Thought Bodega

2006-06-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

It turns out the whole 18-month thing that Merck claimed for Vioxx is untrue. There was a "mistake" in the statistics. Honestly, I'm not sure it ever made any sense to me anyway. What I wonder is whether it's grounds for appeal. If a jury is shown completely incorrect and misleading evidence -- evidence that is practically the cornerstone of the defense, is it a valid trial at all?

I'm not sure. But if I were Mike Humeston, I'd be pretty pissed off right now.

2006-06-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

For a long time now, people have been saying that dashes are counted as spaces in a URL, and underscores do not. What I'm curious about is why anyone cares. Well, people optimizing for MSN might, but MSN doesn't really bring such a significant amount of traffic anyway. Background: MSN seems to care a little too much about keywords in a URL.

Notably, I've wondered for awhile if it almost makes sense to embrace the "_" as a sign of solidarity to an ascii character that seems to be getting neglected and beaten up for no reason at all. That, and it seems to me that this whole debate has been causing spammers to beat the "-" to death, which may be a bad thing if users get conditioned to see dashes as a loose indicator for spam.

Personally, I think if search engines actually regarded the dash vs. underscore issue as important, they would just fix the issue. It wouldn't really upset much, as the underscore really doesn't get much action on the internet, except in the URL. This just underscores (ha ha -- bad pun) the fact that nobody cares!

I still use the regular dash, "-," in URLs, as I always have, but I see plenty of major sites using "_" even after redesigns that restructured their URLs. Personally, I really don't think it matters. In my mind the purpose of putting keywords in the URL is to make the URL look relevant and jump out at you. It's a more effective use of real estate in your SERP.

http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical-Injury-C1/

... looks better than

http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/-C1/

... but

http://www.lawyerseek.com/Practice/Pharmaceutical_Injury_C1/

... doesn't look any worse to me either. There are better things to worry about.

2006-06-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

When SEMs do search engine optimization for major major sites, they should investigate their strategies carefully and make sure it's all kosher-looking. I know most people don't know how to investigate a site's backlinks, and I know that even Google struggles to pick out garbage links, while MSN and Yahoo appear to feast on garbage. However, not only are these sites putting their rankings in jeopardy by having all these sketchy links pointed at them, but they destroy their image for people who actually do investigate (like me).

I suggest that Google add a link for "who links to this URL" driven by their link: command (however inadequate it is) in light of all this spamming garbage. I know it's a veiled admission that their filters are far from perfect, but it's a useful thing to look at nonetheless. Not that this site has many high quality links; I have lots of crap pointing to this site. But this is a personal blog, not a major site!

My favorite is "http://www.ryar.org," a law firm that apparently bought a domain that used to be some sort of childrens' organization, and now has links from, among other things, an adult diaper site :) Lovely.

You won't find any of this stuff on sites I design. My God guys, at least point some sketchy links at a blog on blogspot.com, and only then point those to the credible domains; that's what I'd do.

2006-06-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

The recent reports of a newer class of blood pressure lowering medications, ACE inhibitors, causing birth defects "even earlier" in gestation begs the question of whether I'd even consider, as a woman (if I were a woman) to take any drug invented before the 1970s, and not taken (and tested) extensively during pregnancy by others. It seems logical to me that basically any medication, and perhaps even nutritional supplements in any abnormal quantities should be avoided. If doctors advise that even minute quantities of mercury are potentially catastrophic to a fetus, why would medications, substances that tinker with our bodies in mostly unnatural ways, be any better?

The strangest part in this story is that ACE inhibitors were known for years to damage fetuses, but supposedly only in the 2nd and 3rd trimester. Some genius actuary looked at the data, and, since the drug only seemed to affect fetuses in the 2nd and 3rd trimester, he concluded it's only a risk then. My God, what kind of idiot would conclude this? Yes, because this stands a test of reasonability, and clearly, a fetus in its most primitive and formative state is less sensitive than a 2nd and 3rd trimester fetus? I applaud the genius who came to that conlusion, and I encourage him or her to meet these children who are now deformed, allegedly, as a result of his conclusion.

These drugs totally scare me, seriously.

2006-06-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks ago, I heard about some Fosamax litigation pending, and I started seeing the influx of reports of people claiming their jaws were literally rotting off. I can't attest that I've seen any of this first-hand, but I do know this is a second drug from Merck that appears to be riddled in litigation recently. I also found out my mom was on the drug, like many other older women.

Unfortunately for Merck, whereas Vioxx was a drug for older people in pain (who tend to die for whatever reason -- including heart attacks), Fosamax is prescribed to many otherwise healthy women for osteoporosis. And normally their jaws don't just rot off. This adds a monkeywrench into the equation for Merck, as they cannot assert that all these people who claim that their jaws are falling apart have the symptoms as a result of old age or some other cause. It's a signature symptom.

I expect lots of noise on the subject pretty soon ... just when Vioxx was getting interesting, too. Oh yeah, my mom won't be taking this drug anymore.