Clinical Trials: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

–Trial investigators have lost control of their trials’ messages. Editor’s Note: The following is a lightly edited version of a talk I presented (without slides!) at the CVCT workshop in Washington, DC earlier this week. The topic was the changing role of media in communicating the results of clinical trials. When it comes to the…

Click here to continue reading…

Social Media And Medical Journals: The Streetlight Effect

–Another study tests the wrong approach to social media in medical publishing    Here’s the main problem with a new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association: they measured the wrong thing with the wrong method. In their new paper the researchers randomized new studies appearing in Circulation to receive social promotion…

Click here to continue reading…

Mark Cuban Should Take The Cigar Out Of His Mouth And Stop Giving Health Advice

Last night the celebrity billionaire Mark Cuban ignited a firestorm on Twitter with the following recommendation to his 2.7 million followers: 1)If you can afford to have your blood tested for everything available, do it quarterly so you have a baseline of your own personal health 2) create your own personal health profile and history.It will…

Click here to continue reading…

Intent To Tweet And A Failure Of Communication

For more than 15 years I’ve been trying to figure out how physicians can get involved with social media without devolving into Beliebers. It’s not easy. I often joke that the job is a bit like being the social director on a cruise for people with Asperger’s. But here’s the twist: it’s easy to be the social director on a cruise for sorority sisters…

Click here to continue reading…

2012 In Review: Social Media In Cardiology

For a whole variety of reasons most cardiologists are not really comfortable diving into social media. For some reason they’re more comfortable remaining poolside, reading Braunwald or the latest mini JACC or Circulation than writing a blog or interacting with each other or their patients on Facebook or Twitter. Most cardiologists who do get their feet wet send out a few…

Click here to continue reading…

Lancet Editor Richard Horton Tweets Dark View of Contemporary Medicine

One brief message at a time, Lancet editor Richard Horton is tweeting his dark view of the contemporary medical establishment. If you have any interest at all in peeking behind the curtain to see what really goes on behind the scenes of top medical organizations then you need to follow Richard Horton’s Twitter feed. In sudden…

Click here to continue reading…