Swine Flu Alert

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Is the Internet Making us Stupid?

In this thought-provoking podcast several brain gurus and media experts make the argument that the Worldwide Web is creating generations of information-addicted people who crave distraction, have difficulty focusing, can't analyze complex issues, and pride themselves on being multi-taskers when they're really just inefficient serial taskers, crashing their cars while chattering blythely on cell phones. I'm so glad to know this. Now I can blame the Internet for my ADD tendencies. And I'll be extra careful with my mobile telephony.

Google and User Happiness

I was interested in the presentation Daniel Russell made at Mt. Zion's H.M. Fishbon Memorial Library in November, 2008 because he's Google's main man in charge of "user happiness." Also because Google is the 800 pound gorilla in the information jungle, where librarians sometimes feel like an endangered species.

Yesterday I gave a PubMed coaching session to a physician who Googles using natural language queries to find journal articles on specific clinical topics. Most of the time he considers his searching successful; that is, he can find one or two good articles. That's all he wants anyway. His only complaint is that he can't always get full text; hence his request for a PubMed coaching session from yours truly.

I start with the unhappy news that PubMed includes links to free full text only when provided by open access publishers. Most publishers want to be paid for their content, so libraries spend millions of dollars providing that content to their affiliated users, something most people don't recognize or understand. I end with some good news/bad news: open access publishing may some day replace the existing subscription-based scholarly publishing model. But probably not in our lifetime.

Then I give my spiel about how using PubMed's controlled vocabulary MeSH (medical subject headings) can increase precision and recall and is especially useful for very complex searches or very exhaustive ones, such as when you're designing a research project and absolutely, positively have to know everything that's been published in your area of research. I could tell he wasn't buying it. Too much work for too little return. He was perfectly fine with his established system of Googling. The truth is that not everyone wants or needs to be a PubMed virtuoso. But if you'd like to add to your PubMed searching repertoire, please give me a call, 206-6639. It's free...except for your time, that is.

Experiment you can do at home

Check out this video. There may be no evidence that shows a connection between cell phones and brain cancer, but what about the brain popping problem?

Progress

A picture is worth 1,000 words. 'Nuff said.

Glass of Resveratrol Anyone?

If you're not comatose, you may have noted the recent media attention to the "evidence" that resveratrol, a substance in red wine, adds years to your life and may contribute to a happier death when your time finally does come. By the way, it also cures wrinkles which is more important than longevity, at least from a business point of view.

Health reporting happens. People read it and believe it. Whether it's good reporting or bad, people believe it equally. I've recently become aware of a web site that assigns grades in the form of stars to health articles in the news. Health News Reviews focuses on U.S. news and covers broadcast as well as print media. It is written by University of Minnesota Health Journalism program's Gary Schwitzer and grades health news on 9 no-nonsense criteria including the following: [Does the story] evaluate the quality of the evidence? Quantify the potential harms? Quantify the potential benefits? Use independent sources and identify conflicts of interest? Compare the new approach with existing alternatives? His review of the recent 60 Minutes story on resveratrol got only one star out of 9. That's okay, if it gets rid of wrinkles I can go with one star.

Free is Good

A Springer journal might not be your first choice of journals to publish in, but here's some news that might influence your decision: Springer Publishing Company has just signed an agreement with University of California's Digital Library that allows for free open access publishing for any and all of their many journals. Well, it's not exactly free because the publishing cost has been rolled into UC's journal licensing agreement, but it's free to you as author. Here are more details of what Springer is calling its Open Choice plan