Archive for December, 2009
error by design?
Old news, perhaps, that companies should seek to misrepresent data – sometimes it seems easier to accept the default position that all large companies are lying. But it’s important to try to remain objective, I guess. Anyway, to get to the point of this, in 2007 and again in 2009, Boots got major media attention [...]
Filed under: news, statistics | Leave a Comment
Tags: brand, cosmetics, data, Google, No. 7 Protect Perfect Beauty Serum, P values, pharma, publication, science, statistics
Lady Thatcher rejected offer of ’20 karate ladies’ as bodyguards Lady Thatcher refused to be protected by 20 “karate ladies” at a summit in Japan unless male world leaders were given the same number of “karate gentlemen”.
Filed under: news, writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: news
whose interests?
A good story on a community that’s standing up to supermarkets. Or at least a part of that community is. There are some who say they support shopping at Tesco’s, mainly for reasons of price of course. Indeed, one of the commentators on the story says: It is a class issue and it is unfair [...]
Filed under: food, public health, shopping | Leave a Comment
Tags: capitalism, poverty, price, shopping, supermarkets, Tesco
making sense of targets
When the Quality and Outcomes Framework was first introduced, I was involved in a lot of work (much of it for pharma companies) that attempted to help GPs meet their targets. Much of this was in hypertension, which made sense in a peverse way as there’s oodles of money to be made in hypertension work [...]
Filed under: GPs, public health | Leave a Comment
Tags: British Medical Association, dermatology, hypertension, quality and outcomes frameworj, skin disease, swine flu
There were reportedly 138 deaths in England definitely attributable to swine flu between June and November 2009. An estimated 540,000 people had symptomatic flu during this period in England (around 1% of the population). From these figures, the estimated mortality rate was 26 deaths (range 11 to 66) per 100,000 people who had swine flu, [...]
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Tags: antivirals, death rates, pandemics, swine flu, vaccination
not just for the sake of it
Twenty mph traffic speed zones are associated with 40% drop in road injuries in London. According to this study the introduction of 20 mph traffic speed zones in London between 1986 and 2006 seems to have been an effective measure for reducing road injuries and deaths. It was was associated with a 41.9% reduction in [...]
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Tags: casualties, driving, speed, speed cameras
staying on message
Swine flu cases are now falling, apparently, with marked reductions in rates among infants and younger kids (more), although infection rates may leap again in the New Year. Not sure when we’re going to get the invitation, but we still plan on vaccinating our 3-yr old daughter, as per the recommendations. Seemed important to say [...]
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Tags: children, swine flu, vaccination
A number of news papers are talking about the idea,which seems intuitively correct, that lonliness may be contagious. The study protocol seems sound, although the stats are still to be published, says NHS Choices: What appears to be new in this research is the idea that loneliness is contagious. This is based on the observation [...]
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