In light of recent widely covered events (and entertaining reactions on Twitter), Nature published an editorial yesterday titled, simply, “Sexism has no place in science.” It was published as a “reminder that equality in science is a battle still far from won,” and it outlines the problems of sexism and gender basis and some of the ways they can be tackled. I thought it was worth highlighting a few of their ideas here:
Recognize and address unconscious bias. Graduate students given grants by the US National Institutes of Health are required to undergo ethics training. Gender-bias training for scientists, for example, would be a powerful way to help turn the tide.
Encourage universities and research institutions to extend the deadlines for tenure or project completion for scientists (women and men) who take parental leave, and do not penalize these researchers by excluding them from annual salary rises. Many workplaces are happy to consider and agree to such extension requests when they are made. The policy should simply be adopted across the board.
Events organizers and others must invite female scientists to lecture, review, talk and write articles. And if the woman asked says no — for whatever reason — then ask others. This is about more than mere visibility. It can boost female participation too. Anecdotal reports suggest that women are more likely to ask questions in sessions chaired by women. After acknowledging our own bias towards male contributors, Nature, for example, is engaged in a continued effort to commission more women in our pages.
Do not use vocabulary and imagery that support one gender more than another. Words matter. It is not ‘political-correctness-gone-mad’ to avoid defaulting to the pronouns ‘him’ and ‘he’, or to ensure that photographs and illustrations feature women.
The piece ends on a hopeful note – “The lot of the female scientist in most developed countries is better than it was a few decades ago” – but reminds readers “that it is essential that all involved strive for better.” Hear, hear!
Congratulations to Stanford Medicine’s Class of 2015! They were honored during a commencement ceremony on campus on Saturday morning, and photographer Norbert von der Groeben was there to capture the smiles, cheers and (happy) tears.
And still going strong – the most popular post from the past:
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: A 2012 article in the San Francisco Chronicle provided a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
We reported many of the happenings at last week’s Big Data in Biomedicine here on Scope. Writer Bruce Goldman was also in attendance for the three-day event, and he captured the conversation in a just-published Inside Stanford Medicinepiece.
Last weekend’s Health Matters, an annual event, drew more than 750 people to the Stanford Medicine campus. Along with hearing about the latest medical and health advances, participants were offered the chance to talk one-on-one with some of our experts and to participate in a dizzying array of hands-on activities.
For those of you who missed out (and even those who didn’t), save the date for next year’s event: May 14, 2016.
MedCity News ran an incredibly informative article earlier this week on how people use social media – and more specifically, Twitter – to consume and discuss health information. Reporting on a recent talk from Twitter engineer Craig Hashi at Cleveland Clinic’s ePatient Experience: Empathy + Innovation Summit, Neil Versel shared:
Some 40 percent of consumers believe that information they found on social media affects how they deal with their health, [Hashi] said. A quarter of Internet users with chronic illnesses look for people with similar health issues. And 42 percent search online for reviews of health products, treatments and providers.
…
Twitter processes 23,000 weekly tweets with the words “feet hurt,” and the frequency naturally increases as the day and the work week go on, though many people tweet that when they get home on Saturday night as well. “Dr. Scholl’s can actually come in and reach these people,” Hashi suggested.
“Allergy” tweets mostly occur between March and June, Hashi said. “Sunscreen” also peaks in the late spring and summer. “Uncomfortable tummies” is highest on Thanksgiving, with lesser spikes at Christmas and on Super Bowl Sunday. Hashi said that Tums advertised on Twitter around Thanksgiving.
And for those who question the value of Twitter, or don’t quite understand its place in health care, these figures might give you pause: “The volume of information available on Twitter is staggering, Hashi said. There are half a billion tweets send every day. There will be more words on Twitter in the next two years than in all books ever printed. An analysis Hashi put together found that there were 44 million cancer-related tweets in the 12 months ending in March 2015, and traffic spiked in October, which happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month.”
Tomorrow, Stanford Medicine opens its doors to the public as part of its annual Health Matters event. On the agenda: medical and health talks (sample topics: how to stay healthy and injury-free while working out, what you need to know about heart disease prevention, and what researchers are learning about longevity and aging) and a series of interactive exhibits. Among those hands-on activities: cooking demonstrations and Q&As with Stanford nutritional experts, a meet-and-great of the stars of Stanford’s canine wellness program, and the opportunity to hop on and learn more about the lifesaving technologies that happens in the Life Flight helicopter.
Parts of the event will be live tweeted; if you can’t physically be here, follow along on @StanfordHealth all day.
Gender matters in medical research. That’s the reasoning behind the Research for All Act (.pdf), a recently introduced Congressional bill that would require scientists conducting NIH-funded research to look at male and female animals and cells. The legislation would also require the FDA “to guarantee that clinical drug trials for expedited drug products are sufficient to determine safety and effectiveness for both men and women.”
Women compose more than half the U.S. population, but most medical research focuses exclusively on men…
For example, the unique way women metabolize drugs was ignored when researchers determined the dosage for Ambien sleeping pills; as a result, the initial recommended dosage was double what it should have been for women.
Additionally, cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of all Americans, but only one-third of subjects in cardiac clinical trials are women.
Including gender analysis in research can save us from life-threatening errors… and can lead to new discoveries. Gender analysis has led to better treatments for heart disease in women. Identifying the genetic mechanisms of ovarian determination has enhanced knowledge about testis development. Analysing how sex affects donor–recipient matching is improving stem-cell therapies. And exploring how sex-specific biological factors and gender-specific behaviours interact has helped researchers to understand how nutrients trigger cell functions, and may assist in the fight against obesity.
And still going strong – the most popular post from the past:
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: A 2012 article in the San Francisco Chronicle provided a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
Earlier this week, my colleague pointed to a New York Timesessay penned by VJ Periyakoil, MD. In it, Periyakoil calls for a role-reversal in talking about end-of-life issues and encourages patients to take the lead in starting such conversations with their doctors. “Without these conversations, doctors don’t know what the patients’ goals are for living their last days,” she writes. “What are their hopes, wants, needs and fears? Do they want to die at the hospital connected to a machine? Do they want to die at home? The current default is for doctors to give patients every possible treatment for their condition, regardless of its impact on the patient’s quality of life, the cost or the patient’s goals.”
Periyakoil goes on to describe a letter that she and her colleagues created to help facilitate these patient-doctor conversations. The video above expands upon the Stanford Letter Project, which helps patients map out what matters most to them at the end of life, and includes the candid thoughts of numerous older adults.
“If I’m brain-dead, unplug me,” one woman says matter-of-factly. “And I want to die painless. No pain – just put me to sleep and don’t let me wake up.”
In the doctor’s office, one man shares his reason for writing a letter and expressing his wishes: “One of the worst things in the world that you can have happen [is you’re on] your deathbed and you’re putting the burden of life-altering decisions on a family member that has no clue of what you really want or don’t want.”
Advises another older man: “Don’t be ashamed of it – everybody dies. Just discuss it and agree on what you want.”
In light of recent widely covered events (and entertaining reactions on Twitter), Nature published an editorial yesterday titled, simply, “Sexism has no place in science.” It was published as a “reminder that equality in science is a battle still far from won,” and it outlines the problems of sexism and gender basis and some of the ways they can be tackled. I thought it was worth highlighting a few of their ideas here:
