Healthcare
The anti-Jenny blogosphere
Medical and science blogs are aghast at Jenny McCarthy’s comments that I reviewed earlier today. Let me list some of the more choice comments. Read More...
The anti-vaccination tragedy
Mar/31/09 10:07 Filed in: Vaccines | Healthcare Policy | Pseudoscience | Pharmaceuticals | Evidence based medicine
I have written about the anti-vaccination movement several times recently, yet every day, I read another article or another comment somewhere that reminds me of this situation. Today, I came across a recently published article in The Lancet, one of the most respected peer-reviewed medical journals, which reinforced one of the consequences of the anti-vaccination movement. The article, Measles in Europe: an epidemiological assessment, states that there were 12,232 cases of measles in Europe during 2006 and 2007. Most cases were unvaccinated or improperly vaccinated children. Read More...
Wikipedia–bad medicine
The internet has become a great tool for researching information from new gadgets to statistical analysis of politics. One of the most popular websites for research is Wikipedia, an online, democratic encyclopedia. As I have discussed previously, I link to it frequently, to give an overview about a particular topic. I admit I go to the website many times a day to get more information on a topic of interest to me, sometimes just for entertainment, and occasionally to laugh at the quality of articles. Wikipedia functions as a democracy, meaning anyone can edit it. Sometimes it appears that the project is more of an anarchy, but there are “police”, called administrators or admins, and several levels of bureaucracy above the police, to control the situation. The admins are elected by the community of editors. They can block editors (kind of a punishment), and as best as I can tell, every single action by anyone is subject to a lot of yelling, screaming, whining, and complaining. Actually, a social scientist might find the whole system quite fascinating, as I do.
A Wikipedia article is almost always the #1 hit when a google search is done on a subject. This might be useful if you are interested in episodes of 24 or need to know all about the Boston Red Sox. In most cases, the quality of the articles are not a life and death issue. If a Yankees fan chooses to vandalize (yes, that’s the term used by Wikipedia cognoscenti to describe actions that aren’t approved by the general Wikipedia community) the article, I am relatively certain that the world will not collapse into barbarism and a new Dark Age. Read More...
A Wikipedia article is almost always the #1 hit when a google search is done on a subject. This might be useful if you are interested in episodes of 24 or need to know all about the Boston Red Sox. In most cases, the quality of the articles are not a life and death issue. If a Yankees fan chooses to vandalize (yes, that’s the term used by Wikipedia cognoscenti to describe actions that aren’t approved by the general Wikipedia community) the article, I am relatively certain that the world will not collapse into barbarism and a new Dark Age. Read More...