Every seeming kind of "not a big deal" thing related to #vaccineswork blows up in our faces like death threats via online mobs against #pediatrician#SciComm
May seem extreme but take a look at the escalation of responses to my identifying "bad #data"
We can't wait for yet more false "vaccines affect (THEY DO NOT) fertility" trope to circulate
anyone who is generating data on #vaccine "#sideeffects" needs to think about clean, quality, meaningful data. Junk data: common, but this actually matters
One of largest groups of #vaccine-hesitant, whether for #COVID19 or in general: evangelicals - they believe there is a government microchip or fertility aspects. (Menses map to fertility).
People can ask questions, but "#data" has to be #quality
#Interdisciplinary#research is great - but recognize that every "#vaccine#sideeffect" "study" is going to end up asked in a patient-clinician visit as "so does the vaccine do as I read on FB/Twitter?"
Shoddy #research by Wakefield or a non-clinician is still shoddy research
We are in a #pandemic with >500,000 Americans dead, the @CDCgov director @CDCDirector recently described sense of "impending doom"
Ideally valid, vetted, thoughtful, high-#quality data should always be a commitment. In a #pandemic, an added lens of thoughtfulness needed
Not everyone feels responsibility for life/death nor gets death threats for doing their job. #vaccineswork docs don't need more bad #data
Prior to the #vaccine being available we already knew #menstrualhealth was being affected by lifestyle changes, diet, stress, etc. #womenshealth is VERY important and rarely studied or talked about. We need to care enuf to get good #data on it.
There are important questions to assess across domains. #Menstrualhealth is often a taboo, is understudied, as I know too well as a #pediatrician & women with #endometriosis & #fibroids (Hence my hyperfocus on this issue) - SO much bad/missing info
I state, highlight, mark up, not insinuate
Why is someone who likely does not menstruate a sudden expert on #womenshealth to identify a WOC seeking #data#quality & #integrity as the threat...to women?
"Respecting" social science = using respectable methods, not online surveys.
Academic language on #online#survey#data:
"systematically assess carelessness in a crowdsourced sample" Denial that quick & dirty is poor #quality is an odd use of time & ineffective. One could better defend one's merit, by delivering #quality per best practices and standards.
LOVE being faculty at @MIT this semester for a class on #dataanalytics & #datascience. I tend to PM my mentees, especially women and #blackexcellence to start to prepare questions to ask. Too often people stay silent. Speak up. Never be embarrassed to show #curiosity.
Listening right now to mid-semester progress reports from teams and am feeling like such a proud #datascience#BigData#bigdataanalytics momma. Bear cubs doing good (well AND good in world)
LOVE that this is a space within @MIT that focuses on #SDoH and #equity.
Literally right now, hearing about a study on #socialmedia chatter as a driver of vaccines hesitancy driven by #Twitter - start postulate "cause/effect" by an incident that happens within days after a vaccine - like ppl automatically assume a death is "caused" by vaccine
Adding the word "experience" to an online survey of biological & immunological mechanisms does not make it anthropology. People who are spreading online rumors about vaccines need to take a hard look at what they are doing. There are valid ways to collect health data. Use them.
There are real, concerning, harmful gaps in knowledge in #womenshealth. Bad data of the GIGO method of data collection for quick and dirty "research" on "vaccine side effect" merely replaces one harm with another harm. searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/gar…
If collecting data, overtly on "vaccine" and "side effect" claiming causation from temporal relation
for "after" on something as highly variable as menses, w/ deliberate inclusion of perimenopause (known menstrual variation)
=methodology used by anti-vaxx
Handling uncertainty has been the work of the last few years. First there was the abyss of #womenshealth issues I fell into following what seemed simple enough egg freezing, then the unearthing of years of remote & recent medical system trauma causing me to question my own work
Oh, cancer monitoring too. & other types of uncertainty
One thing that I changed was my level of frankness. I became much more direct and not concerned with whether what I communicated was liked
You can't be a "pleaser", outwardly focused, & deal with uncertainty from own body
My mom gave me "permission" to be less perfectionist despite that being a trait she had most of her life. You have to develop self-compassion. When you have the latter you seek less external validation
More than that is recognizing control is only ever an illusion. Ride the wave
instead of improving, response ~ "not to attack... but am glad you are not my doctor"
Indeed, I engage patients & families 1:1 without forcing them into fields I've pre-created for my #data collection, based on assumptions I have from personal experience
Respecting women & WOC allows people to not be forced into leading questions or pre-created fields
Measuring needs to be #quality to deliver quality. Your #results will never be better than your #studydesign or collection methods. Wrote this cuz we need less measurement & more humanity. I'm in b-school & everyone sends a new survey every 30 sec.. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…