#FollowFriday #FF @DrJenGunter: EBM Sex Health Expert Wielding the Lasso of Truth

If you’re on Twitter you probably seen the #FF or #FollowFriday phenomenon. FollowFriday is a way to recommend people on Twitter to others. For at least 2 reasons: to acknowledge your favorite tweople and to make it easier for your followers to find new interesting people.

However, some #FollowFriday tweet-series are more like a weekly spam. Almost 2 years ago I blogged about the misuse of FF-recommendations and I gave some suggestions to do #FollowFriday the right way: not by sheer mentioning many people in numerous  tweets, but by recommending one or a few people a time, and explaining why this person is so awesome to follow.

Twitter Lists are also useful tools for recommending people (see post). You could construct lists of your favorite Twitter people for others to follow. I have created a general FollowFridays list, where I list all the people I have recommended in a #FF-tweet and/or post.

In this post I would like to take up the tradition of highlighting the #FF favs at my blog. .

This FollowFriday I recommend:  

Jennifer Gunter

Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter at Twitter), is a beautiful lady, but she shouldn’t be tackled without gloves, for she is a true defender of evidence-based medicine and wields the lasso of truth.

Her specialty is OB/GYN. She is a sex health expert. No surprise, many tweets are related to this topic, some very serious, some with a humorous undertone. And there can be just fun (re)tweets, like:

LOL -> “@BackpackingDad: New Word: Fungry. Full-hungry. “I just ate a ton of nachos, but hot damn am I fungry for those Buffalo wings!””

Dr Jen Gunter has a blog Dr. Jen Gunther (wielding the lasso of truth). 

Again we find the same spectrum of posts, mostly in the field of ob/gyn. You need not be an ob/gyn nor an EBM expert to enjoy them. Jen’s posts are written in plain language, suitable for anyone to understand (including patients).

Some titles:

• How safe is the HPV vaccine? New data available.
• Some birth control pills have a higher risk of blood clots. Is yours one of them?

In addition, There are also hilarious posts like “Cosmo’s sex position of the day proves they know nothing about good sex or women“,where she criticizes Cosmo for tweeting impossible sex positions (“If you’re over 40, I dare you to even GET into that position! “), which she thinks were created by one of the following:

A) a computer who has never had sex and is not programmed to understand how the female body bends.
B) a computer programmer who has never has sex and has no understanding of how the female body bends.
C) a Yogi master/Olympic athlete.

Sometimes the topic is blogging. Jen is a fierce proponent of medical blogging. She sees it as a way to “promote” yourself as a doctor, to learn from your readers and to “contribute credible content drowns out garbage medical information” (true) and as an ideal platform to deliver content to your patients and like-minded medical professionals. (great idea)

Read more at:

• Blogging with integrity: what does that mean for doctors?
• To blog or not to blog? What’s the answer for you and your practice? (At OBG-management)

You can follow Jen at her Twitter-account (http://twitter.com/#!/DrJenGunter) and/or you can follow my lists. She is on:  ebm-cochrane-sceptics and the followfridays list.

Of course you can also take a subscription to her blog http://drjengunter.wordpress.com/

Related articles

• Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com: 2009/09/11/)
• Laikas Followfriday #FF Twitter List (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com 2009/11/13/)
• #FollowFriday #FF Dutch @Nutrigenomics @Beatis @TheSofa @DrShock @digicmb (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com 2009/11/21/)
• #FollowFriday #FF the EBM-Skeptics @cochranecollab @EvidenceMatters @oracknows @ACPinternists (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com 2009/11/27/)
• How safe is the HPV vaccine? New data available. (drjengunter.wordpress.com/ 2011/06/17/)
• Some birth control pills have a higher risk of blood clots. Is yours one of them? (drjengunter.wordpress.com 2011/05/24/)
• Cosmo’s sex position of the day proves they know nothing about good sex or women” (drjengunter.wordpress.com (2011/08/19)
• To blog or not to blog? What’s the answer for you and your practice? (OBG-management August 2011 · Vol. 23, No. 8)
• Follow Friday Has Become Spam Weekly (5minutesforblogging.wordpress.com)
• Stop Doing Follow Friday Wrong (chris.pirillo.com)

Silly Sunday #29 World Cup 2010-Twitter Reports of England’s Loss.

The World Cup Soccer 2010 started 2 weeks ago. For now I only follow the Dutch team live. But indirectly I follow many other matches via Twitter. It is very entertaining, especially if things go awry, like the way the English were crushed by the Germans today (1:4). This was partly due to the referee who ruled out a legitimate goal by Frank Lampard when it was still 1 : 1.

Below are some of the tweets in my timeline. I especially like @precordialthump’s comparison of the English knock-out with apoptosis.

@Precordialthump opens with the best Faulty Tower fragment: “Don’t mention the War”. I can’t resist to show the fragment here.

And don’t miss the pic: “It wasn’t a goal” (via nutrigenomics)

1. 
   mariawolters PHEW! #ger AND #gha are through! Go Ghana, go Africa! Now on to #ger / #eng. Mwahahaha …. #fb 23 Jun 2010 from Twitter for iPhone
2. 
   precordialthump Don’t mention the war… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0&feature=fvw Come on England! 27 Jun 2010 from Echofon
3. 
   precordialthump Oh my god!!!! Come on England – 1966 in reverse!!! 27 Jun 2010 from Echofon
4. 
   MaverickNY @SallyWalker exactly kind of gobsmacked. If they ditch all the bad refs there won’t be any left for the final tho 27 Jun 2010 from Echofon in reply to SallyWalker
5. 
   mariawolters at least #eng will be spared the excruciating penalty shootout this time #brightside #schlaaaaand #fb 27 Jun 2010 from mobile web
6. 
   Herring1967 I blame our 12th invisible player. Everyone keeps passing to him and then he fucks it up. 27 Jun 2010 from web
7. 
   TW_Adorno Your team qualified with ease under a Labour Govt and have struggled in every game under the Conservatives. How could this be? 27 Jun 2010 from twidroid
8. 
   thestephmerritt Is this happening because they’ve cut the defence budget? #ididafootballjoke 27 Jun 2010 from web
9. 
   precordialthump The England team’s performance turned out to be the World Cup football equivalent of apoptosis… well done, Germany. 27 Jun 2010 from Echofon
10. 
    MaverickNY @whydotpharma not sure which was worse: refereeing, #eng or american tv commentary. Probably the last one was most clueless. 27 Jun 2010 from Echofon in reply to whydotpharma
11. 
    jdc325 Watched the England game with my Dad. My summary: what a shit waste of time. I could have gone for a walk or read a book. 27 Jun 2010 from web
12. 
    nutrigenomics Ha RT @biomatushiq: [pretty fast] ROFL RT @sotak: It wasn’t a goal! [pic] http://bit.ly/aHon2g #worldcup #eng #ger 27 Jun 2010 from Snaptu
13. 
    TheMarydoll Just been announced that the england team are flying back to glasgow airport so they can get a hero’s welcome. 27 Jun 2010 from Snaptu
14. 
    laikas RT @BrettAwesome: Breaking News: England have a new coach. It takes them to the airport in 15 minutes. 27 Jun 2010 from TweetDeck
15. 
    mariawolters RT @bradykelly: RT @riaanbth: RT @bonnycross: RT @itshellsbells: The new England badge http://twitpic.com/20hgo2 (via @Tertia) 27 Jun 2010 from Twitter for iPhone

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

#FollowFriday #FF the EBM-Skeptics @cochranecollab @EvidenceMatters @oracknows @ACPinternists

FollowFriday is a twitter tradition in which twitter users recommend other users to follow (on Friday) by twittering their name(s), the hashtags #FF or #FollowFriday, and the reason for their recommendation(s).

Since the roll out of Twitter lists I add the #FollowFriday Recommendations to a (semi-)permanent #FollowFriday Twitter list: @laikas/followfridays-ff

This week I have added 4 people to the #FollowFriday list who are all twittering about EBM and/or are skeptics and/or belong to the Cochrane Collaboration. Since there are many interesting people in this field, I also made a separate Twitterlist: @laikas/ebm-cochrane-sceptics

The following people are added to both my #followfridays-ff (n=36) and ebm-cochrane-sceptics (n=46) lists. If you are on twitter you can follow these lists.
I’m sure I forgot somebody. If I did, let me know and I’ll see if I include that person.

All 4 tweople have twittered about the new and much discussed breast cancer screening guidelines.

1. @ACPinternists* is the Communications Department of the American College of Physicians (ACP). I know ACP from the ACP-Journal club with its excellent critical appraised topics, in a section of the well known Annals of Internal Medicine. The uproar over the new U.S. breast cancer screening guidelines started with the publication of 3 articles in Ann Intern Med.
   *Mmm, when I come to think of it, shouldn’t @ACPinternists be added to the biomedical journals Twitter lists as well?
2. @EvidenceMatters is really an invaluable tweeter with a high output of many different kinds of tweets, often (no surprise) related to Evidence Based Medicine. He (?) is very inspiring. My post “screening can’t hurt, can it” was inspired by one of his tweets.
3. @cochranecollab stands for the Cochrane Collaboration. Like @acpinternists the tweets are mostly unidirectional, but provide interesting information related to EBM and/or the Cochrane Collaboration. Disclosure: I’m not entirely neutral.
4. @oracknows. Who doesn’t know Orac? Orac is “a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone might actually care about his miscellaneous”. His tweets are valuable because of his high quality posts on his blog Respectful Insolence: Orac mostly uses Twitter as a publication platform. I really can recommend his excellent explanation of the new breast cancer guidelines.

You may also want to read:

• Laikas #FollowFriday #FF Twitter-List (2009/11/13)
• Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally (2009/09/11) with tips how to use FollowFriday.

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• Follow Friday Trends: How Twitter Lists are Changing #FollowFriday (mashable.com)
• Laika’s #FollowFriday #FF Twitter List (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com)
• Kaleidoscope 2009 wk 47 (laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com)
• On Cancer Screening, Politics, and Communication (dailykos.com)
• Get a Mammogram. No Don’t. Repeat. (nytimes.com)

#FollowFriday #FF Dutch @Nutrigenomics @Beatis @TheSofa @DrShock @digicmb

Last week I announced that I would weekly update my FollowFriday Twitter list.

On the FollowFriday list are people I would like to recommend to you.

When you’re on Twitter you can follow my FF-list here:
http://twitter.com/laikas/followfridays-ff/

This week I would like to put several Dutch people in the limelight.

All these people have in common that they twitter mainly in English about scientific and/or library 2.0 subjects. And they are all nice.

@digicmb (medlib, geek, NL, **) and @DrShock (doctor, psychi, NL, **) were already on my #FF-list

@digicmb (Guus van den Brekel) was on Twitter long before I gave it a try. He knows a lot about Second Life, Web 2.0 Tools (especially all kinds of widgets and Netvibes)  and is always willing to share information. A must follow for librarians. His blog is http://digicmb.blogspot.com/. The Google Wave directory of helpful waves! is a recent post that I liked.

I already knew @DrShock as a blogger. DrShock is a Dutch psychiatrist working in a University hospital. His specialty in psychiatry is the treatment of depression. His blog (http://www.shockmd.com/) is regularly mentioned on this blog. It has a beautiful lay-out with a broad coverage of subjects. DrShock even regularly participates in the Medlibs Round and will be a future host of this Medical Librarian blog carnival as well.

Another Dutch psychiatrist, with a similarly well chosen name: @TheSofa. Georg Fritz is only recently on Twitter, but had interesting Tweets right from the start. He also started a posterous account: georgfritz’s posterous. I like the The November poem I by Thomas Hood, that starts like this: No sun–no moon!  No morn–no noon!  No dawn–no dusk–no proper time of day–  No sky–no earthly view–  No distance looking blue–….
No wonder people get depressed at this time of year.

Also very interesting are the tweets of @Nutrigenomics, Professor in Nutrigenomics, Wageningen University and Director of NL Nutrigenomics Centre. Main emphasis of tweets is on genetics, nutrition, science and health. The link at his Twitter account goes to the Nutrition, Metabolism Genomics Groupat the Wageningen University.

Last week I first ‘met’ @Beatis on Twitter. She is still not sure about the value of Twitter. I hope she will stay tweeting, because her tweets -that can be best described as (moderately) skeptic- are certainly valuable. She co-authors the (english-language) Anaximperator blog. The purpose of this blog is to warn against alternative medicine and alternative medicine for cancer in particular.

You may also want to read:

• Laikas #FollowFriday #FF Twitter-List (2009/11/13)
• Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally (2009/09/11) with tips how to use FollowFriday.

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• A Way to Cheat With Follow Friday (twitterrati.com)

Laika’s #FollowFriday #FF Twitter List

In my post Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally I explained what Twitter’s FollowFriday or FF means, how this Twitter meme started and how FollowFriday should and shouldn’t be used.

In short, FollowFriday is a way to recommend a few people to your Twitter-followers. For at least 2 reasons: to acknowledge those favorite tweeters and make it easier for your followers to find new interesting people.

However, many people don’t use the FollowFriday correctly. For instance, they spend several tweets just mentioning dozens of @people and they repeat the tweets (retweet) about each recommendation they get @themselves. That is annoying for people seeing these tweets appearing in their timeline.

In this FollowFriday post I suggested some Twitter Etiquette Rules as well as some alternatives for the FollowFriday approach.

Now there is another alternative, which can either be used alone or as an adjunct to the normal FollowFriday-tweets:

Twitterlists!

The Twitter List feature is designed to make following and suggesting groups of tweeters easier. Everyone on Twitter can create up to 20 lists with a maximum of 500 Twitter people each. Others can follow these lists as well. So instead of FollowFridays you could construct lists of your favorite Twitter people for others to follow. There is one disadvantage of this approach: context is lost. You can only put people on a list without any further explanation why. Of course, you can create separate lists of categories of people, in my case librarians, doctors and funny people for instance, so others have an idea what to expect.

Some people think Twitterlists make FollowFridays obsolete. However Twitterlists and FollowFridays could reinforce each other. At least that’s what I will try using the following approach.

I will construct a FollowFriday Twitter list on basis of my FollowFriday-tweets. They provide the context. Because Tweets get lost, I will gather those tweets on a separate page, so you can always find my elaborated FF-recommendations there.

For Twitter-newcomers, who know me, but find it difficult to find interesting people to follow, this may be a useful starting point.

In selective cases I also plan to write a #FF post to put someone in the limelight. I intend to do the same with bloggers.

By the way I only include people with useful tweets on the lists, so people with great blogs but with not so interesting or very infrequent tweets won’t be included.
As time goes, I may also prune the list, because the number or quality of the tweets or my preference may change.

What is a good tweet? That is personal, but I think that people should be original, helpful, social and up to date and provide good information (with links) .

When you’re on Twitter you like you can follow my FF-list here:
http://twitter.com/laikas/followfridays-ff/

The Following people are included on my FF-list (listed chronologically according my tweet-timeline)
** means that I often have a chitchat or social talk with that person and/or that he/she is very helpful).

1. @allergynotes , currently @drves (doctor, immunology, health 2.0, **) 2x
2. @berci (doctor, scientist, **)
3. @conorato (health 2.0)
4. @shamsha (medlib, **)    3x
5. @amcunningam (doctor, education, skeptic, **)  2x
6. @pudliszek (medlib, **) 2x
7. @eagledawg (medlib, **)  2x
8. @pfanderson (medlib, geek, **)
9. @digicmb (medlib, geek, NL, **)  2x
10. @sarchet62 (lib, med. anthropologist, geek)
11. @dreamingspires (publishing, Aussie, **)
12. @staticnrg (survivor, health 2.0, science, **)
13. @bonnycastle (education, **)
14. @andrewspong (publishing, skeptic)
15. @DrShock (doctor, psychi, NL, **)
16. @aarontay (lib, geek)
17. @MarilynMann (science, cancer survivor, lawyer, skeptic, pharma)
    Following tweets could not be traced back:
18. @flutesUD (scientist, PhD-student, **)
19. @palmdoc (doctor, geek)
20. @doctorblogs (doctor, EBM, health 2.0)
21. @bgaustin (EBM)
22. @northerndoctor (doctor, GP, EBM, Skeptic)
23. @Blue_Wode (EBM, Skeptic)
24. @precordialthump (doctor, ICU, Aussie, **)
25. @sandnsurf (doctor, ICU, Aussie, **)
26. @bitethedust (Remote Pharmacist, Aussie, Art, **)
27. @giustini (medlib, web 2.0)
28. @jstaaks (lib, psycho, UBA, bieptweet, NL, **)
29. @ENTHouse (doc, ENT, **)

Based on the Next #FollowFriday recommendations (as far as I could trace them back):

• #followfriday @allergynotes @berci @conorato @shamsha @amcunningam 2 name just a few #Nextfriday I will mention other people w/useful tweets
• #followfriday “medlibs” bc of their TWEETS! @shamsha @pudliszek @eagledawg @pfanderson @digicmb @sarchet62#nextfriday More
• #Followfriday 4 truly responding 2 tweets and providing good tweets themselves @dreamingspires @digicmb@AllergyNotes @shamsha @Pudliszek
• RT @alisha764: #followfriday This week, shout out 2 @eagledawg 4 great updates, keeping @medlibs running, & Friday Foolery posts! – YEP!
• #followfriday @staticnrg 4 describing her own journey as a cushing patient, doing a lot 4 her fellow patient, while keeping a broad interest
• The other #followfriday goes to @bonnycastle who has designed a beautiful medical education wiki and is always willing to help (via twitter)
• #followmonday instead of #followfriday follow @andrewspong 4 Open Access Week October 19-23, 2009 http://www.openaccessweek.org/ #STweM
• This #followfriday goes 2 @DrShock. Perfect Med Blog, good tweets & nice guy, always ready 2 help and give advice.
• #Followfriday @amcunningham bc this GP is nice, soundly critical, likes discussions ; specialized in education, but has a broad interest.
• My #followfriday goes to @aarontay , a techy librarian from Singapore. Has many tips as a tweeter and a blogger http://is.gd/2ssJ3 #ff #fb
• #fussyfollowfriday #followfriday @MarilynMann 4 her excellent, original tweets i.e. about pharma & clinical trials – but pls another avatar

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Top of the Tweets [3] – Elections, OmiGod!

Twitter is a microblogging service initially meant as a place where people could answer the question “What are you doing?” via 140-character messages. But Twitter is more useful as a platform for breaking news, exchanging links, thoughts and views, and for social networking.

Twitter is particularly suited for oneliners that are funny or hit the mark. Below is my third selection of twitter oneliners that made me smile, grin or laugh. I hope you like them.

The first selection of tweets has to do with Elections. Although most may have lost some of their topicality they’re still catchy and funny.

The most important election was that of Obama (inauguration January 20).

Reed the tweets from down up and from left to right.Click the Figure to enlarge it.

Another historic election was the Medgadget competition, designed to showcase the best blogs from the medical blogosphere. Sandnsurf (Life in the fast Lane from Australia) and Laikas were finalists in the category Best New Medical Weblog of 2008.
Sandnsurf had some problems in the beginning: he couldn’t vote and, more importantly, he got few votes. But this was a typical example of “slow start, strong finish”: he won. In the meantime, Laikas was not very happy about how some votes were ‘won’.

And February 23 was the Oscar Contest. What is it with Australians and contests?

From OmiGod it doesn’t take many steps to the following tweets…..

……nor to the following, which are more in my own field:

You can find the first edition of Top of the Tweets here.

This series is inspired by the “Selection of My Twitter Favorites” of Ves Dimov at his “Clinical Cases and Images” blog.

Top of the Tweets [2]

Twitter is a microblogging service initially meant as a place where people could answer the question “What are you doing?” via 140-character messages from their cellphone, laptop or desktop. But Twitter is more useful as a platform for breaking news, exchanging links, thoughts and views, and (indirectly) for social networking.

Twitter is particularly suited for oneliners that are funny or hit the mark. Below is my second selection of twitter oneliners that made me smile, grin or laugh. I hope you like them.

You can find the first edition of Top of the Tweets here.

This series is inspired by the “Selection of My Twitter Favorites” of Ves Dimov at his “Clinical Cases and Images” blog. His favorites tend also to contain more in depth discussions on a particular subject.

Top of the Tweets [1]

People who read the “Clinical Cases and Images” blog of Ves Dimov wil undoubtedly know his series “Selection of My Twitter Favorites” (i.e. see edition 30)

This is how he introduces the series:

Twitter is a microblogging service where people answer the question “What are you doing?” via 140-character messages from their cellphone, laptop or desktop. You can select the messages you find useful, amusing, or both.

I enjoy his selection of tweets. But since Ves follows other people and lives in a different timezone, I thought it would be nice to present my own favorites. I’ve chosen tweets (twitter messages) that were funny or striking. This is certainly not the only value of twitter. The greatest advantage of Twitter is that it is an easy tool to share views and thoughts and useful links. Twitter is also very valuable for social networking.

Rereading the gathered tweets made me laugh or grin and posting them here will ensure that I will treasure them.

Below are the tweets of December last year (and one of 2009). I hope you like them.

* I’m planning to write some tips for (real) twitter beginners. Please tell me if you’re interested, and -if so-, what you would like me to discuss.

—

Hierboven een aantal tweets (korte berichten van 140 leestekens op Twitter) die me aan het (glim)lachen maakte en/of die ik heel treffend vond. Twitter is niet alleen voor de “lol”. Het belangrijkste nut is dat je heel snel contact kunt leggen met geestverwanten/collega’s over de hele wereld en dat het een makkelijke bron is voor uitwisseling van nieuwtjes, ideeen en links.

Voor wie meer wil weten over Twitter: ik ben van plan een introductie over Twitter te schrijven voor de echte beginner (die Twitter beroepshalve gebruikt). Schrijf me (evt per mail) wat jij graag zou willen weten.