 |
HOME PAGE | ||
|
BACKGROUNDER | ||
|
THE COLUMNS | |||
|
– chronologically | ||
|
– by general topic | ||
|
DISCLAIMER |
|
HOME PAGE | ||
|
BACKGROUNDER | ||
|
THE COLUMNS | |||
|
– chronologically | ||
|
– by general topic | ||
|
DISCLAIMER |
March 2004 + 2008 | |
 PREVIOUSNEXT
| ECR – Congress Diaries – 2004 and 2008 |
| From
ECR 2004 After last year’s great success of EPOS, the Electronic Presentation Online System of the ECR, the congress organizers have warmed up to more high-technology features. Several new ideas were considered by the committees in charge and it was decided that another system should be tried out this year. One of the decisive factors for the choice was ethics in research. It has long been a nightmare for congress organizers and scientific paper reviewers, in general, how to determine the validity and reliability of scientific communications. Fraud, slander, theft, and misrepresentation should be kept out of scientific meetings such as the ECR. According to an article in the British newspaper “The Guardian”, the psychologist Gerald Jellison claims that the average citizen like you and me tells 200 lies a day [1]. Personally, I doubt this statement, because recently I read elsewhere that an average man does not speak more than 14,000 words per day (women more than 24,000). Because you have to say something substantial besides lies, for instance: “Another beer, please”, men cannot tell 200 lies per day. There are, of course, exceptions: for instance politicians and car salesmen. We would like to hold on to the notion that the scientific community does not fall into this category. However, there are enough recent and historical cases that make us wonder. One finds small or bigger lies in a number of presentations at congresses, also at ECR – from the most extreme cases of manufacturing data and altering experimental results to using someone else’s text or data without acknowledgement. More difficult are the borderline cases: minor fudging of data, reporting only the good results and not citing other people’s work that should be given credit. Probe a bit more deeply into scientific activities, and you will find that fraud is neither clear-cut nor rare.
Therefore, this year ECR has introduced a feature called UNDIES, an electronic device that detects untrue, invented, or stolen scientific results. It follows the United States Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 and replaces the ancient polygraph test that functioned like an ECG. Speakers at a conference do not like pads attached to their bodies to measure changes in respiration, blood pressure, pulse, sweat, and galvanic skin response, particularly because it is disputed how reliable such polygraph tests are. For some years, however, Amir Liberman’s software is available on the market. It can analyse the human voice. When people lie, their speech changes in ways inaudible to the human ear. This patented software has been integrated into the “Vericator” technology and become available as a range of affordable hand-held appliances, phone clip-ons and computer packages. Handy Truster, “the world’s first personal lie detector”, is only US$39.95, plus post and packing. This affordable price made this new technology attractive for ECR. Every lecture during the ECR will be monitored by it. The chairmen (and female chairpersons) are advised to add the results of the “Vericator” examination to their own evaluation of the lectures. ECR thinks about adapting the technology to its needs and introducing it to replace peer reviewing at scientific meetings and, at a later stage, scientific papers submitted to European Radiology. Authors will have to read out the papers on CD-ROM or DVD, together with the submission of hard- and softcopies of the paper. There is a big market for sublicensing it to other congress organizers.
One of the great advantages of the technology is its feature to detect deep emotional feelings. The added “Love-Detection” algorithm is measuring the presence of stable and deep emotional activity and high concentration levels, detected in the high-frequency range of the human voice. The technology analyses a very specific frequency range for constant appearances, to differentiate from regular excitement caused by an event or a changing situation. “The new technology enables users to measure the level of arousal the other party to the conversation experiences while speaking with them, and get a “hint” from a non-biased source whether or not the other party is interested in their intimate relations. The analysis is conducted online during any conversation, even about general and unrelated issues. The new technology also warns about the other party’s embarrassment and concentration levels.” [2] ECR estimates an increase of up to 40% in both congress attendance and quality of science with the new combined electronic tools. People in the audience will get access to the results and know whether a speaker (a) has lied scientifically, and (b) is ready for some non-scientific activities. References 1.
John Sutherland. Would I lie to you? Well, now you can find out one way or the
other, for just $39.95 plus p&p. The Guardian. Monday, 24 November 2003. From
ECR 2008 In my leisurely hours of continuing education in February and March, I read some articles in the daily papers and learned journals that taught me new aspects of medicine. Among them were the following issues. We learned in medical school that high cholesterol (i.e., LDL cholesterol) will kill you. We have to lower it. Now we hear with increasing intensity that LDL cholesterol may not be the cause of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease. It must be something else, and the question is what. Recent evidence boosts the conclusion that statins, drugs used to lower cholesterol production, restore and improve endothelial function directly. Medical teaching that cholesterol plays a key role in heart disease is open to question. Although scientific publications suggested for quite a while that cholesterol might not be the responsible foe, the public health dogma was never touched. Among the many agents sold to lower cholesterol are two drugs, ezetimibe and simvastatin, that operate on different mechanisms. When one of the major pharmacological players in the field combined them into a single medicament, the researchers found that cholesterol was lowered more than with one drug alone. The combination did not, however, accelerate the slowdown of fatty plaque accumulation in the arteries. I was curious and went a long way to get the physician's prescribing information of the medicament where one reads: “No incremental benefit of [the combination medicament] on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality over and above that demonstrated for simvastatin has been established.” [1] What
did we learn?
Next topic: For decades I have followed the debate over diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer: Operation is best. Radiation is best. Seeds are best. Hormones will heal you. It always depended on the eye of the medical beholder. Fifteen years ago, substantial controversy existed about the advisability and effectiveness of screening programs, the most appropriate staging evaluation, and the optimal management of patients with all stages of prostate cancer. There were inherent ambiguities in recommending staging and treatment choices [2]. Some weeks ago, the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued a review of prostate cancer treatments, including surgical removal, radiation, hormone therapy, and “watch and wait,” which involves careful monitoring but no active treatment until the cancer shows signs of growing. Because none of these treatments emerged as superior, the agency came to the troubling conclusion that it could not recommend one over the others [3]. What do you tell people who come to you, although you're are only a radiologist, and ask what treatment you would propose or consider? What
did we learn?
If now you get depressed and want to get happy again with Prozac, the antidepressant taken by some 40 million people worldwide, it will be cheaper for you to take a placebo or a glass of wine. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Irving Kirsch from the University of Hull and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada could access all clinical data submitted by the drug producer to the FDA. Apparently, some studies had not reached the public [4]. The authors summarized their results: Drug-placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication. In understandable words, there is hardly any difference between placebo and medicament. Such
abrupt revelations are major changes for diagnostics and treatment entrenched
for decades. What
did we learn? What
did we learn? Let's see what we learn at this year's ECR. References 1.
Merck/Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals. Vytorin prescribing information. January
2008. |
 _ | |
Similar Topics |
Return to top
Go to Columns Overview |
|
Copyright © 2004, 2008, 2010 by The Round Table Foundation. All rights reserved. | |
 _ | |
Reference: Rinck PA: ECR – Compiled Webcasts.
Diagnostic Imaging Europe. March 2004 and March 2008.