The past few weeks in blog land…

CVS has announced plans to end tobacco sales by October 1 of this year. This item from NPR’s The Takeaway discusses the news, the company’s move toward being a health provider, and includes comments from the CEO about some of the foods CVS sells (which have been mentioned in criticisms of the move). For an example of criticism on this widely applauded announcement has drawn consider 33 Charts’ blog. On Respectful Insolence a reminder to focus on the big picture that positive move this is from CVS.

Gene by Gene has settled it’s patent infringement case with Myriad and will not sell  BRCA tests in North America. No doubt, bloggers are writing about this and related cases now.

Last week a comment in Nature, Policy:NIH plans to enhance reproducibility (by Francis Collins and Lawrence Tabak) addressed the problem reproducibility in science and policies the NIH hopes can combine with the efforts of other interested parties to help “reset the self-corrective process of scientific inquiry”.

5 Key Things to Know of Meta-analysis is a great explanation of important factors to keep in mind when looking at meta-analytical studies. Hilda Bastian has included examples of studies using the different methods discussed, links to further explanations of the statisical methods involved, and charming cartoons to explain the concepts involved. (via @bonnieswoger)

On Cancer.net, MSK’s Dr. Anas Younes wrote about Cancer in the Age of Social Media, asking other oncologists about the recent pieces about blogger Lisa Adams prior to giving his own (admittedly biased) opinion.

Changes coming to HealthCare.gov, the op-eds that outraged many cancer patients on social media, and Copyright Week…all catching my attention this past week!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sponsoring a six day Copyright Week, highlighting principles they believe “should guide copyright policy and practice” as Kevin Smith of the Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog explains.

If you haven’t heard about the flap on twitter and other social media over two recent op-ed pieces by a husband and wife in the Guardian and NY Times (the first was retracted and the other is here) criticizing metastatic breast cancer patient and blogger, Lisa Bonchek Adams, I want to give readers here a sense of what happened without trying to round up all the responses. The op-ed pieces have been criticized for breaches of journalistic ethics, factual inaccuracies, and a failure to understand what Adams was trying to communicate. Many of the criticisms are expressed clearly in Social Media is a conversation, not a press release, The NY Time’s Public Editor Margaret Sullivan responded with Readers lash out about Bill Keller’s column on a woman with cancer.

Following the decision on FCC rules this week here are a few views… from Tim Wu on The New Yorker’s Elements, Who killed net neutrality?. Over on WonkBlog John Blevins tells everyone to Relax…

From iHealthBeat, a round-up of reports that Accenture will take over Healthcare.gov.

Randy Scheckman (on top journals, the impact factor & open access), disappearing data, 23andMe craziness, and more…all in this edition of Blog Buzz!

• Nature News writes about a recent study which showed the rapid loss of original scientific data over time, yikes! A more in depth discussion of this important issue in an item from Scientific American.
• A recent study looked at the rate of publication (and time lag) following the presentation of abstracts at conferences in Medical Education, Publication results of abstracts presented at medical education conferences…from JAMA. Continue reading →