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Louise S.Robbins wrote: > Of course, two examples don't provide robust evidence, but a few years ago, a Johns Hopkins researcher used a therapy on a patient that proved fatal. The research existed that would have warned him not to use this therapy in this instance, but working without expert searching assistance, he did not find it. It made the news at the time. > > The Johns Hopkins tragedy was a very, very big deal in medical library land -- slight correction, it was not a patient but a research subject who also happened to be a Hopkins employee. There were found to be numerous things wrong with the study, one of which was that the researcher did not realize PubMed would not (in 2001) give him articles from the 1950s. The Journal of Medical Ethics has a good summary article here: http://jme.bmj.com/content/28/1/3.full.html Hopkins maintained a website with very comprehensive documentation of the case and the subsequent reviews of the case and left it up for 5 years. It's gone now, but the Wayback Machine has it: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/researchvolunteerdeath.html People interested in the librarian-and-library-aspects of the case should visit the Wayback Machine. A quote from the Medical Ethics article: "There is a problem with researchers not bothering to properly research the literature and assuming that everything will be available on the internet. According to Dr Frederick Wolff, a professor emeritus at the George Washington School of Medicine, it was “foolish” and “lazy” that the investigator and the Hopkins review board failed to look up the 1950s medical journal articles warning of lung damage caused by inhaling hexamethonium. “Anyone trained in academic medicine knows how to do this research,” he said^." ^ <http://jme.bmj.com/content/28/1/3.full.html#ref-5> -- Catherine Arnott Smith, PhD Assistant Professor School of Library and Information Studies Room 4263 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street, Madison, WI 53706 Phone: (608) 890-1334 Fax: (608) 263-4849 My personal website: https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/casmith24/web/ *** The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.(Antoine de Saint-Exupery) *** Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever. (Peter Warlock - The Sackbut - 1926)