Talk:Rohin Francis

Huge holes

This has been put up by the subject. Only 1/4 of the information needed. Rustygecko (talk) 19:08, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Jesswade88 created the page, not the subject. If you think that the subject put the page up, please provide evidence of this, and we can look into the potential for bias created by this. Thanks! Bibeyjj (talk) 22:02, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I created the page. What do you mean by 'Only 1/4 of the information needed'? It's an incredibly short page with a few details of his biography. Jesswade88 (talk) 06:28, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Status as a doctor, surgeon, consultant cardiologist, and head of department.

I've heard Rohin, in some of his YouTube videos, say that he is a "consultant cardiologist" (the quotes are because I don't know what this means). He has also said that he is the *head* of some sort of department of cardiology in an NHS hospital in the UK. He refers to himself as "the big boss man" here: (I Wikipedia software won't let me link to it. It's just after 29:27 out of 33:51 in the video by Rohin called "What actually ARE muscle cramps?" on his YouTube channel, "Medlife Crisis".)

Also, I thought I heard him say he had *completed* a PhD in some sort of field involving medical imaging.

I have also heard him say in the context of heart disease: "I want to keep you off my operating table." So is he also a heart surgeon?

The article merely says he is a PhD student.

So what is the truth about this? Polar Apposite (talk) 22:53, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Will need something more concrete to include anything more. "I want to keep you off my operating table", could just be an expression. On pages like these: https://www.medlifecrisis.co.uk/ https://theconversation.com/profiles/rohin-francis-314067 https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cardiovascular/rohin-francis https://www.radcliffecardiology.com/authors/rohin-francis the PhD is listed as ongoing and on the topic of on imaging techniques for acute myocardial infarction at University College LondonPabsoluterince (talk) 23:48, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

You would seem to be correct about Rohin having not finished his PhD yet if The Conversation is to be believed.

https://theconversation.com/profiles/rohin-francis-314067 says that "He is also currently undertaking a PhD at UCL, where he is using advanced imaging techniques such as PET and MRI scanning to study patients who have suffered major heart attacks, in an attempt to identify therapeutic targets to minimise the amount of damage caused." The same page also says he is "Cardiologist and Clinical Research Fellow, UCL" and that he has "written for the Guardian as well as academic journals and websites, published and contributed to several books and written for Channel 4. He sits on the British Cardiovascular Society's Digital Committee and is part of the BMJ Heart Journal's social media team." and " 2009 Royal College of Physicians, MRCP"

Not sure that this is a reliable source, but only the fact of having written for the Guardian is in the WP article. Maybe it is important what subject he was writing about, and in what capacity, in the Guardian. Polar Apposite (talk) 20:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Claim that Rohin writes about "systemic racism" not in the citation

"In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Francis started creating more serious YouTube videos, and has since discussed issues such as coronavirus disease, systemic racism and pseudoscience.[6]" says the WP article, but there is nothing in the citation about racism or pseudoscience, only the rona. I've seen him talk about pseudoscience quite a bit on YouTube, but I'm skeptical about the claim that he is interested in systemic racism. Polar Apposite (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

He's talked a lot about the rona and about pseudoscience, but not much if at all about systemic racism. He did briefly say that sickle cell anemia has nothing to do with race in his article about that disease here: https://theconversation.com/why-is-race-still-in-the-british-blood-pressure-guidelines-144971#comment_2346516, and that is *all* he said. If he were interested in systemic racism, this article presented a golden opportunity to bring that up, and yet he didn't, which I think is telling. If there is evidence that he has written a significant amount, or even *anything* about systemic racism, it should be provided, or the claim removed from the article. It's actually a very important detail, because systemic racism is such a controversial idea, making it look like Rohin is on the left side of the culture war (if there is one), whereas my impression is that he has succeeded fairly well in staying politically neutral (at least in terms of left vs right, because I think of libertarianism as being neither left nor right but going in a direction at right angles to the line that contains the spectrum running from left to right). He did indicate, as I recall, once that he leaned towards being a "libertarian doctor", meaning that people should be allowed to have any medical treatment they are willing to pay for. As I recall, he also said that "people should be allowed to do what they want with their own money and body organs", which I took to be a reference to donation (or possibly even sale) of body organs. It was one of his YouTube vids that I watched recently. I'll try to find it. In the meantime, I found this very interesting passage in the transcript of his YouTube video (Wikipedia software won't let me link to it) called "Should you get a full body scan":

"

Now, I believe everyone should be able to spend their money

23:13

on whatever useless thing they like, but with homoeopathy or Athletic Greens, the taxpayer doesn't have to deal with the consequences.

23:21

All right, back to India Rohin, aka, dari minimus. And this is why full-body scans are not recommended

23:27

by the FDA or the NHS or any medical organisation. Remember, this is doctors turning down lucrative work,

23:34

so you can't claim that this is some kind of conspiracy from the medical industry, online commenters are always very ready

23:41

to point out when pharma is enriching themselves, and I agree with a lot of those complaints and join in,

23:48

but they seem to have a blind spot when it comes to these private startups, suddenly then they don't notice

23:54

the overt financial conflicts of interest and they're very ready to hand over their cash. Recently I put up a YouTube community post

24:00

asking why people even watch this channel. And one of the replies was that they liked the fact

24:06

that I don't tell people what to do, but I try to help others reach decisions. And I really liked reading that

24:12

and I definitely do try to think that way, I genuinely do believe that patients should be free

24:18

to make whatever good or bad decisions they want, and my role is just to try and provide them with good information, so what I'm not arguing for

24:27

is a ban on these companies at all. In fact, I found a quote from a friend of mine from 2015

24:33

when I was researching this article, which I've written pretty quickly on holiday, by the way, but my friend is called Saurabh Jha, he's a radiologist

24:42

and an author, so as a radiologist, he really understands the ins and outs of these scans much better than I do, and he was actually having a back and forth

24:49

with Mark Cuban on Twitter, who was promoting asymptomatic screening blood tests.

24:54

Can you see how things don't really change over time, and it's often the same kind of people

25:00

promoting these things? And he said, "If I put my physician cap on, then I realise that this is all just humbug,

25:05

bordering on quackery. But then I have another cap, which is a sort of libertarian cap,

25:10

which is that people can do whatever the hell they want with their organs and their money." And amusingly, Cuban asked why all the people criticising

25:20

the idea of scans and things, are radiologists in the replies

25:25

and especially when this would make demand for their services skyrocket. And I thought, that is quite amusing

25:32

that the people who specialise in these scans, who know the complications of these scans,

25:38

and who stand to benefit from more scans happening, are the ones warning against the complications of these scans.

25:45

Do you think maybe there is something to that?

"

In this case he is approvingly quoting a man, who he calls a friend, as calling himself a libertarian, or rather as having a "libertarian cap". I remember Rohin saying in another video that I haven't been able to find just yet, "I would call myself a 'libertarian doctor' if it didn't sound so awful to so many people." or words to that effect. Polar Apposite (talk) 00:49, 7 October 2023 (UTC)