The Storm is here!

The amazing animated version of Tim Minchin’s amazing 9 minute beat poem, Storm, can now be seen on the web. Right here even!

Heart attack equipoise

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Musings on the point of equipoise for investigating and discharging chest pain patients in light of a new paper in the Lancet describing a rapid rule-out protocol for acute coronary syndromes (the ASPECT trial).

Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 049

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Studies show that 73.2% of people start to develop FFFF withdrawal symptoms 168 hours after receiving the previous dose. Thus it would be inhumane to delay any longer… Bring on the funtabulous frivolity!

A Stand Against Big Pharma

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Jelinek and Brown announce that Emergency Medicine Australasia is taking a stand against drug company advertising. The LITFL team applauds!

Placebo Weirdness

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Check out @ProfessorFunk’s kinetic typography take on the utter weirdness of placebos, based on information from @BenGoldacre’s superlative book, Bad Science.

The Wisdom of Crowd Review

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Almost immediately after finishing ‘Time to publish then filter?’ – a post that highlighted a recent editorial in the BMJ outlining the need for an effective system of post-publication peer review — I came across this in the Annals of Emergency Medicine: Millard WB. The Wisdom of Crowds, the Madness of Crowds: Rethinking Peer Review [...]

Time to publish then filter?

LITFL shoes

An editorial in the BMJ by Schriger and Altman highlights the failings of the peer review process and the need for effective post-publication peer review.

Emergency Musical Interlude XXI

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As any biologist, doctor or medical student knows — your mum does a lot more than just give you half a set of genes. This song gives a fantastically geeky, or geekally fantastic — or just fantastic (according to @Jabulani9) — reminder of why we should all thank our mums.

The Future of Anticoagulation

Hirudo Medicinalis

Generally anticoagulation treatment has been focused on an initial parental anticoagulation and then extended therapy by oral anticoagulation. Drugs which block the thrombin process have been the mainstay of treatment programmes.

World Homeopathy Awareness Week

If water has memory

I just heard from Science-Based Medicine that April 10th is the first day of World Homeopathy Awareness Week (WHAW). In keeping with the spirit of raising awareness, I thought it apt to post this from Hell’s New Stand…