"Subscribe" to the Bench & Bedside Journal Club

You can now subscribe to the Bench & Bedside Journal Club at Google Groups. All postings on the blog will automatically be sent to the Group, and it may also facilitate other discussion. So, enjoy!

Do science and medicine under-utilize technology?

It seems under-utilization of technology is a common topic these days in science and medicine (e.g. Nature 438:531 and NEJM 348:2526). For a field that spends SO much on its own technology, and that has so many smart people, why is the everyday stuff so backwards? I think this could be an interesting discussion point. Here are just a couple of examples.

Internet: Science tends not to use blogs, wikis, online discussion forums, or even mailing lists and online publication to the fullest. For example, my labmates that graduate next week were still required to provide print copies of their thesis for binding, the theses are being copied to microfiche, and there was no method to include videos or digital-quality images (in the end, one of the individuals included a CD in the printed thesis, enclosed in a binder-type slip case). Even search engines (e.g. PubMed), one of the most common uses of the internet in biomedicine, doesn't fully take advantage of the internet, having only recently added any cross-referencing between websites, and still limiting searches to a few fields rather than linking to other databases (e.g. allowing searches by title, author, and journal citation index).

Communication: Even internet communication seems to catch on slowly, as many older professors are hesitant to use email while my grandparents, and those of many of my friends and family, love using it. Beyond email, how many doctors have Blackberry PDA's or smartphones (pagers are still the standard!)? How many use internet chat to communicate within their laboratory or institution?

Data Management: Excel still seems the standard, if not state of the art. Even clinical management software is ages behind, often looking like an old Telnet interface, or a really lousy GUI. Nothing begins to approach the ease and accessibility of modern games and word processors, and certainly only the most advanced systems use decent implementations of SQL, XML, etc.

I hope those commenting on this post will cite other examples, as there's no shortage.

What's the best format for an online journal club?

First off, I should define a journal club. I will go beyond Wikipedia's definition to say that I specifically think the term should refer to an interactive discussion about the primary literature. I contrast this with just posting interesting papers (e.g. Faculty of 1000), providing a customizable search service (e.g. CiteTrack), and discussing non-primary material (e.g. reviews or textbooks or class material). All the things have their place, and here I'm talking about the journal club, where individuals can share thoughts, learn about new papers, critique those papers, etc.

So, if this were to be done online, how should it be done? I give several possible examples, but please feel free to post others.

Email: It's easy and almost everyone has it, but I have my concerns about formatting consistency and accessibility - it isn't guaranteed that everyone emails out every comment to every person. To maintain an open discussion format, things would actually become more complicated than need be. You could do a mailing list, but I still feel this loses some of the power of the internet.

Chat Rooms: Sounds great, except your locked into the look & feel of the chat room, and it's live only. Sure, this uses the geographic strength of the internet, i.e. that you can be anywhere and participate, but it doesn't take advantage of the potential temporal aspects, i.e. "asynchronous" discussion taking place on each participant's time frame.

Discussion Forums: This method, in which I'll lump "Groups" at Friendster, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc., seems ideal. It allows for posting and commenting, organizes comments by discussion thread, and is relatively secure. The catch is that it seems they're just generally unappealing visually.

Blogs: For a "moderated" journal club, this seems ideal, but as I'm learning, non-members can only post in comments. As such, anyone wanting to post a new article needs to run the risk of it being buried in comments, or needs to contact the blog owner to become a member or to have the article posted. Otherwise, I love the look and feel, the security, and the versatility.

Wikis: Again, seems like a great idea, but I haven't explored the wiki farms out there very well. I like the idea that anyone can edit in that it allows anyone to post content at equal level. However, this format would require some considerably respect, or else some degree of moderation, to prevent abuse.

I have no doubt I'm missing many meaningful categories of online publishing formats. I haven't even begun to discuss the options for customized webpages or internet-based custom software packages. Please feel free to post comments on any aspect of this idea, as I'm eager to hear what people think.

COX-2 Inhibitors

• NEJM 352(11), March 17, 2005
• Lancet 360(9339):1071-1073, 2002
• J. Clin. Invest. 116:1391-1399, 2006

Okay, I'm hoping SOMEONE comments on this post, but since it seems noone even visits the page, that seems unlikely....

The NEJM issue features the articles that recently described the increased cardiovascular risk of Vioxx leading to an industry chaos.

The Lancet article is one of many that details these risks long before they were talked about openly, thus precipitating the fury with Merck and the FDA.

The JCI article gives a hint of possible ways around the problems.

Anyone want to stand up for Bayer?