By Marley, Bob(1)
ABSTRACT:
Objective: After complaints from several Health Science students about the bio-cognipsycho-neurosocial implications of their daily PubMed usage, a plan of action committee organized by the McMaster Student Wellness Center conducted a study to further investigate this serious matter.
Methods: Qualitative survey data through in-student questionnaires were compiled and critically examined (n=400). Sensitivity analyses were performed on the PubMed usage on the HSL server from May to June 2017, reviewing over 3 billion searches. Results: Daily, a typical BHSc student spends ~24.375 hours on research databases like PubMed, browsing through volumes of academic journals and reading an average of 420 articles daily, except on April 20th and Oct 17th, when the numbers halved (p<0.000001). Reportedly, students (n=35) have been fired after being caught browsing the database by their thesis supervisors while on break. In a protest, these supervisors claimed that this unnecessarily ambitious attitude was responsible for the creation of a toxic work environment, deeming PubMed usage Not Safe For Work (NSFW). Netflix revenues have declined by 98.6%; tutorials on boolean terms for search databases have been determined to be 38.6% more addictive than Season 3 of This is Us (Hyde et al.). Moreover, HABITS professors documented in an end-of-month report that they were astonished to read PubMed-based reflections for the Recreation and Leisure segment of the course.
Conclusions: To help address this issue, McMaster’s firewall plans to flag PubMed as
NFSW. Furthermore, the Faculty of Health Sciences plans to introduce a new course, called Critical Appraisal of Medical Literature, so that students can become more aware of this issue and publish ways to actively combat it.
Spiciness Rating:
The Procrastinator 