Tom Scott has produced a series of handy-dandy stickers to put on newspaper articles. Here are a couple of my favourites, but you can see the whole set here, and even print out your own set.

What I’d like Tom to get on to next is a set of stickers to help me quickly find the crap research in peer reviewed journals. He could start with “Warning: This paper was reviewed by someone who has applied for a job with the first author” and “Warning: Reprints of this article ordered by Big Pharma will account for 18 percent of the journal’s income this month”.

Thanks to CB for bringing Tom to my attention.

I’m hoping that’s true of today’s front-pager on data sharing in health research. The story hypes the idea of data sharing as a brand new one. In truth, public and philanthropic funders of health research have been working for a while to develop a common approach to promote data sharing. They’re due to publish a “Joint Statement of Purpose” on efforts to promote data sharing very soon; if they back the rhetoric up with the people and money needed to do some of the tedious work that will make shared data sets valuable and easy to use, the New York Times story could look very dated, very soon. But it’s a big if. Many scientists are still very resistant to sharing, for reasons that are quite nicely described in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. At least one of the major philanthropic funders of health research keeps asking for proof that more minds working on large, combined data sets will yield results faster than if everyone sits in their own labs, each collecting fragments of similar data and analysing it separately. That’s like software companies questioning whether open source code development is more efficient than proprietary code development. Oh, wait a minute…

The really interesting thing about the Alzheimer’s example described in the Times is that private companies are in the mix, too. Ultimately, academics funded by taxpayers and charities will share their data because their paymasters tell them to. If those same paymasters also do something to remove the disincentives to share data that come from using publication in peer reviewed journals as the only yardstick of success for scientists, it will happen even faster. But the GSKs and Pfizers of this world don’t think peer reviewed papers are the be all and end all, and they are certainly not signing on to any Joint Statement of Purpose on data sharing. (Our invitation to them to be part of the discussions were met with a resounding silence.) If Big Pharma has decided that data sharing is the way to go, then it’s more than a new trend, it’s the new orthodoxy.

Illustration by Fernando Vicente

This week, the Great and the Good of the AIDS industry gather in Vienna for the biennial AIDS circus. With delicious irony, the conference, held right next to the barracks of the UN’s Drug Warriors, will focus in part on getting more countries to do the one thing that really works in HIV prevention — providing clean needles to drug injectors.

That means that there will be a lot of talk about the evidence base. There’s always a lot of talk at these conferences, and although I escaped Vienna just before the start of the conference (to see the inimitable Grace Jones play Lovebox), I’m as much of a windbag as anyone. While pontificating in the BMJ video (below) about the evidence base for harm reduction, I think there’s a more important point to be made to the small coterie of scientists who wash around in the larger tide of 20,000 AIDS junkies, Poz Professionals, singing orphans, dancing hookers, jostling NGO workers, bewildered journalists and UN PR-wallahs that floods these conferences.

The point, made at greater length in an essay in the Lancet (pdf), is that we can’t look at scientific evidence in isolation. [The collage at the top of this post comes from the essay. For works of both anatomical and philosophical beauty, do browse Fernando Vicente's illustrations]. Yes, there’s lots of scientific evidence that harm reduction saves lives. But there’s a huge body of political evidence, too. And that evidence suggests that politicians do what voters want, or, at very best/worst, what politicians think they can get away with. For many politicians in many countries for many years, that has meant not spending voters’ money on helping people take drugs more safely.

As long as that is true, the scientific evidence will continue to be secondary. No matter how many well-spoken epidemiologists do their bit on YouTube.

Or, for that matter, how many nice people stand at the entrance to festivals such as Lovebox handing out orange wristbands that read “Nice People Take Drugs”. As I wandered in with my happy band of blue-tongued smurfs, I reflected that if ever there was a case of preaching to the converted…
But I also take issue with the statement, which has a UNICEF lobbyist ring to it. “Most people at risk for HIV are young” does NOT translate into “Most young people are at risk for HIV”. Nice people take drugs, certainly. But are we to believe that most people who take drugs are nice? Maybe yes, maybe no; since a majority of young people in the UK take drugs, it rather depends on your view of human nature.

Still, the folks at Release who run the campaign have come up with some fun ideas. I especially like the “Politicians Drug Confessions” playing cards.

You can buy them here.

Catholic priest Rev. Kevin J. Gray, who used to preach abstinence, celibacy, humility and heterosexual norms in Connecticut (just up the road from where my mother sings in her church choir), has been done for stealing US$ 1.3 million from the Church and blowing it on expensive hotels and male escorts, according to the Associated Press. But he did more than just pay for an occasional admiring squint at their abs. He paid their rent.

My own rent boy’s reaction: “Where do I sign up?”

SANGRAM has long worked constructively with sex workers, to the fury of Congressman Mark Souder who stomped on USAID until they shut down funding for SANGRAM. In a letter to USAID as bombastic, self-righteous and threatening as any I have seen, Souder pontificated about the Bush administration’s record in promoting family values and women’s rights.

“There is a tragic irony in the fact that this administration seeks to elevate women in the United States to some of the most important positions in the country…; yet, USAID has funded groups outside the United States that promote the ultimate degradation of women.”

Souder might know something about the degradation of women. Six weeks ago he resigned as congressman after 15 years, admitting to having an affair with a staffer. He started off on script, apologising for the pain he had caused his supporters. But then, with breathtaking arrogance, he stuck up for his own hypocrisy, saying “The ideas we advocate are still just and right.” I’m sure his wife agrees.

Here’s the pompous windbag being fake-interviewed by his girlfriend about the importance of abstinence-only education programmes.

Of course abstinence-only programmes are only meant to work until people get married. Since both Mark Souder and his squeeze Tracy Jackson are married, they hardly count as failures of morality-based sex ed, do they?

(Thanks to Paddy Woodburn for pointing out the Seshu profile and setting me off wondering whatever happened to that windbag Souder…)

I’ve been working behind the scenes to try and help this happen, and have written about it in The Lancet, (pdf) and the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, (pdf) (which ran quite a fun Round Table on the subject), with responses here, here,here, and here.

Now, I’m thrilled to say, the issue has been taken up by much bigger guns. An editorial in The Lancet declared the sharing of public health data “necessary, and now”. (pdf) The editorial refers to a meeting I was at in Washington earlier this month at which some of the biggest funders of public health research agreed in principle to work together to increase access to the data they pay for. We’re talking cleaned, coded, individual level data — raw ingredients which researchers with different perspectives and points of view can cook up into new solutions for health problems. There are lots of details to thrash out, but an agreement to start thrashing is a HUGE step forward.

It helped enormously that we had people in the room who have shown that data collected in household based studies can be shared without the sky falling. Osman Sankoh from the INDEPTH network showed off iSHARE , an initiative of researchers in India, Thailand and PNG which has since been joined by several African research sites. iSHARE provides on-line access to good quality demographic surveillance data that can be compared across sites. UNICEF puts its MICS household survey data online, so does DHS. Perhaps the most unexpected (and greatly welcomed) new member of the Data Liberation movement is the World Bank. The Bank has been an object of derision for years because it demands data of countries and then locks the data away in a database funded with public money. Even the governments that contributed the information, and the ones that paid for the database, used to have to pay to get anything out again. Then, in April: Boom! the World Bank threw its database open to the world.That set an important precedent; the age of free data is at hand, and no amount of whining by academics whose promotions depend on hiding information until they’ve got around to publishing papers about it will keep the new age at bay.

But this one, from a fount of indignation calling Himself “Derrail”, deserves its own post. The grammar alone will make you laugh. And the unwitting insights:

YOUR A FUNGUS AN EPIDEMIC AND OUTBREAKING SHOW OFF

Mental illness is an odd thing, isn’t it? By turns worrying: (YOUR A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHY WOMEN SHOULD NEVER BE FREE TO ROAM AND SPEAK OUT IN THE PUBLIC ARENA) and amusing (YOUR FATHER FOR WHATEVER REASON REFUSED TO CHERISH YOU OR ELSE YOUR A MARX’S).

The toxic whole, sent in response to a post about sex worker legislation in Illinois, is after the jump. Prizes for the best response.

If you’d like to copy your response to Derrail, he gives his email address as UG_FC@YAHOO.COM

HELLO, I JUST CAUGHT WIND OF THIS YOU WROTE. I KNOW THE LAW IN ILLINOIS IS A FIRST STEP IN CRACKING DOWN WHOREDOM. IN THE LAW OF GOD IT IS FORBIDDEN FOR FATHERS TO WHORE OUT THEIR DAUGHTERS SAYING THE WHOLE WORLD BE GIVEN OVER TO IT WHOREDOM. AND INDEED YOU PRETTY MUCH MANIFESTED THAT POINT YOU AND YOUR SISTERS. THE UNDERLINE ISSUE IS GOD IS AGAINST YOU SUBHUMAN BEINGS. THEREFORE THE WRATH OF GOD IS BEING REVEALED FROM HEAVEN. YOU DO MAKE A VERY GOOD POINT. WHICH IS THE MORE A MAN OR WOMAN LISTENS TO YOU YOUR WORDS BEGIN WINDING THEM DOWN. AS THE WINDS FROM YOUR TONGUE UNLEASH VOLCANO AFTER VOLCANO.

YOUR A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHY WOMEN SHOULD NEVER BE FREE TO ROAM AND SPEAK OUT IN THE PUBLIC ARENA. YOU PLAY ON SYMPATHY WHICH IS YOUR ERROR. INSTEAD OF JUST DYING! IF YOU DIDN’T COMMIT FORNICATION NONE OF THIS WOULD ENSUE YOU. THEREFORE THE LAW IS AGAINST US ALL SAYING IF YOU DO SO YOU’LL SURELY DIE.

YOUR FATHER FOR WHATEVER REASON REFUSED TO CHERISH YOU OR ELSE YOUR A MARX’S OR EVEN AN ORPHANE. BUT HOE’S ARE PECULIAR THERE AIN’T NO LIMIT TO WHAT YOU’LL DO FOR MONEY. YOUR GREEDY AND YOU JUSTIFY YOUR ACTIONS ON THE DEPENDENCY OF FOOD.

BUT IF YOU ALL SUBMITTED TO GOD THEN THE PULPIT WOULD INDEED REVEAL UNTO YOU ALL PREPARATION “FASTING”. SO STOP HIDING BEHIND CURTAINS OF DECEIT. AND OWN UP TO THE TRUTH YOU DESPISE THE RULE OF OUR FATHER WHO IS GOD.

HERE IS YOUR VERDICT YOUR ALL ABOUNDING TO SHOWCASE THE EVIDENCE OF GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY, YOUR ALL INCLUDING YOU NEED NOT WORRY ABOUT EATING. FOR THESE THREE TRESPASSES YOUR ALL ABOUT TO DIE. YOU SOLICIT YOURSELVES, YOU ENHANCE THY WORTHLESSNESS,AND YOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS. THESE THREE EQUAL DEATH WATCH AND SEE SAITH JEHOVAH’S WITNESS DEATH I TELL!

IF INDEED YOUR WORTH WAS IN HARMONY WITH MY PRECEPTS I WOULD INDEED ENTREAT YOU TO DINE IN WITH ME. BUT I DID NOT SAY FOR YOU NOR DID I AT ALL APPOINT YOU JUDGES. YOUR A VAGRAINT LYING HYPOCRITE AND YOU KNOW IT. THEREFORE SAITH JEHOVAH I SHALL DO UNTO YOU AS YOU IMAGINED TO DO UNTO ALL MY INHABITANTS WITH THY TRIFLING SELF. YOU TRULY DO DISGUST ME AND I CAN’T STAND YOUR NASTY SELF SAITH THE LORD. NOTHING IS WORST THAN A SMELLY ONION SHOWBOATING.

YOUR A FUNGUS AN EPIDEMIC AND OUTBREAKING SHOW OFF. WHO HEARS VOICES ALL THROUGHOUT THE DAY AND INTO THE LATE NITE. SAYING HE’S GONNA COME AND GET YOU. REMINDING YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN OF ALL YOUR FORMER SINS AGAINST ME. SAYING GOD WILL FORGIVE ME GOD WILL UNDERSTAND. BUT YOU’VE MISTAKENLY MISUSED YOUR LAST HOPES OF GETTING INTO MY FAMILY SAITH JEHOVAH. I DON’T WANT YOU EVER SAITH JEHOVAH. I HAVE WATCHED YOU HURT ME AGAIN AND AGAIN. SAYING IF YOU FORGIVE ME I PROMISE TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN BUT YOU DIDN’T DID YOU EVEN LAST NIGHT. EXPECTING AND UNDRESSING FOR MANY OTHER NEW LOVERS I’M FINISHED WITH YOU SAITH JEHOVAH F I N I S H E D WATCH AND SEE ME DO THIS I AM THE LORD

If you’ve only got four minutes, I would also thoroughly recommend spending it with comedian Julia Sweeney, as she has the “sex talk” with her daughter.

After I heard David Cameron promise to make policy that went with the grain of human nature, I suggested that Britain’s sex workers should vote Tory. I wasn’t joking, though I haven’t had that much luck convincing friends in the business. Now, though, George McCoy has given us a proper analysis of candidates’ position on sex work. Put in your post code for an at-a-glance view of who has voted which way, and who is promising what for (and against) people who sell sex.

As I said in my TED talk, we can use our votes to stop politicians doing stupid things that spread HIV. And violence against sex workers, for that matter.

What better way to celebrate than by coming to a party in Chicago on Saturday night. Wear your best gold thong, and be ready for 90′s hip-hop up the wazoo.

It’s above the cafe at 230 W. Chicago Ave, starting at 8 pm on Saturday May 1st. More info here.