Friday, March 30, 2012

The utility of medical meetings

There's a provocative commentary in this week's JAMA by John Ioannidis on medical conferences. His argument is that "medical congresses may serve a specific system of questionable values that may be harmful to medicine and health care." Some of the issues he notes include:
  • The huge carbon footprint generated by attendees' travel
  • The dissemination of misinformation due to abstracts that are not well reviewed, sometimes inaccurate, and many of which are never ultimately published as full-length articles
  • Giving opinion leaders disproportionate influence
  • Over-the-top exhibit halls
  • Industry sponsored satellite meetings
He concludes by calling for research on the best ways to disseminate information and educate physicians. I have to admit that I usually don't learn a great deal at meetings, but it sure is fun to catch up with old friends! 

Photo: The Serra Group
By -
Labels:

1 comment:

Thanks for submitting your comment to the Controversies blog. To reduce spam, all comments will be reviewed by the blog moderator prior to publishing. However, all legitimate comments will be published, whether they agree with or oppose the content of the post.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

OSHA! OSHA! OSHA!

  In many parts of the country, as rates of COVID-19 are declining and vaccination coverage is increasing (albeit with substantial variati...