Sorry this was from 2025 - THIS year Ramadan starts 18/19 Feb.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Important paper. Schools are high-risk environments for respiratory disease transmission MAINLY because classrooms are underventilated. This problem has a workable solution - it just needs political will. Air quality is as important as water quality for public health. MT @martinmckee.bsky.social

Our new paper: Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy #episky #healthpolicy #medsky www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This is how the BBC is reporting Matt Goodwin's selection as Reform's candidate in Gorton and Denton. He's not an academic. He holds no academic position and hasn't done for quite some time.

Whoever got this unethical trial cancelled, you just saved some lives. Kennedy, you should be ashamed of yourself for backing it in the first place. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

MIT’s NANDA initiative found that 95% of generative AI deployments fail after interviewing 150 execs, surveying 350 workers, and analyzing 300 projects. The real “productivity gains” seem to come from layoffs and squeezing more work from fewer people not AI.

2. How to Read a Paper involving AI. With @drpauldijkstra.bsky.social, @jessmorley.bsky.social and new name-to-watch Yosra Mekki bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/...

When I was a medical student 45 years ago, I clerked in a 13 year old girl with deep jaundice and an abdominal mass. She was Hepatitis B positive. That had led to a primary liver tumour. In a 13-year-old. She was dead within the month. Avoidable with vaccination.

Head hits desk.

I love how, when you ask ChatGPT a hard question and it says "thinking", there's a button you can press "skip this step". I guess that's how some human brains work too....

Tylenol, or paracetamol, has been used to treat common pains and fevers since 1893, and is one of the safest drugs around go.nature.com/3IDUgva

If you want to show people in your life why doctors say Tylenol DOES NOT cause autism, here are two straight forward explainers: medicalnewsbulletin.com/acetaminophe... medicalnewsbulletin.com/autism-is-no... #AutRes #EduSky 🩺📊 medsky, 🩺,⚕️ #SciPol 🧪

Fiona Godlee (previous editor of the BMJ) being arrested yesterday for her support for Palestine. She is a good and brave woman with a record of being on the right side of history.

A short explanation of p-hacking and why it absolutely makes sense to ask HHS to release the study methods of their autism report in advance.

Kennedy may have had a grilling from the committee but what is the outcome? He clearly lied to senate both here and previously with conflicting statements throughout but one set actions to me is most concerning 🧵🧪

www.science.org/doi/full/10.... Mandating Indoor Air Quality in Public Buildings. Our paper in Science. 🧪 #healthpolicy

BREAKING: Big moment as CDC staff stage a mass walkout. They have lined the street outside its HQ to greet and salute the four top officials who have resigned in protest at RFK Jr’s attack on the agency’s science base. (🎥 AP)

These are the sorts of attacks on experts that resulted in a domestic terrorist firing 500 shots at the CDC just over a week ago. If you stand for evidence based public health interventions, you basically get a target placed on your back by DHHS leadership. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

THIS

Barbara’s right - this is an awesome article. Starts with AI and the techno-rational approach to democratic decision-making (eek) but goes on to tell us why the political insights of pragmatists like Dewey and Addams remain hugely relevant today.

Reading a research paper that involves using AI in clinical settings? This article has questions to help you critically appraise AI papers: bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/...

Gonna write a paper about a paradox. Systematic reviews squash primary studies into tables; meta-analyses sum the findings of similar studies. 'Homogeneity' tends to be valued. But the REALLY pivotal studies are often unique, distinctive, imaginative, break-the-rules kind. Thoughts? #academicsky

"This paper is destined to become a citation classic." Thank you, Reviewer 2. Now, to your 40 suggestions for improvement... #academicsky

Plenty studies showing that your postcode is a better predictor of your health outcomes than your genome.

Who’s on RFK’s new vaccine advisory group? What are their conflicts of interest? Read and weep. open.substack.com/pub/sheenacr...

Today I asked AI to summarise an academic paper. The actual results were the opposite to what was hypothesised (and to what others had shown). The AI summary assumed the study had found what everyone else had found. Hot tip: don’t use a stochastic parrot to summarise an outlier paper. #academicsky 🧪

OUR NEW PAPER: the 'final findings' paper from the Remote by Default 2 study: "After the disruptive innovation: How remote and digital services were embedded, blended and abandoned in UK general practice" (will do thread on this soon) www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/hsdr/publish... #academicsky 🧪

Putting together some teaching materials on AI in healthcare - what a useful paper this is bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/...

This is so exciting! The German National Library of Medicine @zbmed.bsky.social just had its first open meeting on the plan for an open & independent PubMed safety net. Here's my write-up @plos.org on the meeting & how institutions & others can help absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/05/14/g... #MedLibs

Retraction of RCTs (because they were at best flawed & at worst fraudulent) leads to substantial changes in evidence syntheses (systematic reviews and meta-analyses). How many more crap RCTs are lurking? Time to stop hero-worshipping this design. GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT. www.bmj.com/content/389/...

Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, sent Harvard a letter. They graded it. Bwahahaha.

I’m giving the Edith Pechey lecture in Leeds tomorrow (6th May) at 5.30 pm UK time on how digitalisation increases health inequities. Join in person (from 4.30 for drinks) or online from 5.30). medicinehealth.leeds.ac.uk/medicine/eve... medicinehealth.leeds.ac.uk/faculty-/eve...

In early March, I wrote about the proto-authoritarian attacks on science and universities by the Trump administration and listed some warning signs to look out for in the coming weeks. Now six weeks later and those warning signs are being realised. christinapagel.substack.com/p/warning-si...

Super useful reference including key AI definitions and an approach on how to read a paper including AI in its research. Reminder that “AI… is not a panacea, and it raises both practical and ethical challenges”.

Sometimes good decent people die within hours of meeting nasty evil people. It’s coincidence.

Periodic reminder....😀 #Transparency is one of the six core principles underpinning the WHO guidance on #ethics and #governance of #ArtificialIntelligence for health --> who.int/publications... Important to adhere to the TRIPOD+AI reporting standards🙏 --> bmj.com/content/385/... #trustworthyAI

An excellent addition to the "How to read a paper" fold - focus is clearly on health but the introduction has wide relevance as do many of the questions 📚 #medlibs

Our new paper!! Led by @drpauldijkstra.bsky.social with @jessrmorley.bsky.social and awesome medical student Yosra Mekki. #digitalhealth #medsky #episky How to Read a Paper Involving AI. bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/...

How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Healthcare The new edition of this text is now available in the e-library. It guides those who wish to ‘assess the scientific validity and practical relevance’ of healthcare literature. #RPSLibrary ow.ly/kYsU50VuzV3

It's out! 5th edition of #qual #methods for health research now published, and in a library near you soon!

If, as a doctor, your best scientific take on cancer incidence /recurrence is "I seem to be seeing a few more cases in my own clinic since mRNA vaccines were approved", you need to bone up on cancer epidemiology or shut up.

Lockdowns are terrible. So are deadly pandemics. @chrischirp.bsky.social tells it straight. christinapagel.substack.com/p/we-are-lea...

In this current harsh world, let's warm a few hearts remembering the events of 7-8 March 1991, when the 90,000 people of Brindisi woke up to find 25,000 Albanians roaming the streets of their town. For perspective, that's roughly equivalent to 25k people suddenly landing in Hastings [Thread] >> 1

Our new paper on the evidence base for Physician Associates and Anaesthetic Associates in the UK is out today! Coauthor @martinmckee.bsky.social has done a thread here. #healthpolicy #academicsky 🧪

Paper here www.bmj.com/content/388/...

In the excitement over our new review of PAs, I forgot to tell you about the OTHER paper published in BMJ today, my commentary on the challenges of doing systematic reviews of evidence when there's no RCTs and most of the primary studies were unique and non-standardised.🧪 www.bmj.com/content/388/...

This is why @kityates.bsky.social post is so relevant today kityates.substack.com/p/science-is... and why my dystopian piece is perfectly plausible. christinapagel.substack.com/p/a-dystopia...