Skeptical Scalpel

An anonymous physician wrote the following. With his permission I have edited it for length and clarity: If you are a current or future patient or a healthcare worker, you should understand the concept of “population...

On Gary Schwitzer’s website healthnewsreview.org, a debate about the role of physicians who work as journalists took place. It was sparked by an NBC News report on the changing of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to its new...

In case you haven’t noticed, a hot new topic in education is “grit.” In order to reduce the long-standing 20% attrition rate of surgical residents, some say we should select applicants who have more...

Any surgeon who acts as a proctor for another surgeon or supervises residents or mid-level providers should be aware of the potential legal pitfalls. An informative discussion of proctoring and supervision called “Is There...

An orthopedist asked me if I could explain why a couple of papers of his did not generate any feedback. He wasn’t even certain that anyone had read them. He enclosed PDFs for me. Not being an orthopedist, I cannot comment...

A couple of recent articles about dying by well-known physician-authors attracted a lot of media attention. In October 2014, 57-year-old Ezekiel J. Emanuel, writing in The Atlantic, gave a number of reasons why he hoped he would...

Two weeks ago, I posed this question, “Does anyone really read anything online?” Based on some data from various sources, I concluded that not many do. I also noted that many links I tweeted were passed along by...

Not long ago, I tweeted a link to a very long story. Within 60 seconds, it received three retweets. Since the article would have taken at least 10 minutes to read, it is highly likely that those who retweeted it did not read it....

You may find this story hard to believe, but it’s true. A 75-year-old non-smoking man with no serious medical problems and a relatively low-risk family history [father, a life-long smoker, died of a stroke at age 76] has...

Here’s a story seemingly from the old days of surgical residency training, but it occurred this year. A 2014 graduate of Ohio State University’s urology training program is suing the department chairman, the program...

The astronauts are halfway to Mars when suddenly one of them develops abdominal pain and requires surgery. What will they do? According to NASA, a miniature robot capable of assisting in surgery has been developed, tested in...

According to a Bay Area television station’ s investigative exposé, California hospitals reported 6,282 adverse events to the state over the last 4 fiscal years combined. It sounds like a lot until you realize that there...

1. An article in Time magazine is headlined “It’s Not You, Doctors Are Just Rude.” The first sentence of the article is “Doctors-in-training are in need of a dose of compassion.” It describes a...

New York’s mayor signed into law lowering the speed limit in the city from 30 mph to 25 mph, assuming that this would result in fewer car crashes and pedestrian casualties. The change took place on November 7th. The city...

CHICAGO—Airline pilots should be rated by their passengers, says a prominent doctor group. The National Association of Doctors (NAD) feels that pilots should be judged on such metrics as friendliness, communication skills, and...