Biomed Central’s blog highlights the problem of defining what original research is. This is the problem of the same trial being reported in different papers so that when you get to compiling a meta-analysis you may be double counting or and overestimating the effectiveness of an intervention. This 1997 BMJ study by Tramer et al found that 17% of the published literature and 28% of patient data is duplicated, either overtly (after a bit of comparison) or covertly where different authors are used and so it is more difficult to tell if the papers are related. It would of course help if there was some compulsion to use the trial registry number or similar reference but as far as I know posting your trial plans with a registry is optional (and I wonder whether people do this retrospectively and only if they are happy with the results).

If it’s difficult for researchers and practitioners to make sense of the literature (and duplication is only one possible source of confusion) then how about the general public who find that everything causes cancer according to whichever newspaper they care to read? This study in Plos One looked at worldwide reporting of medical research and promisingly found that “Only 57% of front-page stories reporting on medical research are based on mature research, which tends to have a higher evidence level than research with preliminary findings”. I actually thought 57% was pretty good. I know Lord Drayson certainly argued at an RI debate earlier this year that science (and therefore health) reporting wasn’t that bad and he is making positive noises about evidence based policy so perhaps he’s right.

An article published not too recently on HCPlive has irked a few health librarians on LIS-Medical. This excerpt in particular seems designed to rub us the wrong way:

Forget your local medical library and PubMed and use Google Scholar to search for scholarly literature published in the form of peer-reviewed pieces, theses, books, and abstracts from any number of scholarly organizations, including professional societies, universities, and academic publishers.

One librarian has responded to the piece with enthusiasm, suggesting she had become fed up with PubMed. The Krafty Librarian has sounded off about PubMed recently, to say while PubMed had always hidden the controlled vocabulary, the MeSH, it had become even more hidden with the recent revamp. Is this a full-on backlash against PubMed, or a few disgruntled individuals?

I find myself not wanting to agree with the librarians who slated the HCPlive article. I would like to think that the words ‘forget your local medical library’ are indeed fighting words (to light a fire under our sometimes complacent bums). Can our local medical libraries not compete with Google Scholar, seeing as they have must have full access to this free search engine, and many more databases and resources that may not be free or as ‘user friendly’?

I disagree with the librarian who insists that doctors are at danger of ‘wasting their time’ by engaging with new web technologies such as apps. This is downright patronising to doctors-why should they not be allowed to keep up to date on their own, if they want?

He also stated that to miss out the apostrophe in ‘Crohn’s disease’ was a calamity in Google Scholar. No it isn’t-check out the ‘Did you mean’ suggestion at the top of the results. Google is great for spell-checking!

A study of research patterns in life scientists found that (duh) they all have different patterns of accessing information. Of course we knew this, or at least suspected it, but I can’t help but be pleased that the British Library found space for this news on its Press Room page.  It shores up the notion that libraries and ‘resource centres’ need to be flexible with different users.

“Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources.” Yes they do-another reason why perhaps an information professional must inject themselves into the teams with which they work, rather than sideline themselves. Depending on how an organisation is set up, this can be quite natural and easy (if one’s desk is ‘integrated’ into the team area, for example, as proximity tends to predict positive regard) or difficult, if the information team is isolated or in a ‘bricks and mortar’ library away from the clients.

I thought it interesting that the report highlighted that social networking tools (blogs, podcasts, social bookmarking, etc) had not proven terribly appealing to life scientists.  The full report elaborates that, firstly, “there is not the critical mass of individuals using such services to make it worthwhile” to use them to “enhance research”. Secondly, and I almost choked while reading this, “the time required in order to become a proficient user is prohibitive.” Don’t give me that. These are highly trained people who, as it says in the next sentence, may use “grid technologies” and “an intricate array of analytical tools” in their day to day work.

What do you think about the ‘not enough time’ to learn simple, user friendly web-based software argument?

I really think that the report should have written: “the scientists can’t be bothered with this social networking stuff because of general complacency and then notion that Twitter and the like will only be around for a few years before we get something new, so, again, why bother?”

Nor is this attitude unique to the life sciences. I know someone very influential, at a Canadian charity, who is crying out to use Twitter for fundraising and marketing. But she is sadly also ‘too busy’.

In other news, the “Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has acknowledged that social media has contributed significantly to the income it has raised for its current appeal. In the first week of the DEC’s appeal for Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, over £3 million was donated,” mainly via the BBC website, Twitter and Facebook.

A spokesperson from the DEC said “the biggest risk we faced was not that we might make a mistake [with using Twitter], it was that we would miss a chance to help save more lives.”

Check out #casestudieslife on Twitter to contribute to the discussion about how researchers use and access information (or not!).

This is a cool little toy, if you’ve ever wondered about the relative sizes of a grain of rice to a skin cell, a lysosome to a carbon atom; play with the slider underneath the graphic. It’s from the University of Utah.

So NHS Evidence has been upgraded?  Lets have a look.

The first thing that leaps to the eye (ahem) is that the site is broken in IE6.  Navigation menus are not aligned, the search box has drifted off to the right and the results display is variously squashed or overflowing into the wrong section of the page.  This is something of an issue given that most of the NHS still lives in a retro world of IE6 (Copyright Microsoft 1995-2004).  I am sure it will be resolved soon (and it works fine with Chrome) but testing against IE6 must be an essential for any site deployment aimed at NHS users. 

What about the changes that were actually desired?

The accreditated sources of guidance have started to come on stream and have a slightly stretched mini eye to advertise themselves in the results.  This is visually clear but practically confusing (see the widely distributed quote from the Minister which only adds to the potential confusion).  A search for diabetes reveals lots of accredited source hits – but down at number 25 is Sign Publication No55 Management of Diabetes.  This does not carry the logo even though SIGN is one of the three bodies currently authorised to use it.  Why?  It might be the age of the item (2001) or some other factor.  Certainly it will be confusing to the end user.

A facility to rate results has been added with a Likert scale followed by a free text box for opinions.   You do not have to be logged in with the new My Evidence section to use this so there is no mechanism for feeding back to those who contribute comments in this way.  I wonder how much use this will receive?  It is definitely worth a try as developers and may garner some useful feedback.

The final obvious major change (there may be some subtle ones I have missed) is My Evidence. 

It will be interesting to see the level of take up of this facility (and to consider the levels of usage that the old MyLibrary facility on NLH attracted).  James Robertson in his excellent book “What every Intranet team should know” advances that experience shows only 5-10% of users will make use of personalisation features. 

My Evidence offers a means to save NHS Evidence searches and  set up alerts from those searches.  This seems to work OK.  My test search generated an enormous and unrealistic number of hits for the first week but I guess this might be expected.  My Evidence also offers the ability to save a result which is a welcome addition.  This currently lacks the means to subsequently manage these results (folders, tags etc?) which will be necessary for this function to remain useful as more documents are added.

Less convincing is the My News Feeds feature.  This is a fairly locked down RSS reader.  You can only add feeds from a very limited directory (most categories were empty when I had a look).  When you do add them you have no control over how many entries are displayed or how much content you see initially.  You also cannot save any of the results that are particularly interesting for later reference.  In  many ways it is a more limited version of the similarly unconvincing offer included in MyLibrary on NLH.

You can also add an optional profile.  There is however no justification given at present as to why you would want to.  Perhaps social tools will follow that will make this a more worthwhile feature?

My Evidence use a widget model so it is to be hoped that more options and control will be progressively given to the user.  If the iGoogle model is followed you could create a useful alternative starting point for people.  Hopefully the next iteration of NHS Evidence will see the addition of a HLISD widget that would allow end users to find their closest library or information service. 

The final thing of note is the authentication route.  NHS Evidence have chosen to require a new registration from users.  It is to be hoped that Athens will also be enabled in a future version.  Across the NHS the push is to reduce the number of logins required.  By linking to Athens the route to paid for content could be smoothed.  Athens also links people to organisations and roles which would be a useful way to potentially segment and tailor features on the site.  Not using Athens does have the advantage of allowing anyone to register and is no doubt administratively less burdensome.  One way forward might be the model adopted by BMJLearning where you can link your site login to your Athens login.

There’s some chatter on the evidence-based healthcare message board about the definition of “evidence based medicine” and I have to say I get a bit fed up sometimes as people always talk of the “holy trinity” of EBM, that of: use of evidence + physicians’ experience + patient choice.

But I mean to say, it’s not really, is it? The practice of medicine is a combination of these things, sure, but evidence-based medicine is all about evidence, not experience and not patient choice. It’s not patient-centric medicine, or experience-based medicine, or authority-based medicine. In fact, it’s explicitly NOT about those things. Physicians have had plenty of authority during the long and slow development of medicine, and stil have much weight to throw about; they still harm patients too (they cure people and alleviate a lot of suffering too – I’m not anti physician – far from it, I think they’re great, particularly when I’m ill – just making the point that they’re not omnipotent). As for patient-centric medicine that is indeed important and, like any business, the client is key; the needs of patients do have to play a role in medicine. But that’s not what evidence-based medicine is about. It’s about evidence, evidence and evidence, it’s about the application of the scientific method to healthcare, and to say otherwise is just to try and sweeten the bitter pill that EBM might be to certain healthcare stakeholder groups.

Long live EBM. Long live science…

This new website from Boots and U.S.-based Web MD uses information from “NHS Choices, BMJ Best Treatments, WebMD and Boots” (NeLM news). Interesting features include a symptom checker and questions to ask your doctor. It has a comprehensive editorial policy covering conflicts of interest and a section explaining how to spot sponsored content (the tension between the two still remaining however, why not just go to NHS Choices?…choice of course…). The health areas it covers are comprehensive, not just minor ailments, primary care issues that you would expect. Perhaps as well as my future were-that-I-had-time-to-do study looking at Pubmed v NHS Evidence v Trip in terms of utility for scoping/systematic searching I’ll widen it to look at the best evidence based consumer health sites, unless this has already been done? This seems to be an expanding market.

I was in my local PC World this lunchtime buying a nice mouse for work (and as such evidently a highlight of my day) and I was interested to note that they were doing a brisk trade in MS7 – flying off the shelves it was. Who would’ve thought it? Not me, that’s for sure, but while I probably shouldn’t admit this I do hope it’s a success. The more Microsoft get kicked about by Google and Apple the more I warm to them. I guess it’s a British thing…

p.s. I bought a Logitech mouse, not a Microsoft mouse. I’ve not gone that soft.

It’s apparently Global Handwashing Day today and I can’t resist mentioning the British study (mentioned in the Guardian) that exposed men and women to signs cajoling them to wash their hands (“soap it off or eat it later”) in motorway service station toilets. Without the signs, 2/3 of men did not use soap (!!) and 1/3 of women couldn’t be bothered either. With the pro-handwashing signs, the researchers found that 12% more men, and 11% more women, used soap.

The annual arrival of the CILIP AGM-follow #cilipagm on Twitter to read updates from @tomroper, @m_hopwood and @CILIPinfo-always gives me a little thrill. I am aware of the content of the meeting, via Twitterfall. I am not sure if they have set it up to allow those distant to participate, but perhaps this should be a consideration next year. Which way will the vote for the membership fees go? I was torn over this issue as £7 more per year is not considerable, but I wonder if more effort shouldn’t be put towards diversifying the content of conferences and training so that ‘non-traditional’ areas of information management-web developers, information architects, SEO managers, etc-would be tempted to join. These are areas in which a large number of people work. The 20,000 strong population of CILIP could be seriously augmented.

Anyone attending CILIP AGM 2009 have any reflections they’d like to share?

Update: It looks like membership fees will go up, then, as the majority voted yes to this measure (115 to 66).  The treasurer spoke to say that this would help increase advocacy (=marketing? I hope- ‘advocacy’ is a bit vague.), establishing statutory school libraries and helping health libraries.  Bottom line: CILIP fee increase-still cheaper than a bottle of decent riesling.

It was surprising to see (in the tweets also) that technology costs exceeded 500k-why so much?

Members appear to be discussing other possibilities such as a ‘pay as you go’ (!) option and different ways of interacting with CILIP. Also mentioned was how to increase subscriptions with 4,000 members expected to retire in the next 10 years. Marketing, advocacy, image change. Make CILIP fun. Please!