{"id":918,"date":"2014-04-23T20:23:48","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T19:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/?p=918"},"modified":"2014-04-25T16:51:19","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T15:51:19","slug":"let-me-tell-you-a-story-journal-clubs-as-literary-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2014\/04\/23\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-journal-clubs-as-literary-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Let me tell you a story &#8230; journal clubs as literary criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 444px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/imgs.xkcd.com\/comics\/impostor.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"444\" height=\"187\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the worlds greatest comic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever been to a journal club and had the slight suspicion that what you are addressing isn&#8217;t quite on-target? (Ever been part of #ADC-JC and realised that most of Twitter appears to be whispering at the back and passing notes to each other?) Ever considered if journal club really is a scientific pursuit?<br \/>\n<!--more-->I might be going off on a wild tangent here, but based on some work as an editor, a commentator, a researcher, a reader and a user of medical literature, I do wonder if we think straight about studies in journals.<\/p>\n<p>#1 The journal article is a summary of a (scientific) study crushed into 2500 &#8211; 3000 words<\/p>\n<p>#2 There may be a longer report that sits beneath this with more of the data and further analysis<\/p>\n<p>#3 There are then the case report forms which sit below this<\/p>\n<p>#4 And the patients actual experiences underpin it all.<\/p>\n<p>As journal club attenders, I think we often fall into the habit of making a critique of the way the &#8216;story&#8217; is being told, the phraseology or descriptors, or the presence of absence of certain reported elements. We may be more accepting of a well crafted paper than one with jags, admissions of error and clumsy English. Do our negative reflections of a study really focus on things that have been reported and are wrong \/ disagreed with, or on the absence of enough data to get to the answer?<\/p>\n<p>Is &#8216;journal club&#8217; criticism really any more than literary criticism with a scientific shrink-wrapper?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Bob Phillips<\/p>\n<p>(And I now need to acknowledge that one of the <a title=\"September #ADC_JC \u2013 Those who can, do, those who can\u2019t, teach?\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/10\/10\/september-adc_jc-those-who-can-do-those-who-cant-teach\/\">many brilliant things <\/a>about <a title=\"Archives of Disease in Childhood\u2019s Twitter Journal Club \u2013 #ADC_JC\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/twitterclub\/\">#ADC_JC<\/a> is that for loads of them we have had authors bravely take part to unpack and explore some of the Things Left Unwritten.)<\/p>\n<p>(And also that another thing that we often do in journal clubs is complain that it&#8217;s not the study we wanted to be done, rather than address the study that has been done. Twitter \/ Bronchiolitis study &#8211; I <strong>am<\/strong> looking at you.)<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Have you ever been to a journal club and had the slight suspicion that what you are addressing isn&#8217;t quite on-target? (Ever been part of #ADC-JC and realised that most of Twitter appears to be whispering at the back and passing notes to each other?) Ever considered if journal club really is a [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2014\/04\/23\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-journal-clubs-as-literary-criticism\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archimedes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}