Short Wave - This Holiday, Dig Into Some Of The Hilarious Science Of Christmas BMJs Past

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Would you survive as a doctor in The Sims 4? What's an appropriate amount of free food to take from a public sample station before it's greedy? And how much do clock towers affect sleep? These are the types of questions answered in the Christmas issue of The BMJ — one of the journal's most highly anticipated issues each year. And we find out the answers in this very episode. So, sit back, relax and prepare to be amused by this ghost of Christmas Past (encore).Check out what's been published so far in the 2023 issue. (We particularly like the research about the associated health risks and benefits of various Great British Bakeoff Ingredients.)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 Lederat. 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 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 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 are 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 Rassanathan. She's a family medicine doctor and a clinical editor of the BMJ, along with research editor Timothy Beanie. 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 it? And we hit the books. We started combing through all the ghosts of Christmas BMJ past. And it took us down quite a rabbit hole. So today on the show, our Christmas present is the gift of knowledge, with a tour through some of the Christmas BMJ's greatest hits. 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, you two have been. busy combing through all of these rigorous academic papers. And it seems like it's pretty difficult to get into this journal. So 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 of 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 BMJ. Yeah, so Big Ben rings or, you know, bongs every hour normally. With smaller quarter bells 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 22 years later, I know, while people worked to restore it.

And, like, Gina, this was like a big deal in London. This was, like, a historic clock tower, Big Ben. It's falling silent on Monday to undergo repairs. Big Ben would 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 polysomographs. That's the sleep chart recording the kids' sleep patterns. I mean, there were other reasons kids struggled with sleeping, like hard 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 in 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 for. 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 Olman decided to rethink his career, and he decided to become a doctor in the Sims 4.

And his feature is called I Tried to Survive as a Doctor in the Sims 4. 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 requires surgery, obviously. Oh my gosh. I think we have to have another episode on what these illnesses are and like 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 flagged that we want to. 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. That'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 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. 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. This episode was produced and reported by me, Margaret Serino.

And me, Liz Metzger. It was edited by your managing producer Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Liz and Margaret. Our audio engineer was Hannah Glovna. I'm Liz Metzger. I'm Margaret Serino. I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.