Medicine, Science, & Beyond
Let's explore how scientists discover new facts about our natural world.
“An important new study released today shows real progress in the fight against a common type of cancer…”
Does that grab your interest? Do you wonder why the study excited scientists? My weekly newsletter will take you through what makes a scientific paper stand out from the crowd, and how key studies and classical papers are designed and constructed.
My qualifications? I’m an MD, Cal Tech-trained virologist (with a Three-Year Fellowship from the American Cancer Society), author of more than 80 original scientific papers, textbook and book author; MD, MBA, MS, and BS degrees from Northwestern University and several years in part-time general medical practice. I’ve also held research positions at medical schools, a research institute, and private companies.
I’m now a medical writer specializing in articles in the primary literature, where scientists publish their discoveries. I’ll help subscribers understand how scientists discover new knowledge and organize and share information about their discoveries.
I’ll select important, interesting articles published in peer-reviewed journals. I’ll discuss the scientific questions the authors posed, how they tested possible answers, what data they gathered, and how they interpreted the data to answer their initial questions.
My background is especially strong in virology, diabetes, opioid addiction, asthma, and COPD, but I’ll cover other areas I’m knowledgeable about, always with a goal of entertaining as well as educating my readers. Some stories will even be humorous (yes, there are such reports!).
I’ll walk readers through various topics, clarifying the scientific process and showing why the research results are reliable—or in some cases unreliable. I’ll discuss biases that can blemish results, and I’ll help readers distinguish between science (facts) and pseudoscience (nonsense).
My newsletter will dissect published scientific papers to help readers understand how scientists discover and present knowledge about the natural world. That factual knowledge is forever growing and changing—what’s believed today to be a fact may tomorrow be found to be false and replaced with better knowledge. That’s the self-correcting essence of science.
The source of each newsletter will be an article on an interesting topic in medicine or science from a peer-reviewed journal. Articles will be chosen based on my opinion that the article will
· Be of general interest
· Include helpful hints for readers to manage their own health, e.g., diabetes, hypertension, opioid use, healthful diet, obesity, and topics suggested by subscribers
· Enlighten readers about how experiments are conceived and done
· Inform readers about clinical trials—how they are planned, structured, regulated, and conducted
Scheduled newsletters will be published every Wednesday. They will discuss publications selected from the world’s scientific base, not just from the US or UK. The only restriction will be that the article is written in English. When appropriate, a one-paragraph biography of the lead author of the discussed paper will be included at the end of the newsletter.
After getting the rhythm going with the weekly newsletter and with sufficient free subscribers, I plan to offer paid subscribers readings and videos with embellishments and more in-depth comments about the articles discussed in the weekly newsletters. In addition to the readings and videos, the paid subscriptions will include miscellaneous pieces of interest and just-for-fun items.
Occasionally, special articles will be posted on Thursdays, also available to paid subscribers. These articles may be general discussions about the scientific process, or descriptions or profiles of people of special interest, or discussions of other interesting topics in medicine or science.
Newsletters that dissect a published article will follow the format my late wife, Barbara Goodheart, developed during her 17 years as contributing writer for Addiction Treatment Forum. She drafted a few newsletters before her final illness, and I’ll post those also.
In occasional special features I’ll take you to the human-interest world behind the world of science. It’s a world that may sometimes make you smile, sometimes make you shed a tear, because the world of medical science is not static and dull. It is a moving, evolving, fascinating world. It’s a world I know well, having lived in it for many decades.
The focus of my posts is you, the readers. I’ll welcome and need your feedback. You may disagree with what I say about the report I’ve discussed, or seek elaboration. Or, you may suggest a study that you’d like to have me discuss—these could be recent or many years old.
Please accept my apologies for not giving specific medical advice. If you have a certain ailment, and would like to learn more about it, I will consider finding a recent paper on it to analyze as described, but it will be focused on the article and what it says, not on you and your ailment specifically.