Studies and Stories on Knowledge (this week)

I have no major topic to write on, plus Thursday is a busy teaching day for me, so here's a compilation of various stories and studies that touch on what people know.

• Text4Baby (which I'd never heard of) is a free service where you text to get info.  A survey found the service helped participants to remember appointments and learn about health issues.

• Are small businesses immune to security threats?  Obviously not.  But a survey found small biz managers exhibited knowledge of threats such as keystroke logging, distributed denial of service attacks, website vulnerabilities and targeted attacks, exactly half indicated they need not have concern about any of it.  Essentially, they saw themselves as too small to attack.

• There's always one I really don't understand, like this study that found how ill prepared health care folks are about genetic mutation testing.  So am I.  You get these great disconnects in research.  As in: The surveys found that while 94 percent of physicians responded that they discuss genetic mutation testing with their patients, only 17 percent of lung cancer patients surveyed were aware of genetic mutation testing.

• Here's a survey about ... there being too many surveys.  Okay, only kinda, but this story touches on just that.  As one guy said: But he warned saturating the market with potentially conflicting data could mean valuable information gets "lost in the noise." It can be confusing having so many different surveys," he said. 

• And finally, we end with death.  Except boomers don't want to think about that, according to this story.  An Associated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll found that 64 percent of boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - say they don't have a health care proxy or living will. Those documents would guide medical decisions should a patient be unable to communicate with doctors.