Nothing against the BBC but the most thoughtful journalist has all the scientific knowledge of Tarot Reader’s cat.
Anyway, n=56 which is fine I guess but leaves loads of margin for error.
Personally, I had a cystoscope and at the time had fancy health insurance so went to a bling London hospital and the surgeon insisted I listened to music - saying exactly what this article said. It lowers cortisol after, makes you less restless during and improves patient reported outcomes.
You can look up what a cystoscope is, I elected to do it with a blocker rather than with a general anaesthetic. All I will say is that track Shadowboxin’ by GLA is now completely unlistenable for me!
Let’s not forget that the author is a person too, just cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean you’ve got any place to talk down on them.
Like, take this exact article as a great example. I’m sure Mr Biswas is genuinely very intelligent and thoughtful and a great journalist but having him write a science article is unfair on him and on readers.
Doesn’t even have an undergraduate in a science subject, has never worked as a scientist, and his job is as a national correspondent.
Perhaps my wording prioritised humour over fairness - I’ll take the criticism on that. But I don’t think my core point was wrong. How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?
Finally, I want to stress again - it’s not his fault. The system is broken.
The article strips out that narrow context and generalises. Phrases like “music eases surgery and speeds recovery” and “strongest evidence yet” extrapolate from a sample of 56 people undergoing one procedure to “surgery” in general. The paper doesn’t measure global recovery outcomes, discharge times, or longer-term effects. Satisfaction and pain scores are even reported as comparable between groups (P=0.361 and P=0.07).
There’s also mechanistic speculation in the article (implicit memory, psychological responses, “humanising the operating room”) that isn’t in the study’s data. The paper reports dose differences and perioperative physiological measures—not neuropsychological mechanisms.
The headlines says that music “speeds recovery” but the paper specifically says that patients had similar recovery profiles.
The media article overall overstates the findings of the study. It’s a very specific study on a specific cohort and a specific surgery (minimally invasion) but the article implies strongly that music helps with all surgery.
Also the paper specifically doesn’t touch on medial outcomes from the music - that’s fine as science since it’s granular, but it’s a pretty big thing to miss in the article.
The article misses a bunch of further questions that need more research. How does the patient playing music affect the surgeon? Is it music in general or specific music that helps? Is the patient choosing the music relevant?
“Reshape how hospitals think about surgery”? Not really, hospitals already use music in surgery so it’s not going to “reshape” anything. Over dramatisation.
It’s also just very shallow. Makes no mention of existing science/practice for example. Didn’t speak to any other researchers.
Look, the article is fine-ish but it’s just a regurgitation of the paper with more dramatisation and no analysis. Just post the paper especially on HN.
This goes both ways: how can you (as a scientist) communicate something when you don’t understand communication?
The answer to both is to let the person who understands it and the person who is good at communication collaborate.
At one point things got a bit intense as apparently I have very hard bones - which meant that quite a bit of force was being used. The music playing during this part of the procedure was "No Time for Caution" - which I thought was hilarious... and this fact kind of took my mind off of things.
I think the article should focus more on good music elements versus bad music elements. My brain gets annoyed at bad music. Good music can be useful though, in particular for relaxing. I normally dislike jazz-elements, but Sade for instance is acceptable (not pure jazz, but she uses jazzy elements).
Dissecting the Bloodthirsty Bliss of Death Metal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18335308
Death metal music inspires joy not violence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19383699
I presume such souls may wither away and die, while in a coma, as a person "helpfully" plays very annoying sounds 24x7.
An alternate, is I do see some very strong preferences for music, with strongly expressed dislikes, even among music lovers. I can imagine the same, someone in a coma giving up and dying, to "get away" from the horror.
(Meant as an amusing thought, I doubt any would vacate this world to escape)
And many artists still publish CDs, vinyl records, and other physical artifacts just like they have for ~most of our collective lifetimes. If you want new generations to experience that kind of thing, then buy some of it for them to experience.
(Or, you know: If that seems like too much work or too much money, then a streaming subscription is only about 10 bucks a month. I spent a lot more than that on music when I was a kid.)
oh that's interesting. From headline I had assumed we're talking post op