Medicine and Science
The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) 2009 Mammography Screening Recommendations Were Understandably Ignored by the Medical Establishment and Its Patients (01 May 2013)
Mistaken or Missed Medical Diagnoses Resulted in $38 Billion in Malpractice Payouts between 1986 and 2010 — Because Most of these Claims Were Probably Legitimate, the Study’s Lead Author Thinks that Medicine Has a Significant Problem (23 April 2013)
The Office for Human Research Protections Caught 23 Universities and Medical Institutions in Producing Unethical Research Consent Protocols — Regarding Variably Oxygenating Preterm Infants — an Example of What Can Go Wrong, when Medical Professionals Don’t Think Critically — and Continuing Proof that the Institutional Review Board System that Is Supposed to Prevent these Abuses Doesn’t Work (11 April 2013)
The Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians Indicates that for Many Men, the Potential Harms of Undergoing PSA Screening Outweigh its Unreliable Forecasting Value (09 April 2013)
A Study Related to Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Use — Reveals How Little Critically Important Medical Research Information Makes It Out to Physicians and Patients (22 February 2013)
The Fact that It Is Difficult to Get Pricing Information for Major Health Care Procedures — Demonstrates Just How Out of Control American Health Care Costs Are — a Study Published in JAMA Internal Medicine (14 February 2013)
High Blood Pressure Patients — Meta-Analysis Shows that Dual Blockade of the Renin-Angiotensin System Does Not Reduce All-Cause Mortality — and Comes at the Price of Subjecting Many Patients to Noticeably Higher Risks for Hyperkalemia, Hypotension, and Renal Failure (29 January 2013)
National Research Council (NRC) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) Health Report — Shows How Far the United States Lags Affluent Nations — in Longevity and Accepted Indicators of Health Quality — Tables and Graphs Dramatically Make the Point (10 January 2013)
Another NRA Extremist Joins Wayne LaPierre in Advocating for Still More Gun Toting — this Time in Elementary Schools — Republican Representative Louie Gohmert and His Impractical Idea about How the Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy Could Have Been Prevented (17 December 2012)
A Quotation from Dr. Mary-Claire King — President of the American Society of Human Genetics — Advocates for Scientists’ Duty to Speak Up in a Culture Drowning in Lies and Ignorance — but Her Words Illustrate the Chasm between Thoughtful Evidence-Seekers and the Majority of the Population (and Its Often Intentionally Misleading Leaders) (08 December 2012)
Uncertainty in Science — Mistaken Assumptions Regarding Genetic Mutation Rates May Have Significantly Overestimated the Rate of Evolutionary Change — and Four General Points about Public Confusion regarding the Scientific Process (30 October 2012)
Scientific Fraud and Misconduct Appear to Be Escalating — They Now Account for 67 Percent of Retracted Science and Medical Research Articles — Worse, Sophisticated Fraud Has Not Yet Been Uncovered (02 October 2012)
Bradyarrythmia (Bradycardia) — Meaning Pathologically Slow Heart Rate, including in this Instance, a Noticeably Irregular Pulse — the Apparent Result of My Newly Developed Hypersensitivity (Allergy) to Ibuprofen (Advil®) for Osteoarthritis — an Example of Lay Medical Analysis, Performed while Hiking a Colorado “Fourteener” (24 August 2012)
Reoperation Is Necessary in 20 Percent of Breast Conserving Cancer Surgeries in England — the American Rate May Be Similar — on Talking to Patients about Medical Uncertainty (08 August 2012)
Triumph! — The Gargantuan Olympics of Mind and Motivation — NASA’s Curiosity Lands on Mars (05 August 2012)
If NASA Pulls Curiosity’s Mars Landing Off — We Will Have a National Technological Tour de Force to be Proud of — for the First Time in a Very Long While (05 August 2012)
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Is Much Underdiagnosed in Primary Care, according to a Recent Study — Comments on the Difficulties Posed by Complexity in Medicine (12 July 2012)
Doctors Carrying Grief — Interviews with 20 Oncologists — Dealing with a Continual Stream of Death Is Tough (24 May 2012)
Freedom versus Public Health — an Easily Avoidable Measles Epidemic in Europe Has Weakened the World Effort to Rid the Planet of this too Often (Third World) Fatal Disease — Should There Be Limits on Ignorant People’s Perceived Right to Threaten Other People’s Health? (22 May 2012)
Stirrings of Alarm at Greed’s Rising Distortion of the Scientific Process — (a) The Institute of Medicine’s Warning about Unsubstantiated Medical “Omics” Tests and (b) Academic Psychology’s Courageous Recognition that Some of Its Studies Require Reproducibility Confirmation (16 April 2012)
Three Tips on Hiking with Severe Osteoarthritis (09 April 2012)
Outstanding Science Writing about Gravity and Climate from Germany — This Is the Way Science Communications Ought to Be Done in the United States (17 March 2012)
New Evidence for Antibiotic-Treated Livestock as a Breeding Ground for Drug-Resistant Bacteria that Spread to Humans (27 February 2012)
Faster than Light Neutrinos? — Probably Not — Faulty Wiring Connection Appears to Explain the Discrepancy between Accepted Theory and OPERA’s Calculations Late Last Year (22 February 2012)
An Underappreciated Aspect of Joint Surgery Is the Likelihood that Post-Surgery Performance Will Be Permanently Decreased (Compared to Pre-Injury Levels) in a Significant Proportion of Athletes — an Essay on the Utility of Avoiding Injury and the Psychological Helpfulness of Gratitude in Coping with Reduced Function Afterwards (14 February 2012)
Do Significant Numbers of Physicians Lie or Conceal Information from Patients? — Apparently Yes, Says a Survey from Health Affairs — and an Outrageous Example of Data Manipulation from a Science-Fraud-Committing Cancer Researcher (Anil Potti) (13 February 2012)
Good Science Writing Compared to Bad — an Excellent National Science Foundation Press Release Compared to the Opaque Abstract that it Is Based on — regarding an Ellesmere Island Study of the Permian-Triassic Boundary Extinction (09 February 2012)
Statins Use in Post-Menopausal Women Increases the Risk for Diabetes by as Much as 71 Percent (Compared to Women Who Did Not Take Statins) and 48 Percent (when Data Are Adjusted for Multiple Confounding Variables) — Findings from the Women’s Health Initiative and a Lay Overview by Dr. Mark Hyman (22 January 2012)
Benefit of Annual Prostate Cancer Screening in Low and Average Risk Men Is Still Uncertain — Due to Flaws, the Latest American Study Adds Nothing Especially Helpful to Our Thinking — Regarding the 13-Year Follow-Up to the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (07 January 2012)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reporter, John Fauber, Uncovered the Appearance of Blatant Corruption at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health — another Instance of the Medical-Industrial Complex’s Distortion of Objectively Delivered Medicine (06 January 2012)
Medicine and Science (2011)
Medicine and Science (2010)
