Online communities - are they the best way to get help and guidance for all life's issues?

I do often think that death and cancer are strange taboos given that so many of us are affected by them directly or indirectly.

A study published this week by Lorraine Buis and coworkers looked at online communities for cancer sufferers (see article here). Apparently cancer sufferers are increasingly being pointed in the direction of these communities to get information and emotional support. The aim was to see if there was a link between the survival rates for the cancer and what people tended to be talking about on the forum.

The results were as follows:

• Online support communities for high survival rate cancers are more orientated towards emotional support than forums for cancers with low survival rates.
  

• Support communities for low survival rate cancers contain more information than online support communities for high survival rate cancers.

The authors hope that this work can help the medical profession make informed decisions when recommending online communities. In this case the families of those who passed away are clearly going to have very different thoughts and priorities to survivors and their loved ones. They will therefore participate in communities in different ways and perhaps not always be providing what their fellow community members might need. I wonder how prevalent this type of discrepancy is in online forums in general?

Science and Truth

What I've been looking for recently are places to discuss the big issues in science and get them out to the world at large. In my post on CERN I challenged scientists to get their message across in simple and effective terms so as to avoid malicious rumours. David Weinkove is very experienced in these events and brings us a new and interesting format with his brother:

A Talkaoke at the Science Museum this Tuesday at 7 pm

In a recent Essay at LabLit.com he challenges scientists and non-scientists alike to

get off your pedestal and get round the table

It certainly sounds an interesting format, a type of interactive round table talkshow. I'm going to try and grab a ticket as there still seems to be places available.

It's free, at London's Dana centre in the Science Museum, you can find out more here and see the facebook page too.

Parley with a parochial perpetual perceptive popular poster!

Get that?

I have been answering some questions about why I write this thing.

You can look in wonderment at Sylwia Presley's blog to find out more. It's often an interesting site, this week covering the ethics around the US election as well as some great photos and blogging tips.

It's been great to take part through her series of blogger interviews. Other subjects have included Karl, Lolly, Colin, Rich, and the prodigies that are Kid tech Guru and Monik.

Sparrow's Spleen