SGEM Xtra: Everything You Know is Wrong

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Date: October 29th, 2014

Guest Skeptic: Dr. Jeremy Faust. Emergency Medicine Resident, Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York City. Co-Creator of FOAM Cast with Dr. Lauren Westfer.

This is a Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine Extra (SGEM-Xtra). An extra blog/podcast created in addition to the weekly content.

Normally we do a structured critical review of a recent publication. This is to cut the knowledge translation window down from over ten years to less than one year. However, a SGEM-Xtra will occur when a topic comes up or people come together and there seems to be a need to produce some extra SGEM content.

This first SGEM-Xtra is being recored at ACEP 2014 in Chicago. It has been a fantastic time to meet #FOAMed friends from around the world and make some new friends.

This has been my favorite ACEP ever. That is because it has been a wonderful father-son trip. My son Ethan took his Grade Ten Science Fair project and submitted it for the meeting.

Ethan created, designed, built and tested a new paediatric spine board (Ped-E-Board) to quickly and accurately assess the weight of critically ill or injured children.

Ethan is apparently one of the youngest person to every be invited to present at the conference according to ACEP Now. I am one very, very proud dad.

Last year Jeremy and I did a podcast at ACEP in Seattle. It was called the Five Stages of Evidence Based Medicine Grief. We discussed the five stages of grief as described by Kubler-Ross. People do not experience these in order, there may be other stages and not all stages need to be experienced. We discussed the five stages of EBM grief using a number of medical studies as examples.

The Five Stages of Grief:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Dr. Jeremy Faust

This fall Jeremy contacted me and suggested we do another special episode of the Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine when we are together in Chicago attending #ACEP14. I said great, what’s the topic?

Jeremy wanted to podcast a myth busting talk he had created called: Everything you know is wrong. It was part of a myth busting competition in New York City.

The myth he chose was “the peer review process as we know it is GOOD for science and medicine.” This SGEM-Xtra is a recording of us discussing his presentation.

Bottom Line: Be skeptical, even of the peer-reviewed literature.

References:

Dr. Jackson “It takes 50 years to get a wrong idea out of medicine, and 100 years a right one into medicine”.
Weird Al Yankovic – Everything You Know Is Wrong
Bohannon J. Who’s Afraid of Peer Review. Science Oct 2013
Baxt WG et al. Who Reviews the Reviewers? Feasibility of Using a Fictitious Manuscript to Evaluate Peer Reviewer Performance. Ann Emerg Med 1998
Callaham ML et al. Effect of Written Feedback by Editors on Quality of Reviews Two Randomized Trials. JAMA 2002
Callaham ML et al. Effect of Attendance at a Training session on Peer Reviewer Quality and Performance. Ann Emerg Med 1998
Houry D et al. Does Mentoring New Peer Reviewers Improve Review Quality? A Randomized Trial. BMC Med Educ 2012
Lippert S et al. Perceptions of Conflicts of Interest Disclosures Among Peer Reviewers. PLoS One 2011