The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7501 p574
10 May 2008

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 40K, Acrobat Reader

Dangerous toys for boys

They know who you are

Importance of publishing negative results

The moon and health

Dangerous toys for boys

One of Merlin’s most treasured memories of childhood is the water-bomb. Originally, these consisted of a brown paper bag, two-thirds filled with water and the top screwed closed, which was then hurled as far as possible, to burst with a most satisfying splash on the roadway or pavement.

Occasionally the weapon would be unleashed on a friend, and several times both Merlin and his friend Derek went home with soaked clothes, to receive a severe telling-off or worse (in the days before a good smack became politically incorrect).

From paper bags we graduated to balloons. I am not sure of the physics behind this, but for some reason a balloon water-bomb did not make such a satisfying splash as it hit the ground. However, a variant of the game was to see how much water could be put into a balloon before it burst all over the feet of the aqua-bombardier.

I was reminded of this when leafing through a catalogue of “presents for men’, which fell out of our daily newspaper recently. One of the items advertised was a combination giant catapult and water-bomb. The pack included a large number of balloons to be filled with water, and an ingenious launching mechanism.

To use the device, one lies on one’s back with legs in the air. Stirrups are placed each foot and a powerful elastic band attached to the stirrups is drawn back as far as possible. The loaded water-bomb is then placed in a sort of sling at the end of the catapult, and then you just let go.

The advertisement reckoned that a water-bomb could be hurled to a distance of some 130ft (40m). The distance would, however, depend on the angle of elevation. I reckon, though, that with this device it should be possible to hurl a water bomb over the roof of the average house. What a birthday present for a grandfather to entertain his grandsons with!

Back to Top

They know who you are

The gathering of vast demographic databases has been proceeding for some years. All manner of data are collected constantly. Use a debit card to pay for supermarket bill or order goods from a mail order company, and the companies will quickly build up a picture of what you buy and when. Link this information to your postcode, and a profile of people who live in that postcode will soon emerge.

The development of publicly available internet-based neighbourhood information systems (IBNIS) means that much of the information developed from the data collection can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection.

Such sites include

• www.upmystreet.co.uk
• www.homecheck.co.uk
• www.craptowns.co.uk
• www.chavtowns.co.uk
• and the rather pompous-sounding www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk

The population is thus being segmented into those who are “information-rich” and those who are “information-poor”.

A recent article by Roger Burrows of the University of York in the journal Science and Public Affairs, published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, states that IBNIS will enable people to check on the type of neighbourhood that they are moving into and effectively “sort themselves out”.

Could this have implications for otherwise vulnerable areas and people? Is there any way of challenging the characterising of your neighbourhood by such websites?

Such “sorting out” of populations could have important implications for community pharmacies.

Back to Top

Importance of publishing negative results

Knowing that something does not work, or does not do that which it might reasonably be expected to do, can be every bit as important as a “significant” positive result. However, do journals deliberately exclude negative results?

In addition, do researchers deliberately suppress negative results and not submit them for publication, for fear that they might indicate poor science, or a poor researcher?

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that publication of studies of antidepressant medicines is biased towards those studies with positive results. The authors claimed that all but one of 38 studies showing positive results were published, while few that showed a negative result saw the light of day in a journal. Failure to publish a negative study, besides giving a drug an unwarranted reputation, can adversely effect future research.

Like most retired academics, Merlin has amassed a collection of reprints of papers that he has either written or co-authored (often as an “et al” at the end of a long list). I have often joked that my lifetime publications list would have been much longer if there had been a British “journal of negative results”. My son (an academic) pointed out that such a journal, the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine, now exists on the internet.

From recent papers, we learn that low-dose doxycycline may not be effective in reducing the symptoms of Sjögren’s syndrome, and a battery of questions and tests did not predict falls in the elderly, even though the procedure identified individuals with poor balance.

The mechanisms by which glucocorticoid therapy promotes obesity and insulin resistance are uncertain, but data from one study do not support a role for tumour necrosis factor-alpha, ghrelin, leptin or adiponectin in the insulin resistance associated with short-term glucocorticoid treatment.

Finally, obesity is known to be associated with the low resting energy levels caused by a sedentary lifestyle. A study showed that listening to classical music does not influence resting energy expenditure compared with complete silence, so the authors call for further studies using other genres of music and other types of stress-inductor.

Merlin would like to see examples of other negative results. Such publications could have a profound influence on our perception of medicine and pharmacy.

Back to Top

The moon and health

Popular opinion holds that the moon has an effect on the human body. Some people believe that this is related to a kind of tidal effect on the fluids of which the human body is composed, and many are the supposed effects of this.

Some years ago, two medical researchers in Slovakia claimed to have found a positive effect of the lunar cycle, in that gout attacks tended to be more prevalent at new moon and at full moon than at the quarter moons (Medical Hypotheses 2000;55:24–5). Their research pointed to a pronounced cyclical effect in attacks of gout, with peaks at full moon and new moon, which they stated was statistically significant.

Scientists do tend to be sceptical about links between lunar cycles and humans, but how does one explain these results?

Conversely, a group from Switzerland found no association between patient falls in hospital and lunar cycles (BMC Nursing 2005;4:5). The day of the week, the month of the year and the season also had no apparent effect on the rate of falls.

Another one for the Journal of Negative Results ?