Links for Tuesday, August 21, 2018: patients love good news. And weed. Patients love weed.

Patients liked a blood pressure app better because it was inaccurate

If I were to pick a single study that wraps all my angst about medicine up into a tidy bow, it would be this one:

"...user enjoyment and likelihood of future BP monitoring were negatively associated with higher-than-expected reported systolic BP. These data suggest reassuring app results from an inaccurate BP-measuring app may have improved user experience, which may have led to more positive user reviews and greater sales."

A better writer could hold forth on how doctors (and devices?) are so bad at giving negative but meaningful information to patients that patients simply avoid the process altogether, leading patients to seek a relationship with their doctors that more resembles that between a shaman and a subject than that of a modern, informed, dynamic doctor-patient exchange of information.

*head explodes*

Dr. Robert Badgett, on seeing this study, reminded me of a quote by Voltaire:

"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

I certainly feel like I'm in the entertainment business some days.

With wider availability of cannabis comes wider use and wider abuse

"Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. 'Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,' said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. 'It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent."

I knew guys in college who were stereotypical "potheads," and I think my bias at the time was that all but a few of them would be reined in by the relative difficulty of getting the drug (not that it was difficult). Now that the reins are off, we're stuck addressing possible solutions to the problem. This is not an argument for going back to hard-core criminalization. As Annie Lowrey points out, the US still arrests more people for marijuana offenses than it does for all violent crimes combined. That seems, shall we say, excessive. 

Links for Wednesday, August 2, 2017: death of the high-top, marijuana makes you stupid, and spending money only makes you so happy

Are high-top basketball sneakers on their way out?

True story: I bought 3/4 top sneakers for my senior year of basketball over the objections of my high-school coach, who wanted everyone in true high-tops. I stepped on another guy's foot on the first day of practice and broke my fibula. He took this as evidence I'd erred in my shoe choice. The evidence says otherwise:

"There's no science out there, that we have at least, that proves that a high-top shoe is more effective at reducing ankle injuries than anything else," says Kevin Dodson, Nike's senior design director for basketball footwear. 

Marijuana probably makes people do poorly in school, and it's not because they study less

So, with decriminalization and legalization of marijuana occurring nationwide, let's put the drug where it belongs: right beside tobacco and alcohol, two substances that, while not sinister enough to be made illegal, are clearly not good for you and should be mostly avoided.

Is the old adage to "Buy experiences, not things," wrong?

[this] helps us see the car-buyer’s true problem: not that he’s prioritising objects over experience, but that he’s pursuing the wrong kind of experience. He wants to receive a predictable, consistent daily dose of pleasure from owning a car. But that’s not how pleasure works: if the holidaymaker ends up happier, it’ll be because she got to enjoy anticipating the trip, experiencing it, then consigning it to memory, where it can be burnished until it’s perfect (or, if it went terribly, turned into an anecdote that’s even more fun). If our shallow materialist were to use his vehicle to pursue unpredictable, sociable and one-off experiences – like, say, a road trip with friends – he’d stand just as much chance of happiness.

So these new studies seem to indicate that it's not a simple matter of whether you buy things or experiences; it's a matter of what purpose the things you buy serve. If you buy a Faberge' egg (to use the example in the article) to simply put on a shelf in your office to be dusted, it's unlikely to make you any happier. If you buy that same egg to use in a game where it's passed around to close friends and family who are obligated to write a story about it and distribute it at Christmas, it may cause many people to be much happier.