Nursing, FNP, + Nurse Anesthesia

I am a huge fan of Ben Goldacre, author, physician, and crusader against “bad science”. Dr. Goldacre has written two excellent books about the misuse of science and statistics by politicians, charlatans, and drug companies. His writing is witty, interesting, and the explanations of the faulty “science” are easy to understand. And, oh, by the way … we have both in the library

Bad Science (2008) has chapters that talk about the misleading science behind cosmetic ad claims, homeopathy, detoxes, and how the media promote the public misunderstanding of science.

Bad Pharma: how drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients (2013) deals with the methods pharmaceutical companies use to present misleading and flawed data. Some of the chapters include: Missing Data, Bad Regulators, and Marketing.

Dr. Goldacre has also given a couple TED talks including “Battling bad science” and “What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe“.  He is a passionate speaker/presenter, and his talks are not only educational, they are highly entertaining.

I hear he is working on a new book about statins … I can’t wait!

Jill

Retraction Watch is a fascinating blog devoted to, you guessed it, research article retractions.  Created by two medical reporters, Retraction Watch provides a venue for publicizing retractions and offers a forum for a discussion of those retractions. Over the years there have been several researchers’ retractions that have been elevated to the realm of the infamous: Andrew Wakefield’s research linking the MMR vaccine to autism; Anil Potti, the former Duke researcher accused of lying about his qualifications on a grant application and using flawed data in his cancer treatment prediction studies; and Scott Reuben, who was convicted of fraud and falsifying research studies involving the drug celecoxib. By and large however, retractions receive limited publicity. For example, in 2013, Thomson Scientific’s Web of Science notes that there were over 500 retractions in the scientific literature… wow. This is where Retraction Watch steps in. They cover these retractions, and the blog serves an informal repository.

You might wonder how I could possibly think that a blog devoted to article retractions is fascinating, yet I’m here to tell you that the  mistakes or wrongdoing that result in a paper’s retraction are gripping. For example, here are a few of the top retractions from 2014, culled by the founders of Retraction Watch and published in The Scientist:

• “A former researcher at Iowa State University (ISU) spiked rabbit blood samples with human blood to make it look as though his HIV vaccine was working.”

• the Journal of Vibration and Control retracted 60 articles over a ““peer review and citation ring” in which at least one professor in Taiwan, allegedly assumed false identities to promote his own work.”

• the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “issued an Expression of Concern” for a paper that studied the psychology of Facebook users. According to the complaint, researchers did not notify users that they were taking part in a research project.

Again … wow.

Jill

Congratulations to all of you that are about to graduate! It’s been a long road, I am sure. I hope you have enjoyed your time at UDM! Now it is time to enjoy that shiny new degree!

Jill

It is frustrating to find the “perfect” article only to discover that the full text is not in English. Have you ever used Google Translate to convert an other-than-English medical article into English for one of your nursing assignments? Have you ever wondered how accurate the resulting translation was?

In December 2014, BMJ published an article evaluating the accuracy of Google Translate when used to translate common medical statements (Use of Google Translate in medical communication: evaluation of accuracy). The results? Google Translate only had a 57.7% accuracy when used for translating medical phrases. The results, I would have to assume, would most likely be even lower for complex medical statements.

Here is a sample of a few of the phrases that the authors chose for their experiment:

• Your wife is stable
• Your wife needs to be ventilated
• Your child will be born premature

When verified by native speakers, Google Translate had provided the following translations most often for those phrases:

• “Your wife is stable” —  Your wife cannot fall over
• “Your wife needs to be ventilated” — Your wife needs to be aired
• “Your child will be born prematurely” —  Your child is sleeping early

Bottom line: Google Translate should not be trusted in a medical context.

Jill