The study concluded that doctors should use pain management drugs more often than they currently do.
The study found that doctors are reluctant to give pain medication because they fear patients will be unable to consent to necessary medical procedures.
Doctors surveyed for the study also withhold medicine out of concern that it will mask symptoms and interfere with their ability to correctly identify the patient's illness.
The study's author, Mark Graber, an emergency medicine physician, argued that refusing to give patients pain medicine is against the doctor's professional oath.
The study is based on the answers of 182 surgeons practicing medicine in Iowa to a questionnaire mailed in 1996.
The study found that 67 percent of doctors thought drugs interfered with the ability to diagnose disease correctly and 53 percent believed they interfered with obtaining a medical consent.
The study also concluded that women are underrepresented as tenured professors in certain Columbia departments, including mathematics and natural sciences.
None of the 17 tenured Columbia mathematics professors are female and of the 25 tenured physics professors, only one is female.
These numbers compare unfavorably with the English department, which is 25 percent female, and the art history department, in which nearly half of tenured professors are women.
Mathematics officials attribute the low number of female professor to the fact that a mere 10 percent of applicants to the department are female.
The Columbia study follows a recently-released MIT report that found widespread sex discrimination among professors in the areas of salary, office space and tenure awards.
Gary Falcon and Jim Zimring first came up with the idea to study Peeps two years ago while coasting on a sugar high caused by the bunny-shaped treat, reported The Daily Free Press.
Falcon and Jimring began their research by testing the solubility of the subjects and their reaction to heat and cold. The two also exposed the Peeps to alcohol and cigarettes.
"We disclosed the common side effects such as mild discomfort, insomnia, melting, burning, exploding, shattering into thousands of small pieces and dizziness," Falcon said of his interaction with the Peeps.
"We felt we had an ethical obligation to let the subjects know all the potential risks of their volunteer service."
The two experimenters' most recently-published research centers on the separation of quintuplets.
Another recent trial involved the submersion of a Peep in ethyl alcohol with a lit cigarette in its mouth. The Peep ended up a charred mess.
- Compiled by Daily Staff Reporter Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud.
04-15-99
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