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This month, I contributed to the Cochrane Collaboration's review of its policy on conflicts of interest for systematic reviewers. My post on that has been slow coming, though, because I've been laid up recovering from surgery after an accident - a broken ankle, mending well. But the issues of trauma and conflicts of interest reminded me of a classic case involving both, and I wrote about it at Absolutely Maybe:
First up, I tackled the controversy around evidence on exercise and ME/CFS:
Consumer-Contested Evidence: Why the ME/CFS Exercise Dispute Matters So Much
And it was Black History Month. This year, I traced the stories of African-American STEM societies in 4 posts, chronologically from their founding:
Part 1: The First Wave (1895 to 1947)
Part 2: From Psychologists to Mathematicians
Part 3: From Sociologists to Engineers
Part 4: From Anthropologists to Academic Surgeons
You can see all my Absolutely Maybe posts for Black History Month here.
News for 2019: I'm pleased to announce that I'm now a regular contributor to BMJ Blogs. I'll be generally doing (shorter) versions of suitable posts from PLOS Blogs. First up:
Evidence and choice - what does one mean without the other?
And over at Absolutely Maybe, my annual open access roundup:
Open Access 2018: A Year of Funders and Universities Drawing a Line in the Sand
I updated my Twitter profile pic for the first time with one of my favorites.... Hmm... Too statistical?
Bad visual impairment and surgery that fixed it got me thinking a lot about evidence and choice, and how little one can mean without the other:
Post-Surgery Thoughts on Evidence and Choice
And I took exception to an opinion piece by a doctor about evidence and patient advocates:
"True Patients Must Be Students of Evidence-Based Medicine": An Impatient Rebuttal
My final post for the year is a return to an issue that once dominated my life, but I've kept away from for a very long time - home birth:
The Dangerous Allure of Breech Birth at Home - and a Problematic New Paper
The HPV vaccine and Cochrane sagas are rolling on - and I wrote about the responsibilities of the journal that published the error-ridden critique of the Cochrane review on the HPV vaccine:
Free Speech and Journals' Responsibilities in Vaccine Debates
Unusually, the journal - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine - proposed some corrections and invited feedback. My response:
Correcting the Record On That Critique of the Cochrane HPV Vaccine Review
At the end of the month, I had the privilege of giving the opening keynote at the terrific National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) conference. Here are my slides, and here's my post on the conference:
"High Value, Low Wastage Research" Is More Than Just a Catchphrase Now
