131–140 of 169 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That introduction Haldane quote: > You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. "A horse splashes". That's some mental imagery right there.
Then I wonder what would happen if a Roc fell asleep midflight…
What point is this article trying to make?
> What point is this article trying to make? There is no evidence from RCT studies, that parachutes work (this post). There is no (or only very weak) evidence from RCT studies, that condoms work: https://jech.bmj.com/content/65/2/100 According to the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, there is no evidence from RCT studies, that face masks would protect against respiratory infections: https://www.cochranelibrary…
How do we really know whether double blind randomized controlled trials actually work? Is there any RCT done on evaluating the efficacy of RCT?
What point is this article trying to make?
Unclear why this is in the bmj. Might be of use to students learning how to structure a paper?
This article is part of what is known as the 'BMJ Christmas Edition' which gone on for quite a while[0]. it is meant to be at the same time scientifically serious and practically silly [1]. Its...basically satire, but satire as specific scientific commentary. In this case, about the details and clarity of scientific reporting and the claims made from data.
There have been a couple notable problems...One is that satire and human don't always generalize culturally. The second problem though became much more insidious with the electronic shift in publishing. If you access a Christmas edition article electronically, nothing clearly indicates that anything is different about these articles. Nothing indicates 'Christmas edition'. Nothing indicates that they are meant to be light hearted scientific commentary. So they get cited...both as satire and as not satire. Either for cultural reasons or because people aren't being rigorous.
[0] https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-type...
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/13/bmj-christmas-issue-stud...
I came to leave a snarky joke comment about "in mice?", and then I remembered that mice don't actually need parachutes because their terminal velocity is roughly the same as a human using a parachute [1]. If someone actually ran the study with mice, they'd find that parachutes aren't necessary! 1: https://johnmjennings.com/can-a-mouse-survive-a-fall-from-a-...
That introduction Haldane quote: > You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. "A horse splashes". That's some mental imagery right there.
Honest question: is this satire or gpt?
It is part of the 'Christmas edition' of the BMJ which is famous for things like this.
The point being that we should strive for RCTs when possible, and that RCTs carry more weight than expert opinion or case-control. Many (I don’t have an exact number) clinical practice guidelines are based on expert opinion or observational studies, and are completely valid/evidence-based (it’s just weak evidence).
The point of EBM is not “RCT or bust” it’s really more about the hierarchy, that medicine should not practice in defiance of quality evidence and that we should strive to obtain the highest quality evidence possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At altitude it's very cold, the shrews don't work well in the cold due to the same thing that makes them suitable for this experiment - they are very small, thus they lose heat to the environment easily. So, it's possible they freeze to death first. But yes, I imagine that if they survive the cold and aren't falling onto a hard surface (e.g. they land in grass, not a car park) they would survive. For them other than…
Research is obviously warranted on the possibility of shrew blankets that can automatically detach when they touch down.