Tuesday 16 October 2012

The truth about blogging the truth about health research: blogged

I attended a quick, lunchtime, course entitled Blogging the truth about health research.

Sadly @cebmblog could not attend, but ably deputised by @peterjgill.

This course was a quick tour of why the social web is important for primary care researchers.

Blogging helps to formulate your own thoughts.

It enables you to gain a style understandable by non-academics.

Blogging bypasses peer review, which is great for junior academics.

By informing others of your views before you meet in person blogging can enable the most productive use of face to face time.

Case study Rosiglitazone: the debunk message did not get out.

Sadly the lack of debunking led to a number of deaths before the drug stopped being widely used.

Case study: twitter as a collaborative tool

Autism brain scan: 20 adults with vs 20 without. 90% accuracy!!

This paper was summarised in a Wellcome Trust press release.

@bengoldacre tweeted that he could not find the original paper.

@cebmblog tweeted the original and blogged it. This was picked up by the Guardian and led to the press release being altered.

Twitter enables you to participate in the hive mind.

Trial by twitter: can be a bit traumatic.

PLOS - Measuring the impact of research

Before the web there were only slow, late methods of measuring research's impact

  • peer review
  • citation counting

PLOS - altmetrics

PLOS enables a number of measures of a papers impact. Altmetics are more nuanced and detailed

  • more complex
  • measure aggregate impact of research
  • fast and open
  • track impact outside of academia

Rather preaching to the choir, as far as this blogger is concerned, but a very good session, which gave us all something to think about.

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