand scale," in order to "get a lot of upside compensation," while leaving the "downside losses" to become "the taxpayer's problem," so that the "collateral damage to the economy has proved enormous?"   Does it make sense to allow him to choose his own daughter, who has no more medical experience than he did (which was zero), to steward the school in the future?

I wonder what Cornell medical students, or physician alumni would say, if they felt safe enough to answer the question?

As we wrote in 2009,  boards of trustees of not-for-profit health care institutions have a primary duty to uphold the institutions' missions.  Thus, one would think such boards would be selected according to their dedication to their missions.  But perhaps, in the grubby real world, there may be more important criteria, possibly such as the size of their donations to the institution.  Furthermore, those likely to donate the most  may be more likely to be richest (and perhaps most in need to making themselves appear philanthropic and public-spirited) than the most fervent upholders of patient care, teaching and research.

Maybe giving stewardship of our once proud health care institutuions to people most likely to defend their missions, rather than most likely to donate a lot of money, would result in somewhat poorer institutions which do a better job of patient care, teaching and research.

You heard it here first.  
 

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

Princess Health and Is Meat Unhealthy? Part V. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Is Meat Unhealthy? Part V. Princessiccia

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In this post, I'll examine the possible relationship between meat intake and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, and it is strongly linked to lifestyle factors.

Non-industrial cultures

Non-industrial cultures have an extremely low prevalence of diabetes, whether they are near-vegan or near-carnivorous. This is supported by blood glucose measurements in a variety of cultures, from the sweet potato farmers of the New Guinea highlands to the arctic Inuit hunters. Here is what Otto Schaefer, director of the Northern Medical Research Unit at Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton, Canada, had to say about the Inuit in the excellent book Western Diseases (Trowell and Burkitt, 1981):
Read more �

Monday, 15 December 2014

Princess Health and EHRs and Ebola in the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital ED: the ED physician finally speaks out. Princessiccia

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At my Oct. 2, 2014 post "Did Electronic Medical Record-mediated problems contribute to or cause the current Dallas Ebola scare?" (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/10/did-electronic-medical-record-mediated.html) I had written:

While I have no evidence as to any role of EHRs in this seemingly strange, cavalier and incomprehensible medical decision to send this man home, resulting in potential exposure of numerous other individuals to Ebola (and I am certainly not in a position to have such evidence), I believe this possibility [that is, an EHR-related information snafu - ed.] needs to be investigated fully.
 
I then did an update:

10/3/2014 Update:

My suspicions were apparently correct.  [The hospital admitted an EHR role - ed.]

Then, the hospital retracted its admission, blur and obfuscation broke loose in the press, and the situation became foggy.  See posts by Roy Poses and myself at query link http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Ebola%20virus, including Dr. Poses' Nov. 24, 2014 post "Public Relations and the Obfuscation of Management Errors - Texas Health Resources Dodges its Ebola Questions" at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/11/public-relations-and-obfuscation-of.html.

Finally, the primary clinician involved speaks.  Do read the whole article, as it delves into behind-the-scenes issues:

ER doctor discusses role in Ebola patient�s initial misdiagnosis
By REESE DUNKLIN and STEVE THOMPSON
Dallas Morning News
Dec. 6, 2014
http://www.dallasnews.com/ebola/headlines/20141206-er-doctor-discusses-role-in-ebola-patients-initial-misdiagnosis.ece

... "[ED physician Joseph Howard Meier's] notes in the medical records say he had reviewed the nursing notes. Hospital officials told Congress that the ER physician several times accessed portions of the electronic records where the nurse had recorded Duncan�s arrival from Africa. It wasn�t clear, though, �which information the physician read,� hospital officials told Congress. 

Meier told The News he hadn�t seen the Africa notation in Duncan�s records. The physician said the hospital�s electronic medical records system contained a lot of information, which, like patients, �must also be triaged.� 


Clinicians in an ED have to "triage" information from their records systems, just like patients need to be triaged?  That is a candid and astonishing (to anyone with common sense) admission.

Paper charts never had those problems in my own time working in the ED.

Further, ED charts used to be relatively brief, which is why as a Chief Medical Informatics Officer I recommended document imaging systems only in ED's, to make charts available 24/7/anywhere, and data transcriptionists to capture important data into computers later, not full EHR systems where clinicians enter data which I felt (and still feel) are inappropriate in faced-paced, high-risk settings.

(Put another way, the experiments of direct data entry by busy clinicians, and clinicians attempting to drink information from a tangled cybernetic EHR firehose, are proving a failure.)

... The �travel information was not easily visible in my standard workflow,� he said. �This has now been modified very effectively.�

Modified only after near-catastrophe.  How many other "modifications" (i.e., experimental software changes) will be needed over time in this and other EHRs, I ask?  (Perhaps 10,000 such as here: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-fixing-those-9553-ehr-issues.html?)

... The News asked Meier whether knowing Duncan�s travel history would have changed his evaluation. 

�If he told me he came from Liberia, this would have prompted me to contact the CDC and begin an evaluation for Ebola,� Meier said, �but the likelihood would have still been low since Mr. Duncan denied any sick contacts.�

Over the next few hours, Meier ordered tests, along with an IV for saline. He prescribed extra-strength Tylenol, which the nurse gave Duncan at 1:24 a.m. Meier reviewed Duncan�s vital signs. CT scans of Duncan�s head were �unremarkable,� the medical records say, showing no sign of sinusitis.

Doctors typically order CT scans to rule out more serious possibilities, such as a hemorrhage or meningitis. In his responses to The News, Meier said he ordered the CT scan because of Duncan�s headache.

Meier did not say whether the CT scan�s lack of an indication of sinusitis factored into his diagnosis. �Sinusitis is mostly a clinical diagnosis,� he said.

At 3:02 a.m., Duncan�s temperature was 103 degrees, his medical records say. Sixteen minutes later, however, Meier entered a note saying: �Patient is feeling better and comfortable with going home.� Meier told The News he hadn�t seen the higher temperature in Duncan�s chart.

Duncan was discharged at 3:37 a.m. with the diagnosis of sinusitis. His last recorded fever, at 3:32 a.m., was 101.2 degrees. Meier prescribed Duncan the antibiotic Zithromax, 250-milligram tablets, to be taken twice the first day and once daily for four more days.

I note two things:

1.  If an EHR company has hiring practices allegedly such as described via Histalk blog at my Aug. 15, 2010 post "EPIC's outrageous recommendations on healthcare IT project staffing" (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/epics-outrageous-recommendations-on.html), where rank-novice recent college graduates suddenly become EHR experts afters some transfusion of wisdom at corporate HQ (perhaps via this alien neural interface device that imparts the Knowledge of the Ancients: http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Repository_of_knowledge?), then what can one expect?


The Stargate neural interface device that imparts the Knowledge of the Ancients via direct brain download.  Presto - instant EHR expert!


and

2.   I note what I am going to somewhat satirically going to call the "Silverstein EHR principle", that states:

  • When bizarre and otherwise inexplicable information-related snafus occur in hospitals, especially in fast-paced, high-risk areas, suspect bad health IT as causative or contributory as #1 in your differential diagnosis (or post-mortem, as the case may be).

-- SS

Sunday, 14 December 2014

Princess Health and Yale Medicine: "Straddling medicine and journalism, a former resident keeps an eye on the science press". Princessiccia

Princess Health and Yale Medicine: "Straddling medicine and journalism, a former resident keeps an eye on the science press". Princessiccia

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As a Yale medical school alumnus (post doctoral fellowship in Medical Informatics 1992-4, faculty in Medical Informatics 1994-6), I receive their literary magazine "Yale Medicine."

In the current issue I just received is a story about another Yale medical school graduate who through writing, both professionally and via blogs, is a gadfly against bad medicine - and bad media about bad medicine - like myself and the other bloggers at Healthcare Renewal, at http://yalemedicine.yale.edu/autumn2014/people/alumni/204173.

His name is Ivan Oransky, MD.

... After his internship, Oransky chose journalism over the practice of medicine. �It wasn�t the easiest for my parents to get used to, but once they saw that I was really happy and accomplishing things and adding value to the world, they got it,� he recalled. He was hired as founding editor in chief of Praxis Post, a webzine that was dubbed �Vanity Fair for doctors.� Following that, he was deputy editor of The Scientist and managing editor of Scientific American.

In 2010 Oransky started two blogs to keep tabs on the science communication ecosystem: Retraction Watch, which analyzes research corrections and retractions and which he runs with Anesthesiology News editor Adam Marcus; and Embargo Watch, a site that monitors premature news breaks and the effects embargoes have on news coverage. After four years as executive editor of Reuters Health, Oransky joined MedPage Today in July 2013.

The Yale Medicine piece is worth a read at the link above.

-- SS
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