As part of the STREAM workshop series, Dr. Jeremy Howick gave a seminar on March 25th on the usefulness of basic science research. This a great question to ask, and in his answer he makes two valid observations: 1) there’s a 70/30 split in research funding favoring basic science over clinical research and 2) historically,… Continue reading So How Useful is Basic Science Research?
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Kristin Voigt, co-hosted by STREAM and CIRST
For the first time, STREAM will be co-hosting a workshop event with CIRST, the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et al technologie. On April 9th at UQAM (see full location info below), Kristin Voigt will be speaking on “E-cigarettes and Smoking Norms: Do Concerns About the Renormalisation of Smoking Justify Regulation of E-cigarettes?”… Continue reading Kristin Voigt, co-hosted by STREAM and CIRST
Jeremy Howick visits STREAM on March 25th
Jeremy Howick’s research draws on his interdisciplinary training as a philosopher of science and clinical epidemiologist. He has two related areas of interest: (1) Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), including EBM ‘hierarchies’ of evidence, clinical epidemiology, and how point of care tests might improve practice; and (2) philosophy of medicine, including the epistemological foundations of Evidence-Based Medicine,… Continue reading Jeremy Howick visits STREAM on March 25th
Semantic natural language processing and philosophy of science
On 2015 February 18, James Overton visited the STREAM research group in Montreal, where he presented his research into what scientists are doing when give an explanation for something. Many accounts of scientific explanation have been offered by philosophers of science over the years, but Overton’s offering differs in that he set out to establish… Continue reading Semantic natural language processing and philosophy of science
James Overton visits STREAM on February 18th
James Overton is the founder of Knocean, a consulting and development service at the intersection of philosophy, science, and software. Example projects include ontology development and deployment, building semantic web tools, and developing custom web applications for scientific and medical projects. He specializes in scientific database integration using biomedical ontologies. On February 18th at 3… Continue reading James Overton visits STREAM on February 18th
Nope– It’s Still Not Ethical
Last year, Jonathan and I published a critique of unequal allocation ratios in late-phase trials. In these trials, patient-subjects are randomly allocated among the treatment arms in unequal proportions, such as 2:1 or 3:1, rather than the traditional equal (1:1) proportion. Strangely, despite introducing an additional burden (i.e., requiring larger sample sizes) the practice of unequal allocation… Continue reading Nope– It’s Still Not Ethical
Charting the Unpredictable: Using fMRI patterns to determine outcome in acutely comatose patients
Every year in Canada around 50,000 people suffer brain injuries, with those experiencing severe traumas often becoming comatose for days or weeks post-incident. While there exists a battery of physiological prognostic indicators, such as pupillary light reflex (or lack thereof), and patterns of EEG activity, there remains a significant subset of patients who retain an… Continue reading Charting the Unpredictable: Using fMRI patterns to determine outcome in acutely comatose patients
Charles Weijer visits STREAM on January 12th
Charles Weijer is a philosopher, physician, and the Canada Research Chair in Bioethics at Western University. His academic interests center on the ethics of medical research. He has written about using placebos in clinical trials, weighing the benefits and harms of medical research, and protecting communities in research. On January 12th at 3 PM, he… Continue reading Charles Weijer visits STREAM on January 12th
Unsuccessful trial accrual and human subjects protections: An empirical analysis of recently closed trials
The moral acceptability of a clinical trial is rooted in the risk and benefit for patients, as well as the ability of the trial to produce generalisable and useful scientific knowledge. The ability of a clinical trial to justify its claims to producing new knowledge depends in part on its ability to recruit patients to… Continue reading Unsuccessful trial accrual and human subjects protections: An empirical analysis of recently closed trials
The Landscape of Early Phase Research
As Jonathan is fond of saying: Drugs are poisons. It is only through an arduous process of testing and refinement that a drug is eventually transformed into a therapy. Much of this transformative work falls to the early phases of clinical testing. In early phase studies, researchers are looking to identify the optimal values for the various… Continue reading The Landscape of Early Phase Research