With The Advantage Of Science And Internet, Bust Your Myths

By Raj | Jan 26, 2009

Right from my childhood days, my mythology treasury has remained fatter than the Greek mythology collection. Voracious reading and extensive hunting for information have eliminated many myths out of that but still I’m left with many answerless questions in my mythology book even now. The questions that I was searching for answers include “whether God exist or does not exist” and “is there life beyond solar system and milky way” and “what if the sun exhausts one fine morning” and when will the fossil fuels run out and “won’t the earth give away and cave in if we go on depleting the coal and crude from underneath” etc., etc. Apart from internet searches to clear my queries, often I used to get tied on to my seat for hours by programs on TV channels like National Geographic, Discovery Channel (and Discovery’s network channels The Science Channel, Discovery Health and Animal Planet) or with their web sites. Many times Google may not find me satisfactory answers. So apart from my own reference sites and search engines, I may even extend my search to the human powered search engine, Mahalo and Yippy. Yippy searches a bunch of search engines and aggregates the results into subcategories displayed as clusters, sources and sites separately. You can then dig much deeper into the sub-category of your choice.

So until recently, the past lean season (holidays) where I had less amount of medical transcription work when I could find time to search the internet to find answers to my questions and myths, I had these medical myths deep in my mind and it’s obvious that many will have these myths carved in their minds too right from their childhood either because of the advices that they receive from their parents or from their school teachers or from their family doctors:

People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
We use only 10% of our brains
Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals

(Drinking at least three liters of fluids even got into the New Year resolutions and was adhering to it until this day!)

Apart from these medical myths, here are some seasonal myths or festive time myths that I had:

Nocturnal feasting makes you fat
You can cure a hangover

However, British Medical Journal had the advantage of busting the medical myths that I had and further probing into the journal busted the festive myths also. So, the more research is done on a subject, what is a fact today might become a myth tomorrow!

Bust your medical myths and improve medical knowledge and information, improve your medical transcription skills

In my efforts to make my mythology book thin, whenever I do not have a clear answer or knowledge on any subject, just any silly matter to rocket science, I used to end up with search engines than putting across those questions to mythologists, experts or my mentors. Most of the times, internet has quenched my quest for information and knowledge but still I have many questions left unanswered.

Once while digging the net for information regarding the doubt “What will happen to the earth when the sun dies or will sun get exhausted one fine morning?” I got the answer from Astronomy Café. The second answer from Science Hack videos was pretty much interesting where I got answer on a video by a scientist “What will happen to the earth when the sun dies?” exactly what I wanted to know about when will the sun glow off. I didn’t notice how the hours flew away when I started viewing the videos available there at Science Hack on every branch of science. It’s a vertical search engine for science videos where you can search for science experiments, science projects, science movies and science news. Every science video on Science Hack is screened by a scientist to verify its accuracy and quality before it is available for public viewing. You may use your online leisure hours usefully by watching videos in any discipline of science at Science Hack.

We are born to achieve something. Alleviate the darkness of ignorance in your path to achieving. Your success tomorrow depends on how wise you invest your time today. So, without whiling away your time browsing those crappy sites on the internet when you’re with less work, medical transcriptionists, have the advantage of science and internet to bust your myths, especially medical myths if any. Make your personal mythology book thin. Fetch knowledge and information from sites that are authorities in their respective discipline. As applied to physicians that practicing good medicine requires the constant acquisition of new knowledge, it applies to us, medical transcriptionists too. Constantly updating and improving your information in medicine is just another sort of improving your transcription skill and improving your value.

4 Responses to “With The Advantage Of Science And Internet, Bust Your Myths”

nancy on January 30th, 2009, at 3:11 pm said:

I thought I was the only one!!! I bow to you! You’ve given me some more things to think about AND more places to find the answers! I imagine if you and I watched TV together, I would be perfectly comfortable leaving the clicker with you!

I love your mind!

Raj Krishnaswamy on January 31st, 2009, at 5:34 pm said:

Hi Raj: Interesting reading. On a lighter note, how about solving the following myth: the light on the inside of a refrigerator shuts off when the door is closed! Conversely, if the light switch on the inside of a refrigerator malfunctions, is the compressor designed well enough to extract the heat put out by the constantly lit incandescent bulb? As you can see, I have an engineering mind just like you do. All kidding aside, I liked the last paragraph the most. Thank you!

Raj on February 1st, 2009, at 4:25 pm said:

Hi Raj Krishnaswamy:
Regarding constantly lit bulb inside a refrigerator: Because of slight manufacturing fault, I had this same problem with the light not getting switched off inside my new refrigerator due to a few millimeter gap between the switch and the door, and I didn’t notice it too, but the bulb used to get fused off once in a month or so and I was unable to trace the cause for the first few months. After replacing a couple of bulbs and after conducting a detailed probe by myself, I got the cause and solved the problem by sticking a thick piece of paper on the door, so that the gap is taken care of by the paper. (I didn’t go for a replacement of the fridge itself as it took a few months for me to identify the problem.)

Hence the lesson I learnt that may clear your doubt: I didn’t see any decrease in function of the refrigerator. I used to have ice cubes and every other usual normal function working properly and the temperature inside was maintained by the thermostat and compressor quite okay, but the bulb was unable to glow for such long hours!

The fridge was purchased in 2003 and it’s still working fine till date.

Abishai on April 23rd, 2009, at 8:27 am said:

The Answer Lies in Christ Jesus. King of kings and Lord of lords. All myths of mankind of all ages die and cease to exist in the revealed inerrant spoken word of the Lord God that is contained within the Holy Bible (Authorized King James Version). The Word is Jesus Christ who came into this world so he could save the lost. Through his sacrificial death on the cross he bore our sins and has given us salvation as a free gift. Those who believe on Jesus will enter heaven, that mean everyone who rejects him will never enter heaven. Choose Life and Live forever by accepting Christ Jesus today.