Klarinet Archive - Posting 000683.txt from 1999/12

From: Lisa Canjura-Clayton <lisakc@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Cause for concern?
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 15:15:50 -0500

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At 08:53 AM 12/20/1999 -0500, Ken Wolman wrote:
>michael@-----.uk wrote:
>>
>> Unsafe sax: cohort study of the impact of too much sax on the
>> mortality of famous jazz musicians
>> Sanjay Kinra and Mona Okasha
>> BMJ 1999;319 1612-1613
>> http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1612
>> MB
>
>Well, I intend to read this later, much more closely, from home tonight,
>hoping to make sense of it: but right now it's sort of funny and makes
>me wonder whether either of the authors ever played any instrument
>beyond the Flutophone or Tonette. Especially since they highlight two
>musicians who make pretty lousy examples of dying of circular
>breathing. <snipped>
>
>Ken <bewitched, bothered, and bewildered that research money goes into
>drek like this>

I work in medical research, and get to plow through all sorts of articles like
this. It's very funny stuff, from my vantage point. Obviously the authors
didn't take it at all seriously "...these measures went through extensive
validation procedures: 100% of the authors' friends who were asked their
opinions on these measures agreed that they were a 'good' or a 'very good'
idea", "Further research is, however, needed in this area: it is anticipated
that attendance at a number of national and international concert venues would
resolve this issue, and the researchers are currently seeking funding for
this." "To conclude, in the words of famous jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins:
'Sometimes when I am in the midst of really good performance, my mind will
imperceptibly switch to automatic pilot and I find myself just standing there
while the spirit of jazz, as it were, occupies my body, choosing for me the
correct note, the correct phrase, the correct idea and when to play it. It is a
profound spiritual experience!' Spiritual experience or cerebrovascular
ischaemia-- who knows?"

Believe it or not, after plowing through tons of very dry medical research with
tons of odds ratios and Kaplan-Meier curves, this is great stuff. They may not
be instrumentalists, but they're obviously jazz fans.

PS to Ken-- Don't worry about the funding. It's a British journal. The NIH
would be too stuffy to fund something like this.

Lisa Clayton
Research Statistician
UCSF Division of Adolescent Medicine
(My opinions are not necessarily those of my employer, who *does* have a sense
of humor nonetheless...)

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