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Thanks Dean,

This is much easier for me to read.

Although, I don't know whether it is useful to group all this 'grey' literature together. There should be different categories or levels as in other types of evidence. Grey lit ranges from: [because there probably are no absolutes] almost completely untrue, pseudoscience, research deliberately done to deceive or for profit; to the half-true well intentioned, but badly planned or executed and subsequently flawed studies; to almost completely true such as in a well written thesis or good piece of independent research. Therefore, using this umbrella term could lead to several potentially important babies being thrown out with the bathwater.

Also, as someone has already pointed out: 'sometimes grey lit is all that is available'. I suppose we need to examine the reasons why the literature is grey, eg Neuro Electric Therapy was a successful treatment for withdrawal symptoms, the grey research for NET, performed by its designer with over 200 patients, and another independent 72 patient study by a psychiatrist is more reliable, and was done with greater care and objectivity than the only official piece of research on NET, which only had 12 patients in each group and apparently used the wrong settings. However this was the research that was accepted by the NHS. The only difference was that nobody had heard of the grey team, while the other team were well known in the field of addiction research.


Jo

From: Dean Giustini <[log in to unmask]>
To: jo kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, 16 March 2012, 17:21
Subject: Re: Finding the Hard to Finds: and the odd virus

Hi evidence-based practitioners/grey literature enthusiasts,

I have loaded a Word version of my grey lit manual onto my wiki:
http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Grey_literature (see Introduction)

Introduction

See also Searching for grey literature pathfinder
I find Slideshare increasingly frustrating too.  I use it so often because of the metrics.
Cheers

Dean Giustini
UBC biomed librarian
http://hlwiki.ca



On 16 March 2012 10:00, jo kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I enjoyed reading the article, it was very interesting especially 'Acupuncture in the management of drug & alcohol dependence'. However, a word of caution about SlideShare:
Just read it online, don't download it to your hard drive, [as I just tried to do]. I was offered a Download Manager program that I didn't want having had trouble with these in the past, but it seemed to be the only way to download the slides. I clicked Download but along with the download manager came a lot of other software that I really did not want so watch out when you click 'Accept'.

My anti-virus program detected and deleted one of these piggyback programs as a virus, but I still had to go to Control Panel > Programs/Feature and remove two other "new" programs. If it is too late for this advice - I suggest a System Restore back to the previous day, or restore point. Close any open programs, then: Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and scroll down to System Restore. Click on it, and follow the on-screen instructions for choosing a restore point. Then just wait until Windows restarts your PC and you should be good to go. 

BTW talking of unwanted software anyone who has downloaded ITunes to get the Oxford EBH Lectures [or any other reason] should now go to Control Panel - Programs/features, and Uninstall: Adobe Bonjour. I found out that it's sole function is to spy on whatever software you use and report back to Adobe, but to do this it is using your bandwidth and processor power. I also uninstalled the Adobe Updater - but that's only because I like to be the one to choose when and if I update something; it also kept trying to reinstall Bonjour and the £6 pm ICloud Console.   

Best wishes Jo



From: Ash Paul <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 21:41
Subject: Finding the Hard to Finds: Searching for Grey Literature

Dear colleagues,

Here's a very good electronic resource from the University of British Columbia (I found it via Twitter):

Regards,

Ash