Short Wave - Christmas in July! Celebrate With Hilarious Research

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Would you survive as a doctor in The Sims 4? What's the appropriate amount of free food to take from a public sample station before it's considered greedy? And how much of an impact do clock towers have on sleep? These are the hard-hitting questions that researchers ask and answer in the Christmas issue of The BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. What started in 1982 as an experimental roundup of fun research for the holidays has since grown into one of The BMJ's most highly anticipated issues each year. In honor of the July 31 research submission deadline, Short Wave talks to two of its editors about what makes the cut. What science story do you want to hear next on Short Wave? Email us at [e-mail] — we'd love to know! See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Short Wavers, Regina Barber here, and I'm joined by two of my favorite producers, Margaret Serino and Liz Metzger. Hey, you two. Hello. Hey, Gina. Happy to be here. We know that you are a lover of all things pop culture. Yes.

Being a little bit silly. And of course, some great scientific papers. All true. All true. Well, in Lederative, that. We have a little treat for you today, which actually came from a story you and I worked on, Gina. Do you remember the Lego Poopie Head episode? Of course. Of course, I could not forget that one.

It's that academic paper where scientists are trying to publicize if your kid eats a Lego. Parents don't need to freak out. And y'all all talk to Sabrina Imbler, who's a science journalist who wrote about this paper. And they said that the research team wrote this paper with kind of. of this one other intention. They wanted to get sort of a funny paper into this very famous journal called the Christmas BMJ. BMJ, as in the British Medical Journal, which began in 1857, but about 40 years ago in 1982, they decided to try something a little different for the Christmas holidays and, you know, take a break from their usual, serious scholarly research. Good idea. It's probably a little bit

easier to explain by hearing about one of Sabrina's favorite papers from last year. This, like, very serious evaluation of Dr. Brown Bear on Peppa Pig. And Dr. Brown Bear is, like, the resident GP, he attends to all of the little creatures in Peppa Pig's world. But he does a lot of, like, unnecessary house calls. Like, there was this little fox that coughed three times in one day, and, like, Dr. Brown Bear, like, turned on the emergency sirens and, like, made an urgent house call and the paper in the BMJ issue basically said, you know, this is an inefficient use of medical funds. So I love Peppa Pig and I am not here for its slander. No, no, but I too acknowledge that the ambulances are probably overkill. But more importantly, I want to say that

getting into the Christmas BMJ is a big feather in the cap for a lot of researchers. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. The first time I heard about this super competitive issue was when we were doing the Lego poopie heads because that team didn't make the cut, which brings us to the super important caveat. These topics, they can be silly, but the science is not. The Christmas BMJ is really hard to get into, like really hard. We are always inundated with submissions. I get personal emails, suggesting ideas, and we get a number. of unsolicited submissions to our manuscript system. And we really only take forward a handful.

That's Ginny Rastanathan. She's a family medicine doctor and a clinical editor of the BMJ, along with research editor Timothy Vini. You basically have to please everyone. Everyone has to be kind of happy with it before it can kind of move forward. So, like, good journalists, we started wondering what papers do get in. And we hit the books. We started combing through all the ghost of Christmas.

BMJ passed. And it took us down quite a rabbit hole. So today on the show, we give the gift of knowledge with a little Christmas in July. Everything from the science of Big Ben. And how true to life is being a doctor in the Sims 4? Plus the skinny from the experts for your next application. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, Marge, Liz, it's Christmas in July, just in the nick of time. And I know you two have been busy combing through all these rigorous academic papers, but it seems like it's pretty difficult to get into this journal. Like, my first question is, what exactly does get through? What gets published? Okay, so there are two different types of entries. There's research and non-research. Timothy is one of the editors for the research division while Jennifer specializes in the

non-research work. So these issues just cover a wide variety of things other than just these like research papers we talked about earlier. Content in the Christmas issue includes opinion pieces, patient commentaries, editorials, analysis articles from time to time, and predominantly features that cover a range of topics. It sounds like a really lovely holiday tradition. Yeah, a lot of these studies are actually just really wholesome and sweet. Like literally sweet. Like one of Jenny's favorites, a paper called Taking the Biscuit. Which was about asking people how many.

free cookies and hot drinks were acceptable to take in a medical library. Specifically, like, when people leave out little snacks around the holidays so that, you know, people can take a break and grab some food and coffee. And what I loved about this paper is that the authors got at this ubiquitous social situation of how many free food items are acceptable to take in public and turned it into a kind of survey, research, and pontification, which was quite timely and topical, specifically with respect to kind of the way that NHS workers were feeling at that time of year with the cost of living crisis, etc. By the way, if you're wondering how many cookies is too many, Tim says the researchers did find a consensus. Two biscuits and then like two or three coffees or something.

after that you were taking too much free stuff. I don't know if there was a giant pile of cookies. I might take three. Gina, you're stealing from health care workers. I don't know. I think you need to seize opportunity when it presents itself. Okay, so I'm assuming that you both have a couple favorites to share. Marge, what was yours?

Yeah, I mean, one that I thought was pretty clever and also just really sweet and cute was this original research about these kids who just could not get a good night of sleep, and I've been there. And all signs were pointing towards this very loud, very iconic culprit. Wait, is that Big Ben? Yes. And the paper is called Things That Go Bong in the Night. I love it. So basically, this team of sleep researchers at St. Thomas Hospital wrote this paper together for the 2017 issue of the BN.

Yeah, so Big Ben rings or, you know, bongs every hour normally with smaller quarterbells every 15 minutes. Pretty frequent. I know. But one night in August of 2017, Big Ben chimed 12 times and then fell completely silent until 2022 years later, I know, while people worked to restore it. And like, Gina, this was like a big deal. deal in London. Mark, the historic clock tower Big Ben. It's falling silent on Monday to undergo repairs.

Big Ben, we'd stop ringing for four years. I mean, four years. I just simply don't understand it. This whole thing was called the Silence of the Bongs. And that, like, event inspired these researchers to, like, look at another rhythmic process alongside it. Sleep. So I'm going to paint a little picture for you.

We're at the Evelyna London Children's Hospital. sleep center, which sits just across the Thames opposite Big Ben, and these two researchers looked at sleep patterns in kids. And so did this break, this long silence? Did it help their sleep? Actually, yeah, it did a lot. Because every little bong from Big Ben corresponds to a sleep disruption on their poly somographs. That's the sleep chart recording the kids' sleep patterns. I mean, there were other reasons kids struggled with sleeping, like hard to be. beds and caretakers staying up. But one of the biggest impacts was Big Ben. So thankfully, the hospital has since built a new sleep center, which has better soundproofing. So when those times started

up at 2022, they were much better prepared. And the two sleep researchers ended their paper like this. In the meantime, we hope the only thing disturbing children's sleep on Christmas Eve is the sound of Santa's reindeer landing on the roof. It's a very nice tie into Christmas. July. Yeah, Gina, we plan things out here. It is hard to get by without sleep, but sometimes you forego it by choice, like when you get sucked in to a really good book or in this case, in my case, and I think for many other people, the original time suck is a specific game, the Sims 4. You knew where I was going, Gina. Yeah, I did. I love Sims. So the last paper was original research and this one's non-research? Exactly. While some of us became obsessed with

Animal Crossing to kind of escape the grim reality of the early pandemic, freelance journalist Jordan Ollman decided to like rethink his career and he decided to become a doctor in the Sims four. And his feature is called I tried to survive as a doctor in the Sims four. I bet his parents were really proud. Along with playing the game, he reached out to a lot of other doctors who also played the game and he was really just trying to see how accurate the experience was. Yeah, it's not an exact analog for reality.

You know, for starters, there are only eight illnesses that exist in the Sims world, which sounds easy, theoretically, but there are big ramifications for a misdiagnosis. If you mess up, a patient can literally fade into the ether. What? Yeah, I know. But just like in real life, many of these illnesses have overlapping symptoms. You know, like coughing could mean llama flu or a mysterious illness called triple threat that. That requires surgery, obviously. Oh, my gosh.

I think we have to have another episode on what these illnesses are and how close they are to reality. But, okay, so I'm guessing that even if the science isn't right, he clearly got it published. So he probably found the game depicted something about a doctor's experience that was correct, right? So there's two things that Jordan Flagg that we wanted to note. One is wait times. Both virtual and real life, people get tired of waiting. And also, importantly, you know, a lack of work-life balance is really detrimental both for SIM doctors and actual doctors. This includes eating vending machine lunches, having to prioritize seeing patients even when you need to use the bathroom.

Jordan concluded that, you know, in the several SIM months of playing the game, which is, you know, hours, that, like, ultimately the lesson is that, like, we should really be appreciating just how challenging it is to be a world life doctor. Wow. Well, I mean, appreciation is good. It's true. But Liz, Marge, when you pitch this to me, you said you could tell me how to write a paper that would get accepted. I'm here to win. So what do all of these submissions have in common? Okay. So the big consensus is there isn't exactly one type that will get you published. It's all about originality. It's all about doing really good science. And also, this is the British Medical Journal.

It helps when you are writing about something that is medically related. Timothy also told us that, you know, one of the things that he and the other editors are looking for is that this kind of just provides a little bit of levity because of when it comes out. I think at the end of the day, we would like physicians to be able to grab this issue, sit down on a break over the holidays or after a big holiday meal, open it up and be able to be intrigued, interested, and sometimes given a laugh. I guess now is where we should say the research deadline to apply to this year's issue of the Christmas BMJ is today, hence this episode. But the BMJ is still accepting submissions for non-research work until August 31st. What would you two write about? I think maybe we co-lab on a Star Trek themed one. Yeah.

Do not get Gina started on this. We do not have time. I know. I've fallen into a trap. of my own design. Okay, but whatever makes the cut, we'll be ready, we'll be excited, and we might even cover it at Christmas. This episode was produced and reported by me, Margaret Serino. And me, Liz Metzger.

It was edited by our managing producer Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Liz and Margaret. Our audio engineer was Hannah Glovna. Beth Zonovan is our senior director of programming, and Anya Grendman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Liz Metzger. I'm Margaret Serino. I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.