Here's one of the consequences of the new health reform law you might have missed: The number of people seeking treatment for addiction could double, depending upon how many states expand Medicaid programs and how many addicts take advantage of them.
And for many of them, there will be no place to go....
Here's one of the consequences of the new health reform law you might have missed: The number of people seeking treatment for addiction could double, depending upon how many states expand Medicaid programs and how many addicts take advantage of them.
And for many of them, there will be no place to go. "In more than two thirds of the states, treatment clinics are already at or approaching 100 percent capacity," writes Carla K. Johnson (photo) of The Associated Press. That comes from a piece in which Johnson compared federal government data on addiction rates in the 50 states, the capacity of existing treatment programs, and the provisions of the new healthcare law.
The surge of new patients is "expected to push a marginal part of the health care system out of church...
According to an article Tuesday in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Don Sapatkin, the story of the AIDS epidemic's "patient zero" was "sordid...
According to an article Tuesday in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Don Sapatkin, the story of the AIDS epidemic's "patient zero" was "sordid tabloid fare" created by a book publicist to hype the 1987 book And the Band Played On by the journalist Randy Shilts.
Whether or not this charge is fair, there is a bit more to the story.
Patient zero was identified by researchers as a man who had sex with multiple male partners on his travels across the U.S., inoculating them with HIV and accelerating the epidemic. Shilts, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle,...
When the bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, doctors in the medical tent didn't know what to do: Should they run from danger? Should they go outside to help the injured? Should they stay with their patients in the tent?
According to...
When the bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, doctors in the medical tent didn't know what to do: Should they run from danger? Should they go outside to help the injured? Should they stay with their patients in the tent?
According to a stirring piece by Sushrut Jangi in The New England Journal of Medicine, a family physician, Pierre Rouzier,
texted his wife what might be a good-bye message: There's a bomb at the finish line and we have to help. “I didn't want to die,” he said, “but there were people out there.”
One woman "held his arm and said, "I'm going to die right here, and no one is going to know who I am.' Rouzier held her hand and told her, 'You're not going to die.'"
Much of the piece is a mini-profile of...
Tests done at the now bankrupt Cetero Research lab in Houston to assure the safety of drugs seeking FDA approval were, in many cases, fraudulent, according to an investigation by Rob Garver...
Tests done at the now bankrupt Cetero Research lab in Houston to assure the safety of drugs seeking FDA approval were, in many cases, fraudulent, according to an investigation by Rob Garver and Charles Seife at ProPublica.
In a long story that appeared last week, they reported that "about 100 drugs, including sophisticated chemotherapy compounds and addictive prescription painkillers, had been approved for sale in the United States at least in part on the strength of Cetero Houston's tainted tests."
Astonishingly, Garver and Seife reported that the FDA has apparently not taken any action on the drugs that were approved on the basis of fraudulent testing, and it has not even revealed what those drugs are. "To this day, the agency refuses to disclose the names of the...
[I will be updating throughout the day with thoughts about Boston Marathon coverage.]
Allow me to say that as an alum and an employee of MIT, it was shocking to learn that the campus had become the scene of a terrorist shootout. The most violent event I can think of on the MIT campus was when it was...
[I will be updating throughout the day with thoughts about Boston Marathon coverage.]
Allow me to say that as an alum and an employee of MIT, it was shocking to learn that the campus had become the scene of a terrorist shootout. The most violent event I can think of on the MIT campus was when it was tear-gassed during Vietham War-era protests. But that was nothing like this.
And condolences to the family of the MIT police officer who was killed. I'm afraid I still cherish university campuses as a place for study and reflection; I'm always heartened to walk through MIT and see students buried in textbooks or collaborating on a project. That officer gave his life to help protect the unique place of MIT in the world, as a distinguished institution that contributes so much more to the world than terrorists can ever hope to erase. I hope that can provide some comfort to his family.
* * *
If you'll pardon the...
Last week, researchers at the University of Bristol published a study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in which they report that much of what passes for research in neuroscience is--what's the word I'm looking for?--worthless....
Last week, researchers at the University of Bristol published a study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in which they report that much of what passes for research in neuroscience is--what's the word I'm looking for?--worthless.
The researchers, led by Marcus R. Munafo, entitled their study, "Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience." In their abstract, they note that "a study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect," and it also allows for "statistically significant" results that do not represent real effects.
"Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low," they write. That means the studies are likely to overestimate the size of any effect they find, and less likely to...
Links--too numerous to describe in detail, but too good to pass up:
--Nicola Jones had a short update April 2 in Nature on the muzzling of Canadian government...
Links--too numerous to describe in detail, but too good to pass up:
--Nicola Jones had a short update April 2 in Nature on the muzzling of Canadian government scientists in seven federal agencies, which has drawn protests from Canadian science writers, among others. Jones reports that Canada's information commissioner has launched an investigation into the practice. Roxanne Palmer of International Business Times asks, in a longer story, which country is more open with regard to scientific research: Canada, the U.S., or China? The Tracker's carefully considered point of view...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced vaccine critic who claimed to link vaccines to autism and helped create a worldwide anti-vaccine movement, was featured prominently on the front page of a British newspaper over the weekend.
Wakefield's paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was later retracted. An investigation has accused him of fraud. And numerous studies have failed to find any evidence that vaccines cause autism. Yet a press release that he issued was reprinted by Britain's The Independent as if it were an Op-Ed comment.
In the press release, Wakefield, who may have done more than any other individual to discourage parents from vaccinating their children, blamed the government for a measles outbreak in the UK that has afflicted nearly...
[Updates with link to Scientific American stories.]
As I write, it's less than 24 hours since two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the oldest marathon in the country and one of the nation's greatest amateur sporting events. Many reporters and others are reminding...
[Updates with link to Scientific American stories.]
As I write, it's less than 24 hours since two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the oldest marathon in the country and one of the nation's greatest amateur sporting events. Many reporters and others are reminding us that early reports in the aftermath of violence are often wrong. That was the case following the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings. Even such prestigious news outlets as The New York Times made mistakes in the first hours.
And the same thing seems to have happened here. Initial reports said investigators had found two unexploded bombs after the blasts. But that was later retracted, and...
I had never heard of Markus Persson when I ran across him in an online story at The New Yorker, but I had heard of his most famous creation--the video...
I had never heard of Markus Persson when I ran across him in an online story at The New Yorker, but I had heard of his most famous creation--the video game Minecraft. I haven't played Minecraft. I haven't actually seen it. All right; my six-year-old told me about it.
In a piece entitled "The Creator," Simon Parkin tells us the story of the creation of the game and of Persson, a 33-year-old Swedish programmer who thinks of himself as "only a workmanlike coder." The game has sold more than 20 million copies, Parkin tells us, and Persson has earned more than $100 million from the game and related merchandise. (LEGO is among the companies that have done merchandising deals with Persson and Minecraft.)
Minecraft has rudimentary graphics and sound effects. Its...
The Lancet has just now corrected the obituary of a pioneering epidemiologist after what it calls "an unduly prolonged period of reflection."
The obit was published in...
The Lancet has just now corrected the obituary of a pioneering epidemiologist after what it calls "an unduly prolonged period of reflection."
The obit was published in 1858.
It reported the death of John Snow, who bucked the wisdom of "most medical men at the time" by suggesting that cholera "was a disorder of the digestive system not the blood; and that it was contagious and spread through the oral-faecal route, largely through contaminated drinking water." The medical men widely believed the cause was "miasma, or the stench from decaying vegetable and animal matter."
Here is the original obit, in full:
Dr John Snow: This well-known physician died at noon, on the 16th instant, at his house in Sackville Street, from an attack of apoplexy. His researches on chloroform...
Michelle Boorstein, a religion writer at The Washington Post, writes that following the...
Michelle Boorstein, a religion writer at The Washington Post, writes that following the suicide of the son of the megachurch pastor Rick Warren, "evangelical Christian leaders have begun a national conversation about how their beliefs might sometimes stigmatize those who struggle with mental illness."
Matthew Warren, who was 27, shot himself Friday, shocking even many close friends of his father's, who didn't know that his son "had long been suicidal," Boorstein writes.
Boorstein's story reports that evangelical leaders are calling "for an end to the shame and secrecy that still surrounds mental illness." The story portrays this as a welcome willingness to deal with an issue long...
David Brown at The Washington Post has a nice story on a government...
David Brown at The Washington Post has a nice story on a government-funded study of premature infants that "failed to adequately inform parents" of the risks faced by their infants, which included blindness, brain damage, and death.
The failure to obtain adequate informed consent in this study was pointed out by a government watchdog, the Office for Human Research Protections, which said in a March 7 letter that the directors of the study "went out of their way to tell you that your kid might benefit...but they didn't give the flip side, which is that there is a chance your kid might end up worse."
The study dealt with the use of oxygen to treat premature infants. It can boost the infants'...
The Pulitzer Prizes won't be announced until Monday, but Investigative Reporters and Editors and the custodians of Syracuse University's...
The Pulitzer Prizes won't be announced until Monday, but Investigative Reporters and Editors and the custodians of Syracuse University's Mirror Awards for reporting on the media industry have announced their winners and finalists. (The Mirror Awards announced finalists only; the winners will be announced at a June 5 ceremony in New York.)
Several science, environment and technology stories are among the winners and finalists.
The Seattle Times was a finalist for an IRE award with a story on "the dark side of elephant captivity," and National Geographic made the finals with a piece called "Blood Ivory," about the ivory...
Journalism is built upon shortcuts. Not always, and not everywhere. Long stories can be deliberately--and effectively--discursive. But daily news items rely on shortcuts to get the job done in as little time as possible.
Take, for example,...
Journalism is built upon shortcuts. Not always, and not everywhere. Long stories can be deliberately--and effectively--discursive. But daily news items rely on shortcuts to get the job done in as little time as possible.
Take, for example, an obit today for Robert Edwards, one of the developers of in-vitro fertilization. The obit was written by AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng. It begins, "Robert Edwards, a Nobel prizewinner from Britain...died Wednesday at age 87."
"Nobel prizewinner" is a shortcut. It tells us in two words (I'd make it three) that Edwards likely did good and important research, and that he was probably well known. A couple of grafs later, the story says that Edwards and his late colleague, Patrick Steptoe, were "accused of playing...
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