Yes, little Nags-in-Training, it is indeed that time once again when all navel-gazing pundits whip up their Top 10 or Best Of lists for the year that is quickly passing.
Happy New Year to all my readers, to those of you who choose to share what you like here with friends, family or perfect strangers, to those who take the time to leave your astute, challenging or sometimes downright funny comments here, and particularly to my loyal subscribers who follow The Nag via RSS feed, Twitter, or email subscriptions (you too can do this just by clicking the appropriate Follow The Nag buttons on the right sidebar of the homepage). I sincerely appreciate your company here!
Now here’s that Top 10 list of the most widely read Nags for 2011:
1. Microwave Popcorn: (Still) Bad for You (this article is almost three times more popular than the second-most-read piece here – who knew that so many people eat, or even care about, microwave popcorn?)
2. Why You Should Not Buy Girl Guide Cookies This Year (and with this one post, I watched my Mother Of The Year Award chances evaporate . . . )
3. Lipitor – and Nine Other Blockbuster Drugs That are Falling Off the ‘Patent Cliff’ (what happens when a Big Pharma blockbuster suddenly comes to the end of its patent protection, thus opening the market to cheaper generics)
4. Why the Olympics Are Bad Business (okay, I could understand why this one ranked #7 on last year’s most-read list – I wrote it about our 2010 Vancouver Olympics – but this year, too? Could be the growing interest in next year’s London games?)
5. Dannon Slammed With $35 Million False Advertising Settlement over Activia Probiotic Yogurt (a good news story for all those who believe that corporate marketers should be punished for lying – or for making annoying ads)
6. New England Journal of Medicine Editor: “No Longer Possible to Believe Most Clinical Research Published” (as a heart attack survivor who now takes a fistful of meds every day, I found this post’s message about Big Pharma’s influence on ‘marketing-based medicine’ disturbing)
7. Does the Medical Profession Need to Wean Itself From Its “Pervasive Dependence” on Big Pharma Money? (I have the Arab news agency Al Jazeera to thank for this 2010 post’s spike in popularity this year, after its English language service linked back here in their July piece called ‘Mass Psychosis: How Big Pharma Got Americans Hooked on Anti-Psychotics’).
8. Four Marketing Tricks That IKEA Uses to Seduce Us (I hate Big Box stores – but I have to admit that I love IKEA – this post helps to explain this paradox)
9. Why Doctors Get Sued (hint: it’s not because of greedy patients and their even greedier lawyers – this article was also last year’s #10 ranked post in 2010)
10. Why Narcissists Love Facebook (2011 was the year I let loose against social media’s attraction to the truly inane – this was one of my rants)
A number of my Ethical Nag posts were also picked up and republished by other websites in 2011, including:
- When The Little Darlings Won’t Eat Fresh Fruit (Dr. Joe Today)
- When Patients Demand Treatments That Won’t Work (Prepared Patient Forum)
- Experts: Why So Wrong So Often? (Dr. Joe Today)
- How To Turn A Condition Into a Disease by “Selling Sickness” (Dr. Joe Today)
I absolutely love my WordPress stats page here on The Nag. It’s a behind-the-scenes daily web tool that lets me monitor which articles you are reading most often, which external links you are clicking while reading those articles, and even what search words or phrases you have typed into Google to land here in the first place. Fascinating! For example, the top referring sites last year were:
The stats page also keeps up with the number of readers here (almost 130,000 of you so far). The busiest traffic day here in 2011 was Monday, September 19th (and the most-read post that day was NEJM Editor: “No Longer Possible to Believe Most Clinical Research Published”, the 6th most-read post overall in 2011). The post that attracted the most reader comments was The Vancouver Riots: a Backlash Against the Backlash.
Average monthly readership has more than doubled compared to this time last year. Most of you are from the United States, with Canada and the U.K. not far behind. There were 89 new posts here in 2011, growing the total archive of Nags to 238 posts.
Once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH for your engagement in what engages me, too. Happy 2012 to you!
Cheers,
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Take a look at all the Nags since Day One
The Ethical Nag 
Happy New Year to you Carolyn. As I post this it is 2.20pm Jan 1, 2012 here. My guess is that it is 10.20pm 31/12/11 where you are. Love how the world is so small these days. Keep on nagging 🙂
You are so right. The internet makes all of us neighbours, Australians and Canadians alike, doesn’t it? Happy New Year to you, too, Dr. Joe! I always look forward to your pithy comments here.