PalMD is a practicing internist in the Great Lakes region of the U.S.. Aside from the great joy he finds in his family and his work, he likes communicating some of that joy to others. He has a special interest in the ways patients---and we are all patients at one time or another---are deceived by charlatans. He aims to change the world, one reader at a time. Previous writings can still be found 
For some reason I'm really excited about tomorrow's post. I don't usually write very far ahead of time, but this one took a little bit of extra research. You see, I got this letter from a PR firm hyping some altmed doc, and it was much more interesting than the usual similar things I get. It highlights some of the subtleties at the intersection of science-based medicine and the other stuff.
The post is going up here tomorrow morning, and at Science-Based Medicine in the afternoon.
One thing I've found about blogging, though, is a piece I really work hard on and like a lot may go over like a real dud, and a post I crank out in five minutes may end up with more hits than I've seen in months. Go figure.
Comments
That's how the blogosphere works; I had one post I spent probably fifteen hours completely devoted to, which only my subscribers really looked at. Then the little two paragraph blurb I wrote gets linked and cited on twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, and numerous other sites as if I said something revolutionary...
I don't know why this is, but it is a very interesting phenomenon. Perhaps some study could be done on this...
Posted by: Jared | March 7, 2010 6:47 PM
As a reader of 132 RSS feeds (from LOL cats to SB to XKCD to SBM) I can say with certainty that post length affects readership. Jared, your 15-hour post probably wasn't 2 paragraphs long, was it?
We live in an age of 140 character snippets, not Shakespeare.
Posted by: Colin | March 7, 2010 7:16 PM
No, but it wasn't terribly long, either
Posted by: Jared | March 7, 2010 7:30 PM
Yeah, my post tomorrow approaches Oracian length.
Posted by: PalMD
| March 7, 2010 7:57 PM
I really like this current post. Let's get the hit rate up really high.
Posted by: the Blind Watchmaker | March 7, 2010 9:15 PM
Well, this one certainly is brief.
Posted by: PalMD
| March 7, 2010 9:24 PM
Shorter PalMD: crap post coming up tomorrow. Save yourselves the effort, and just read this one.
No?
Posted by: Bob O'H | March 8, 2010 2:45 AM
Advertising that tomorrow's post is especially good greatly increases the odds that I will read it :)
Posted by: Matthew | March 8, 2010 5:02 AM