Author: MarkH

  • Improving medical care—arrogant doctors are a distractor

    (Tangentially related podcast here) Here’s the thing: all this talk about arrogance in medicine is a red herring. It’s distracting us from the real question that we should all be asking: how do we improve quality medical care? The personality of individual physicians is important, but not very, just as the medical mistakes of individuals…

  • Podcast!!!!!

    OK, so I guess I’m not busy enough, cuz I’m experimenting with podcasting. I have a voice best left to typing, but I want to try a new medium. The first episode is on arrogance in medicine, and the rss feed looks funky cuz i’m still learning, but let me know how it goes. This…

  • Choosing a medical specialty III – applying, interviewing and matching

    Aside from taking 4th year medical school classes it’s also the time of year that medical students who plan to graduate in 2009 (like me) are applying to residency programs across the country. This is an interesting process and one that many people outside of medicine are unfamiliar with, and quite surprised by. For one,…

  • Blogospherics—giving folks their due

    Orac is celebrating his 4th blogiversary today, and folks are giving him his props over at his place. I was about to give him congrats over there, but I figured this deserved a post of its own. I started blogging seriously in May of 07. I had been attracted to the crankosphere via the cesspit…

  • Credulous medical reporting

    Science and medicine reporting is hard. In this space we’ve dealt with some of the problems that arise when “generalist” reporters try to “do” science and medicine. And now, CNN has shut down its science unit. Given the increasing complexity of medical and scientific knowledge, this is very bad news. As a fine example of…

  • H. influenzae—it ain’t the flu, but it’s still pretty cool

    This was first posted at Science-Based Medicine on Monday, but I can’t seem to keep myself from cross-posting. –PalMD I’ve been thinking about an interesting organism lately, an organism that illustrates some basic principles in science-based medicine. The organism is called Haemophilus influenzae (H flu), a gram-negative bacterium discovered in the late 19th century. H…

  • Obama Meets With Gore, Rejects Denial

    It seems Obama didn’t get Nisbet’s memo. Just watching on CNN, future president Obama says: The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be…

  • Terrorism denialism

    I was reading two articles on disparate subjects and found them oddly linked in my mind. The first former terrorist Bill Ayers’ explanation of why he didn’t respond when Obama was smeared by association and the second P. Michael Conn and James V. Parker writing for the WaPo about the escalation in recent years of…

  • Why am I here again?

    Perhaps because I don’t blog anonymously, or maybe for other reasons, I don’t write that much about my personal life. That kind of writing can be self-important, insipid, and boring. But it can also have real power. A number of the anonymous bloggers here describe the intersection of the scientific life and family life with…

  • Carnivalia, blog business, etc.

    Carnival of the Liberals is up at Capitol Annex Skeptics’ Circle 101 is up at Ionian Enchantment. You may have noticed the Friend Feed widget on the sidebar. I’ve added this as a sort of “mini-blog”, where we can post brief links or stories. I’d say it’s just out of beta at this point, but…