NeuroTalk Support Groups - This has taken away the worst of the worst of my fears

Hi, Ray, and welcome to Neurotalk!

The quote above (I hope you can see it) is only an abstract of an article in a medical journal. An abstract is a general summary of what's in the full article, usually with a sentence or two each about the purpose of the study (for example, they wanted to study the aerodynamics of pig flight before and after meals to see if being weighted down slowed the pig), what was done and to what or whom (14 pigs were randomly chosen from Farmer Brown's barnyard weighed and dropped from the top of the barn before and after meals and their flights measured in various ways), what the results were (all 14 pigs flew blah blah distances before the meal, but only 3 survived the postprandial flight), what this indicates factually (the full pigs couldn't fly as well as when they were hungry), and the conclusion drawn by the researchers (pigs shouldn't fly on a full stomach). In theory, the reader (good doctors read a lot every day) will skim the abstract to decide if they want to read the full article, which is in an expensive periodical. If you know someone with library access on line, they can get a full article for your local library, if they're willing, or you can pay typically $15-30 for a copy online. A lot of medical journals will release their full articles a year or two or three after they're printed and/or published online. If this isn't already more than you want to know, you can learn to use the system at PubMed through the link at the top right of this page. There is also a medical dictionary link up there for the adventurous. Usually we can get all we need from the last sentence or two of the abstract.

In this case, the video is the "full article" and not readily available yet.

In reading articles, remember that it's only one study, and in the scientific method, one study only starts or continues the debate, and we should never put too much weight on the outcome.

I subscribe to a service called AMEDEO, which will send you abstracts of articles from any field of medicine once a week, so I generally see them a day before they come out in press.

The way I found out all this stuff is from studying for a 2-year degree in medical records, with which I sat an exam for certification in 1973. I worked in hospitals for about four years and then as a consultant in coding diseases and operations for a couple of years, until I returned to school in a different field in 1975. Now I'm sure you and anyone reading knows way more than they want to know.

Have a good day and thanks for pointing out what I should have made note of in the first place.

Jaye