Health news was popular before the pandemic. Now, almost all news is health news. It’s not only a rapt audience contributing to the deluge of COVID19 news. Two other factors: 1) the availability of preprint servers, digital archives where a scientific paper can be published without formal peer-review and 2) the attention economy. Attention is […]
Can We Discuss Flatten-the-Curve in COVID19? My Eight Assertions
On Telehealth, an older couple asked me a tough question about COVID19. They asked whether this virus would either be gone or less dangerous in 6 months to a year. It was a curious question. I replied, Why do you ask? Doc, we have a big family with many children and grandchildren, most of whom […]
2020 Mandrola Update
Many things have changed in my life. I still practice electrophysiology full-time in Louisville. I still write. And I still love endurance exercise. You haven’t seen many blog updates because my writing has taken different forms. One is academic writing. In 2019, I co-authored 21 academic papers. Here is a link to the papers on […]
I am not quitting social media
I recently finished an academic review paper on the role of social media in medicine and cardiology. My co-author and friend Piotr Futyma (Rzeszów Poland) and I focused mostly on the upsides of digital media. It’s not yet published but it is accepted. I was an early and accidental adopter of social media. I used […]
Finding Truth: How Much Do We Need Experts?
I am planning a column on the role of experts in translating medical evidence. Evidence is important because it’s how doctors know they are helping not harming people. It’s hardly news that the new (digital) democracy of information has changed the rules of influence in Medicine. In the days of old, academic doctors generated, analyzed […]
Downsides of Twitter
I use Twitter a lot. Interacting with thoughtful people is fun and I am learning a bunch. I especially love learning from the stats people and the philosophers. But Twitter has downsides. The main one is that it’s ephemeral. You see something and think, gosh, that is great, but It’s hard to go back to find […]
New Policy on Comments
I am changing my policy on comments. In the past, if you had one approved comment then all of your subsequent comments would post without moderation. I changed that. Now I will moderate all comments. That means there may be a delay. Another change is that I am not going to allow personal medical anecdotes. […]
On the intolerance of ideas, and liberty …
I like thinking and learning. Birthdays surely make one slower on the bike, but birthdays, it seems, do not have the same drag on the brain. For me, birthdays have increased my appreciation of liberty. In the Constitution of Liberty, Hayek defines it as the absence of coercion. Such is a beautiful definition. Don’t coerce […]
I am changing…
Seven years have passed since I started this blog. In that time… I have learned some basics about writing. (I almost wrote, “I have learned to write,” which would have been foolish, since, writing-wise, I have plenty to learn.) I have learned to stay upright on the bicycle. Concussions made me understand that the joys […]
Graduation Day… From Blogger to Author
Hi all, I have graduated from blogger to author. My first book is now available. It’s called the Haywire Heart. I co-wrote it with Chris Case and Lennard Zinn. VeloPress is the publisher. The book deals with one of my favorite themes: heart conditions in endurance athletes. Although exercise is a key component of health, […]
Science Needs Data Sharing Like Sports Needs Doping Controls
I’ve got a good story for you. One that goes back to the early days of this blog, a time when I wrote about cycling. It turns out that the biggest medical news thus far in 2016 has a connection, albeit slight, to the recent doping news out of Belgium. You’ve heard the news from […]
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