Another trend with disturbing implications for the quality and conduct of medicine: online publication of research is creating memes that rapidly lead to consensus absent any validation with older research. ( "Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, recounts how and why he coined the term meme to describe how one might extend Darwinian principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing-fashions, and the technology of building arches" . en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme. )
"Over the last decade or so, access to scientific literature has changed radically. Reading a research paper no longer requires a trip to the library, as the research journals are only a web browser away. A paper in the current edition of Science looks into whether this transformation has triggered a corresponding change in how that literature is used. Its author's statistical analysis suggests that the ready availability of scientific information has a counterintuitive result: a smaller pool of articles are referenced in the scientific literature."
Using Thompson's citation index (CI), which indexes articles and references from the 6000 most highly cited journals, and Information Today's Fulltext Sources Online (FSO), sociologist James Evans has examined what effect the availability of online articles has had on how researchers cite previous work. The combined data from CI and FSO hold over 26 million articles and an additional 8 million distinct articles that referenced them through 2006.
His conclusion?
"Fewer and fewer distinct articles were cited even as more publications could be accessed online... "
"The conclusion of all this statistical work was that, as more and more articles are readily available online, researchers, on average, cite fewer articles. The articles that are cited are newer, and fewer distinct articles receive attention. The results of the explosion of easily available articles, according to Evans, is that "researchers can more easily find prevailing opinion, they are more likely to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles." As a side effect of this, a scientific consensus will typically form more rapidly. The other side of this is that papers containing ideas that don't catch quickly will be forgotten by the scientific world much faster. "
Which stifles debate, discussion, error correction. Someone who is not careful or wishes to unduly influence medical opinion would merely have to publish a handful of articles -- bereft of previous research so as to reduce the chances for comparison -- in a handful of journals to change thinking and consolidate consensus quickly all the while evading serious scientific scrutiny. And once a rash conclusion reaches the public it is quickly disseminated -- online again-- where it whirls into common use. Meanwhile minority opinions -- even those with more solid scientific support -- can be ignored or attacked.
Sound familar? How about the vaccine-autism controversy or the Avandia or SSRI scare? I would like to see what percentage of articles are now actually original research as opposed to meta-analysis or combing through of databases which is easier and quicker to publish and which "leading publications" are more eager to run with to generate attention.
The internet can rapidly distribute new information. But not all information is new knowledge, which is information that advances understanding.
Insta-think can lead and does lead to Tabloid Medicine.
"Over the last decade or so, access to scientific literature has changed radically. Reading a research paper no longer requires a trip to the library, as the research journals are only a web browser away. A paper in the current edition of Science looks into whether this transformation has triggered a corresponding change in how that literature is used. Its author's statistical analysis suggests that the ready availability of scientific information has a counterintuitive result: a smaller pool of articles are referenced in the scientific literature."
Using Thompson's citation index (CI), which indexes articles and references from the 6000 most highly cited journals, and Information Today's Fulltext Sources Online (FSO), sociologist James Evans has examined what effect the availability of online articles has had on how researchers cite previous work. The combined data from CI and FSO hold over 26 million articles and an additional 8 million distinct articles that referenced them through 2006.
His conclusion?
"Fewer and fewer distinct articles were cited even as more publications could be accessed online... "
"The conclusion of all this statistical work was that, as more and more articles are readily available online, researchers, on average, cite fewer articles. The articles that are cited are newer, and fewer distinct articles receive attention. The results of the explosion of easily available articles, according to Evans, is that "researchers can more easily find prevailing opinion, they are more likely to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles." As a side effect of this, a scientific consensus will typically form more rapidly. The other side of this is that papers containing ideas that don't catch quickly will be forgotten by the scientific world much faster. "
Which stifles debate, discussion, error correction. Someone who is not careful or wishes to unduly influence medical opinion would merely have to publish a handful of articles -- bereft of previous research so as to reduce the chances for comparison -- in a handful of journals to change thinking and consolidate consensus quickly all the while evading serious scientific scrutiny. And once a rash conclusion reaches the public it is quickly disseminated -- online again-- where it whirls into common use. Meanwhile minority opinions -- even those with more solid scientific support -- can be ignored or attacked.
Sound familar? How about the vaccine-autism controversy or the Avandia or SSRI scare? I would like to see what percentage of articles are now actually original research as opposed to meta-analysis or combing through of databases which is easier and quicker to publish and which "leading publications" are more eager to run with to generate attention.
The internet can rapidly distribute new information. But not all information is new knowledge, which is information that advances understanding.
Insta-think can lead and does lead to Tabloid Medicine.
Science, 2008. DOI: 10.1126/science.1150473
