Links to 13th June

 

The week in links

Education resources, open access, copyright, bad research and lobbying, life without newspapers- insight from the1940s, Twitter hype vs the numbers, browser innovation, Digital Britain, life without broadband, French anti-filesharing law overturned.

The week in links

Education resources, open access, copyright, bad research and lobbying, life without newspapers- insight from the1940s, Twitter hype vs the numbers, browser innovation, Digital Britain, life without broadband, French anti-filesharing law overturned.

Filed under: Admin, Design, Health, Links, Mobile devices, Music & internet radio, UK copyright, Uncategorized, Copyright, Creative Commons, Digital Britain, digital britain unconference, HADOPI, journalism, net neutrality, OFCOM, open access, P2P, twitter

Facebook, cancer, miracle cure

Update on the social-networking-causes-health-risks story. Previous post here

Ben Goldacre and Dr Aric Sigman on BBC Newsnight discuss Sigman’s paper with Jeremy Paxman. Also featured, the views of Professor Susan Greenfield, source of The Daily Mail story:

Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist

‘Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.’

Lots of fun. Best bit is when Goldacre, having pointed out that Sigman has ignored all research evidence which contradicts his theory, says ‘there are several research papers which contradict your theory and I’m going to post them on Badscience.net’.

Which he did. He also has a link to Sigman’s full paper.

At Badscience.net you can now watch the extract from Newsnight, look up the references and read the comments thread.

Which allows you to be better informed than people who rely only on newspapers and TV.

www.badscience.net

Filed under: Health, Media, Research methods, Aric Sigman, Badscience.net, Ben Goldacre, Newsnight, social networking, Susan Greenfield, The Daily Mail

Dore on R4, transcripts available

Face the Facts: The Dore Programme: controversial treatment for
dyslexia has gone bust.’ Broadcast on Friday 15th August.

In which we learned that:

Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at Oxford University has a colleague who uses the Dore Balsall Common study as a training exercise for undergraduate students. This was also the primary purpose of looking at the Dore research for the course I teach. Then it became a news story.

Kenny Logan, who has frequently endorsed the Dore programme as helping with his dyslexia, is a director of Dore’s parent company – Camden Holdings Limited.

Transcript of the John Waite’s investigation now available from this link. BBC Radio 4

Transcript of You and Yours 19.05.2008 interview with Kenny Logan.

From the archive

“On Friday 23.05.2008 the Dore company, based in Kenilworth Warwickshire, closed it’s UK operation with the loss of 50 jobs and placed the company in the hands of advisors.”

Filed under: Dore, Health, Research methods, Dore, Face the Facts, You and Yours

Dore on R4

‘Fri 15th August You and Yours, 12.00-1.00pm
12.30: Face the Facts: The Dore Programme: controversial treatment for
dyslexia has gone bust.’

On BBC Radio 4

and listen again for 7 days

via

Brainduck

Given  their previous reporting on Dore, which was just embarrassing for an investigative consumer affairs programme, it’s to be hoped You and Yours ‘fess up, Face the Facts and decently credit the Dore bloggers for reporting this story.

Previous Dore coverage and links on this site grouped under Categories

Filed under: Dore, Health, Media, Research methods, Dore, You and Yours

Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, whose time management lecture we featured in July, has lost his battle with pancreatic cancer.

Thanks to Dragonmaster for the update.

Filed under: Health, Learning

Mapping, GIS, disease

“A system of electronic mapping which allows many different types of data to be layered onto a single image is being used to improve healthcare across Rwanda.

The digital maps, called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), are designed to compile information from numerous databases and use it to both track and predict outbreaks of disease.

This can then be used to help developing countries best utilise their limited resources. For example, GIS is used to organise data on clusters of disease and the availability of drinking water.”

BBC technology

See also, data mapping, point maps, John Snow, cholera, London 1854

Wikipedia link

Filed under: Health, Research methods, User Interface Design

Time Management

Randy Pausch on time management. Lecture at University of Virginia November 2007. Video 1hour 16 mins.

Why? Time management is vital to study, especially part-time study.

What do I get for over an hour of my time? Enough tips to save hours a week of wasted time, for the rest of your life.

Some important lessons for life. Like? To focus on the important objectives, forget the things that don’t matter. And then advice on how to put this into practice.

Available from ‘iTunes University’ as a video podcast from Carnegie Mellon University.
I’ve asked the class to try iTunes U to consider the interface and podcast subscription model. Where people face restrictions on installing software, or have objections to using iTunes, there are several alternatives.

Youtube. Search term: Randy Pausch time management. (This is quicker than looking for it on iTunes, but subscribing may offer other benefits.)

A page of links celebrating the legacy of Randy Pausch’s work, lectures and presentations is maintained by Dr. Gabriel Robins at
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy/
Read this first if you need more context. Once you have watched the video, if you wish to re-cap the lecture slides are available as a PDF (12Mb) from there.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch

Filed under: Health, Learning, User Interface Design

Meta science reporting

Ben Goldacre has a piece on media coverage of health and medical research.

1. Mostly, press coverage is pretty poor.

He cites a US study
“After almost two years and 500 stories, the project has found that journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms.” (Schwitzer, 2008 )

2. It affects people’s behaviour. (Kylie Minogue public health effect)

3. It affects scientists. “if a study was covered by The New York Times it was significantly more likely to be cited by other academic papers.”

Read the Bad Science column in The Guardian edition. No links,  no comments  *: the print version to read on screen.

Now, read the same column in Ben’s Bad Science blog. Referenced and linked. Easy to look up the Schwitzer article and other sources he cites. There is also a debate in the comments to his post which manages to remain largely on topic for more than 20 entries and includes some useful sources.

Comments remain largely on topic for more than 20 entries. How often does that happen? In itself, a blogosphere phenomenon worthy of study.

[ * Correction: about 200 comments. My mistake. But lots of them are completely off topic.]

How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products, and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories
PLoS Med Gary Schwitzer article

Public Library of Science
PLoS Med

Filed under: Health, Media, Research methods

Dore, bloggers and Bad Science

It would be gratifying to report that the recent suspension of activities by the Dore company was the direct result of a better public understanding of research methods.

Unfortunately, it is not quite as clear cut as that. The direct cause of Dore’s demise seems to be financial. First Australian, then UK and USA operations have been suspended following unsustainable losses rather than methodological concerns.

Filed under: Dore, Health, Media, Research methods

from the Annals of Improbable Research

The Relative Price of Nothing

“Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy,” Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, Ziv Carmon and Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 299, March 5, 2008, pp. 1016–7. (Thanks to Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, who variously are at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Duke University, and INSEAD (Singapore), report:

we studied the effect of price on analgesic response to placebo pills…. After randomization, half of the participants were informed that the drug had a regular price of $2.50 per pill and half that the price had been discounted to $0.10 per pill (no reason for the discount was mentioned). All participants received identical placebo pills… pain reduction was greater for the regular-price pill.”

Link to free edition of the magazine

“Our goal is to make people laugh, then make them think. We also hope to spur people’s curiosity, and to raise the question: How do you decide what’s important and what’s not, and what’s real and what’s not — in science and everywhere else?”

The Annals of Improbable Research

Filed under: Health, Research methods