Maybe it’s time to investigate these understudied pediatric diseases, no? /fin #biliaryatresia #alpha1 #masld #hepatitis #buddChiari #DubinJohnson #AcuteLiverFailure #Alagille #ifald #toxicLiver #WilsonsDisease #PlasmaProteinDisorders #GilbertsSyndrome #PSC #hepatology

How can we do health system planning and prevention without knowing the number of cases ?
3/

Two studies from the early 2000s said there were 15,000 hospitalizations a year. Here is one of them. But I realized THEY ARE CITING A PAPER PUBLISHED IN 1900.

And I thought pediatric cancer was understudied!
2/

Louse-borne diseases are far more rare these days but still occur in the US, notably among homeless populations.

Here is a podcast I heard recently on louse-borne bartonella infection.

Diseases spread by lice and via foodborne illness. Borrelia is the agent of louse-borne relapsing fever. #episky

Mostly academics did what they normally do which is publish articles in the peer reviewed literature. We’re not professionally rewarded for op-eds. We’re rewarded for research.

Some people did, but they didn’t get much press.

If a faculty publishes the papers, gets the grants and teaches the courses, they’ll be left alone to pursue whatever line of inquiry they want.

Particularly in science. Yes we do have to hire someone to teach the class on, say, health inequalities that may be required by the accreditation board for our discipline, and that person will very likely tilt left. But we also need to hire health economists.

Agree but there is less groupthink than you imagine. Remember that academia has always been safe employment for cranks, oddballs, and devil’s advocates. Not everyone wants to be the odd man out, but it wouldn’t be that hard to just do your thing and stay out of the fray.

Cutting funding for PhD students, as has been done widely, will not be an effective way to open up the academy to conservatives. It will only narrow the pool of matriculated students to the children of the wealthy.

If conservatives want more conservatives in academia, then they should get PhDs and apply for the jobs. We can only choose between the folks that apply.

I don’t even know the political views of the majority of other faculty in my college. We certainly don’t discuss politics at faculty interviews.