Hot MedFax

How smart do you think you are?  If you are like most, probably 'way smarter than you really are. smartplanet.com says 40% of us think we're in the top 5% (in my city, the gifted child program was dropped because too many parents with kids in the top 25% insisted their kids be part of it).  The Web site quotes David Dunning, who says that, "not only are we terrible at seeing how stupid we are, but we're also too dumb to recognize genius right in front of us." Here's another stunning fact he's come across.  Incompetence can mask the awareness of one’s incompetence. The phenomenon is now called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, according to smartplanet.com. Dunning reportedly based this on a bank robber who squirted lemon juice all over his face and thought he was invisible because in a photo he took with a Polaroid, his image mysteriously disappeared.  But that story's for another day. The bottom line:  he didn't even know what an idiot he was.   ...

Imagine this.  Instead of visiting your doctor when your headache just doesn't go away, go online and talk to others who have experienced similar symptoms for relief and suggested treatments. No, it's not like asking your Aunt Millie for her recipe for ingrown toenails. According to a story at wired.com, PatientsLikeMe, a new social network for those suffering from chronic diseases, " says it will use a new $1.9 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to build an open science platform to help patients measure the progression of their own diseases and to make that data available to medical researchers." And you won't be alone. Ryan Tate writes that almost 200,000 people have already taken advantage of the network to spread medical data. Privacy freaks, no worries. The network is secure.  The app developed when its owners realized there are no standardized "measurement systems developed for patient use."  So, very often, patients are lef...