Medline search words and Statistics
Written by Robin at 31 Aug 2005 16:13:00:
Hi D,
Thanks for the offer to help. In addition to my email I wanted to post this, mainly as a record of MEDLINE search words.
There are two important things to do with statistics and scientific research which require little foreknowledge ... and anyone with organising talent and intelligence could do
The most important and central statistics to check are those from Oster.
The reason why Oster is so important is explained on ARCgroup posting "RIC Oster BMJ Ploss and Bryk" message 34.htm which is a wee bit lower on this page.
If you can read my criticism and his paper ... Oster was not very good at maths - note how for "tight foreskin" he says 1% at one point and 2% somewhere else, I calculate 1.4% - my calculation was on scraps of paper, ARC needs this calculation written clearly to publish ... This paper is really the only one ever quoted for statistics, ... Osters entire mathematics are not transparent ...- is this interesting for you?
Then, there are several areas of scientific research to be done, but by far the most important is researching MEDLINE as described in ARCmanifesto (now called ARCproject, name change because we are not a political party, we are just a party!). I would open you a password protected forum to use as pin board. The point is to critically examine new studies, and keep ARC and male initaition.net up to date. Its a long and continual process which could be started by you and carried on by others as long as we keep records.
Firstly I have searched out my old search words, and checking and refining these search words is the first step so that MEDLINE coughs up all the abstracts we want and possibly only a few extra irrelevant ones
freno* frenu* freni* fraenum frein (for different languages, but most studies will have an English abstract), and because there is a frenulum lingua (of the tongue) then one needs to write something like BUT NOT ling* (I cant remember if I needed peni*)
phimo* is easier but then you will need AND peni* BUT NOT penic* (for penicillin)
This is the formular as well as I can remember, it would first be good to establish the exact search terminology.
If you go to my site map.html and find MEDICUS you get a medline link at the top of the page, and Id suggest you just go and have a look and check out that you understand this sort of search engine because youve probably never seen anything like it, then think about it a bit and tell us your feelings.
Its strange, but these two subjects are the most important on the back-up list. I always imagined getting further into the communication systems before starting on the scientific back up ... still if you want to start now, - then why not :)
cheers
robin
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