Monthly Archives: September 2010

Cardiologists accused of implanting cardiac stents that weren’t needed

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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I now sport a shiny stainless steel stent implanted into my left anterior descending coronary artery that was 99% blocked when I survived a heart attack two years ago. Stents are like tiny chicken wire mesh tubes inserted inside the obstructed coronary arteries of your beating heart and then expanded using a small balloon to open blocked arteries that prevent blood flow to heart muscle.

But it appears that some cardiologists like these miraculous little devices so much that they are implanting stents into patients who don’t need them.   Continue reading →

Please, no more fridge magnets! Why companies spend all that money on useless corporate swag

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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I’ve picked up lots of corporate swag at conferences and trade shows during my PR days, but free ballpoint pens or cheap fridge magnets can hardly compete with the really good swag that other people seem to get.  Consider for example what was handed out to sports photographers covering the February Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver/Whistler this year: an eye-catching coffee travel mug shaped exactly like a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens. Now that’s a very cool and potentially useful Olympics souvenir to bring home.

Or how about the American Society of Clinical Oncology? The drug company Genentech gave out to each annual meeting attendee in Chicago a beautiful black leather case filled with a wireless mouse, a 1 GB thumb drive, a combination laser-pointer/infrared remote control PowerPoint slide advancer, and a four-outlet USB hub – each one engraved, of course, with the Genentech corporate logo.

Other drug companies use even more creative and arguably more sinister swag strategies: in the waiting rooms of child psychiatrists, for example, children play with giant Lego blocks prominently stamped with the word Risperdal, courtesy of the drug company Johnson & Johnson – who have now lost the patent on the antipsychotic drug and have stopped handing out these toys.

But few promotional gifts can compare with the $91,000 swag bags distributed to celebrities at the Academy Awards ceremonies in Hollywood this past March.   Continue reading →

How deductive reasoning can lead us to stupid conclusions

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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"Elementary, my dear Watson... "

Let’s say you are a researcher hard at work analyzing results from your current medical project. You have a large number of available options that may affect the results of that research before coming to any published conclusions. (And if Big Pharma is funding your research, you likely have considerable motivation to skew those results to favour their product). What you will certainly be most interested in is simply interpreting your existing data by applying deductive reasoning to come up with “The Truth”. In other words, what are you going to tell the world that your findings mean? But according to the clever scientific minds over at Photon In The Darkness, deductive reasoning is not all it’s cracked up to be:

“Deductive reasoning is defined as ‘an argument where the conclusion is a logical consequence of its premise’. Many believe that if their conclusions follow logically from their premises, then their conclusions must be true. But this reasoning can be either valid (if the conclusions are logical consequences of their premises) or invalid (if they are not).

“There is no true.”

In an essay last year called Deductive Mis-Reasoning,  filed under their Help For The Bewildered section, Photon In The Darkness offers us the perfect simplistic example of flawed deductive reasoning at work: the iconic fictional police detective, Sherlock Holmes. Continue reading →

Provocative TV commercial targets McDonald’s high-fat fare

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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The fries are already flying over this one. A fast-food television commercial set in a morgue and produced by the non-profit pro-vegetarian Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has begun airing this month. The ad takes direct aim at McDonald’s high-fat menu to draw attention to the link between high rates of heart disease deaths and high density of fast-food restaurants in our communities.

The ad centres around an overweight, middle-aged man seen lying dead in a morgue holding a half-eaten burger as a woman weeps over his body. McDonald’s omnipresent golden arches then trace the dead man’s feet with the text “I was lovin’ it” – a harsh jibe at McDonald’s long-running slogan “I’m lovin’ it.”

A voiceover then says: “High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian.”   Continue reading →