Changing views

Worryingly, and from what I can see, typically for a med student, I'm having people asking my opinion on medical matters a task for which I am singly not qualified and tell them so, pointing them in the direction of Wikipedia (joke). Here are some of the complaints I've had to avoid professing an opinion on so far other than go to the doc's ASAP (there are more but I forget):

- Any number of rashes. Nowhere embarrassing yet, though.
- Whether a US based relative should ditch his expensive heart pills and buy some generics. Different formulations, not quite the bioequivalent formulation. Crikey - it's your heart for God's sake, why are you cutting costs there! Buy one fewer watches or go skiing less or something.
- Chest pains (chest pains!).
- Rectal bleeding (proper blood in the water, not the tissue) lasting for a couple of years (years!). I did have a clear recommendation this time: get to the bloody doctor; why are you sat here in a pub quiz night when you could be having this problem looked at?!
- Something that looked like a BCC.

Some if not all of these could well be serious - go to the GP if you have these problems rather than relying on some part qualified idiot like me. Goes to show, perhaps, the importance of trust between the advisor and advisee in a clinical relationship I suppose.

Science literacy in the media

The Guardian, the paper of the British undergraduate (and me when I lived there), likes consider itself somewhat a cut above other newspapers. It provides a platform to the excellent Bad Science columnist Ben Goldacre (although his recent article on drug patents left a bit to be desired) which is to be applauded.

However, despite all this it still seems to favour the art graduate stepping sideways school of training health correspondents and because of this makes regular, irritating (to me) mistakes in the most basic facts of science stories. There was an article which conflated influence vaccines with therapeutics quite recently etc etc.

Here's a classic. As I clicked on the link, I knew what I would find:

- Story about an E. coli outbreak.
- Covered by David Batty, "Health Correspondent"
- He thinks it's a virus. He's clearly not sure, so starts off with the classic "bug" gambit at the start of the article to avoid committing.
- He even quotes a bacteriologist.

How long does it take to search Wikipedia? I suppose if you don't know what you don't know, you don't know you need to search.

Maybe I could be the Guardian's Australian chess correspondent. After all, I know shag all about that.

Pig Ignorant Students

I've posted before on the phenomena of students playing flash games on their laptops, passing the computers between one another in group of six or so. Irritating, rude and hard to understand. Why not stay at home and play, or go down the pub?

My theory: this minority of students are such a bunch of repressed swots that they would feel guilty if they didn't attend each and every lecture. Most of my fellow students are the product of educational hothousing both at school and at home and would probably feel the need to birch themselves should they not attend (physically, if not mentally). I'm getting tired of listening to fellow students conversations: the background level of hubub is unlike anything I've ever experienced during any of my previous degrees (been to uni too often) either in the UK (which was a med school) or in Australis (which wasn't).

I can normally put up with this, but today I had to say something. The irony of ignoring and carrying on a loud conversation whilst an aboriginal lecturer asks for attention and highlights how people's attitudes to indiginous populations need to change seemed lost on the young Australian students in front of me. The fact that the lecturer was effecting a welcome to aboriginal land to all students from where ever they came and was managing to strike a perfectly balanced tone did not help my mood.

However, I let that ride, and said nothing hoping that the students would engage as the lectuer progressed. Bear in mind here that the vast majority of the audience paid respectful attention. This did not include another student in front of me who was taking the opportunity to complete his individual assignment (why do this in a lecture? why not stay at home, you arse?)

Next up, I heard a sniggered comment from behind me when the lecturer informed the auditorium that many aboriginal people lived in Sydney and in particular in a suburb called Blacktown. I looked around to see what the deal was, but couldn't see what was going on or who was having such fund.

So far, so poor.

However, when, during the lecturer's discussion on the intervention, which contained real insights, the girl in front of me picked up her friend's iPhone and started playing some kind of bar tender game. This being the last straw for me, I leaned over:

"Perhaps you might like to listen to what's being said rather than playing a game on your friend' little phone".

The girl at least had the decency to realise that her behaviour was perhaps inappropriate and at least feigned rapt attention for the remaining five minutes.

It's going to take a while before I regain my faith in my fellow students, and the poor behaviour comes from a particular sub-population. Apologies for the lack of proof reading, but I'm a bit angry at the moment.