🧵I couldn't quite make myself look at the new MAHA report, so I settled for today's opinion piece in the Washington Post: wapo.st/4mf4Ma7 As a #medlibs and #SystematicReview / #EvidenceSynthesis person, I of course had a look at the links/citations they include. Let's go over them, shall we?

“"Those signs aren't made in basements. They're made in professional printing offices and they cost a lot of money," he said.”

It can be so hard advocating for yourself. If you are succeeding at it, well done, you got this. If you are struggling with it, take a breath, drink some water, keep trying. You’re not done yet.

1/ This is a long 🧵, so buckle up & I hope you read till the end. The HHS Secretary, is planning to remove all 16 members of the USPSTF the expert panel that decides which preventive services (cancer screenings, HIV prevention meds) must be covered by insurers under the Affordable Care Act.

100 health groups sound alarm after ‘abrupt’ cancellation of USPSTF meeting. The influential task force dictates whether health insurers must cover preventive services such as mammograms and low-dose CT lung exams, which now may be in jeopardy. radiologybusiness.com/topics/healt...

"Secretary Kennedy declared that HHS has failed to address root causes of disease, mandating radical restructuring of HHS. Yet the USPSTF is a clear success. It interprets evidence and makes guideline recommendations that are widely trusted and followed..." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

I'm wfh and someone is watching the first Jurassic Park in the other room. How am I supposed to work in these conditions?

How are folks handling #copyright when it comes to using things like chatGPT/Claude/CoPilot for #evidencesynthesis tasks. E.g. using CoPilot to do QA/bias assessments, or Claude for data extraction. Do you use only open article pdfs? Has anyone seen any work on this? #systematicreviews #medlibs

“No CDC childhood vaccine was ever placebo-tested.” False. Our crowd-sourced sheet lists 24 saline-placebo RCTs for 7 schedule vaccines: 1 Rotavirus (8 RCTs) 2 Hib (5) 3 Hep B (4) 4 Varicella (3) 5 Hep A (2) 6 Measles/MMR (1) 7 Influenza LAIV (1) Data 👉 bit.ly/3EuYzqI @bradspellberg.bsky.social

I’ve just finished book 5 of The Saxon Series, audiobook, and I see that book 6 has a different reader again. That will be the 4th so far. I hate this.

Best strawberries 🍓 in the world. Thanks to the farm workers. The striped mountains in the background are Topatopa.

In 15 yrs of reporting, I've never had so many health & biomed researchers & outreach orgs tell me they're afraid to talk w/press or barred from speaking bc of new comms policies. I understand the fear of losing funds. I don't know if silence does more harm than good. If you can speak up, pls do.

Call your trial/device/score/tool something that doesn’t already come up in the corpus challenge. Winner gets to have their research found without making life hard for their peers. Even an odd spelling will get you points eg the TRYAL trial is a bzillion times better than the TRIAL trial.

In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪 🧵 1/26 drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...

Had a chat with a good friend recently and she mentioned how much her boycott efforts have actually positively impacted her savings

Thinking about how researchers or academics can mitigate the professional impact of removing their name or withdrawing papers that have been rewritten to comply with #censorship

#standupforscience #medlibs

Wondering if any of the academic publishers or database providers have made any comment or are doing anything wrt the indirect rate cut down to 15% eg Elsevier, Ebsco, Wolters Kluwer/Ovid #medlibs surely many library resource budgets will be impacted.

“Many jobs” like?

The anti-abortion billboard near me got defaced. They changed it pretty quickly, it’s a tedx ad now.

If your boss or company tells you to do something unethical: don't say yes. Make them write it down.

"Publication ethics and professional standards define the work of medical journals, editors, and researchers. These are safeguards of best scientific practice and integrity—and will not yield to bad practice like gag orders, suppression, and authoritarian whims." tinyurl.com/24v53u6y #medlibs

I realize I’m a shallow, stupid, and silly person, but that hat was certainly a choice.

I read these under the assumption that they are a form of fan fiction, and the thing they are a fan of is drama.

Thank you to @everylibrary.bsky.social for creating a legislation tracker for the 26 book banning bills already up for 2025. Check this list to see if your state is on it, and if it is then use the @5calls.org app to call your state reps to yell about it. www.everylibrary.org/billtracking...

I am but a lowly medical librarian, but I had a thought about Qs I'd like to ask RFKjr in a confirmation hearing. To me these are softballs that anyone interested in medicine or healthcare could muster up an answer. And yet, I think it would be important that someone in that position should know.

I am but a lowly medical librarian, but I had a thought about Qs I'd like to ask RFKjr in a confirmation hearing. To me these are softballs that anyone interested in medicine or healthcare could muster up an answer. And yet, I think it would be important that someone in that position should know.

When I’m working on a literature search for a #systematicreview I will look at the searches for reviews on the same topics for synonym ideas and 99% of the time the syn development is just non-existent. The bar is so low.

Happy New Year! 2024 has been a little wild, both good and bad, but will always be the year I made @the-bookseller.bsky.social. A dream come true! www.thebookseller.com/rights/the-b...

I enjoyed A Complete Unknown. I think the criticism of it mostly boils down to what people really want is a glossy well done Joan Baez or even a Suze Rotolo biopic. To which I say: yes please!

My son (25) was badly injured, but survived a multi fatality bus crash this summer. I am so happy I feel overwhelmingly blessed to be celebrating another Christmas with him.

The problem with having vax preventable illness rampant in the community is that even if you are vaxxed you will still be screwed if you need to access healthcare during an outbreak.

Don’t want to get my hopes up that universal healthcare might be gaining momentum in 🇺🇸

Took a flying tour of downtown Portland in a little Cessna. It was pretty spectacular.

But really I’ve been involved in projects where the client was told ‘AI powered’ but really it was me at six other MLIS people. I only found out about the AI bit afterwards.

I like how this study set out to answer a why we do a thing that particular way Q www.jmir.org/2024/1/e53781 Leblanc V, et al Added Value of Medical Subject Headings Terms in Search Strategies of Systematic Reviews: Comparative Study, J Med Internet Res 2024;26:e53781

Oh gosh these are kind of cute.

Agreed!! "I hope that MLA members will call for better contractual language from the organization that is supposed to be serving them. They deserve it." #medlibs hedgehoglibrarian.com/2024/12/02/m...

I'll be doing an advent calendar of #SearchingSkills where you can try/learn something new every day. It will be primarily in PubMed and sometimes using MeSH terms to answer the question. It will be aimed at inexperienced searchers, but I hope experienced searchers will join in too!

Just saw Gladiator 2 and I really enjoyed it.

This is honestly such a worry for me. Good metadata REALLY matters.

Just had a call with some h o s p i t a l l i b r a r i a n s across the country. So many pressured for space. Staff. Please, vocally support your libraries - especially hospital and health sciences. #medlibs

I never made it to the end of Game of Thrones, life turned over and I think maybe I got to season 4. But we just got Max, so maybe I’ll try again. I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning.

It's disturbing seeing some medical and public health professionals trying to normalize RFK by saying "we have to meet him halfway." NOPE. RFK is a charlatan who has deliberately spread disinformation that has killed people. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

I wonder how many #medlibs are stressing about what the rfk jr appointment will mean. Should I be updating my CV?

Researchers are making decisions today that will stretch years into the future. Some are definitely choosing “safer” research topics. Some are looking to take their expertise to a safer place.

I highly recommend turning over a rock or log when in the presence of a 4-8 y/o child.

Couldn't find a starter pack for the #EvidenceSynthesis community in health and care research and beyond so I created one. If you're not on this and would like to be and/or have suggestions of others to add let me know. Or indeed if you know of a starter pack I've missed. go.bsky.app/79wrV7Y