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!
n=56 doesn't give you much information regarding the margin of error, unless you practice Tarot Reader's cat science. The standard deviation of outcomes and the difference between both outcomes matter just as much.
If I flip a coin 56 times and it always falls on head, I can be pretty much certain that it's not a fair coin. I wouldn't need to flip it 1000 times. We are all someone else's "know-nothing hack"...
I’m sure the individual writer is smart educated and thoughtful, but the system of science journalism (science communication is different but equally flawed) is so bent-out-of-shape as to be effectively worthless.
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.
Good points - that's why I follow & support https://theconversation.com/ for news since it's Science Journalism is done by actual scientists working in the field.
The core issue is that the BBC report inflates what the study actually shows. The paper is a small, single-centre RCT of one specific surgery (laparoscopic cholecystectomy). Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol. It does not demonstrate broadly faster recovery or an across-the-board clinical benefit. The authors themselves are cautious and explicitly list limitations.
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.
> Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol.
Ooh, that sounds like p-hacking. How many other protocols, and other potential outcomes in general, did they look at before picking the one to publish? If it's on the order of 20, then we can expect they'd encounter such a result by pure chance.
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.
I kind of understand where they come from: science vulgarization in pop news has been riddled with misinterpretation or lack of depth which can mislead the general public.
I’m not gonna delete it as it’s just going to make comments like yours confusing for people, but that was poor phrasing from me.
It gave the impression that this specific journalist knows nothing, which is unfair.
I was trying to be funny (always risky online) and intended to be speaking humorously about science journalism in generally. In hindsight, my phrasing doesn’t do that, and actually doesn’t communicate what I was saying very well.
I stand by my criticism of science journalism in general and my request that the article is just posted. But my wording was very rough, ultimately didn’t make the point I intended and yes might frustrate some people. If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
Oof, this comment was really nice up until the end. Accepting responsibility, expressing regret, etc.
> If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
But then you're like "If you're upset, whatever, that's on you" - even though nobody's really suggested someone is "extremely" upset or hurt by your comment.
Also, you can be funny on the Internet - it has nothing to do with that. The real question is whether you can be funny without degrading people.
A while back I had to have a long and unpleasant dental procedure - a bone graft so I could get an implant in an area where the bone had been damaged - this took about 4 hours. During this time the dentist played music - mostly various works selected at random by Hans Zimmer.
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 will have surgery soon. If I ask the surgeon to allow me to listen to music during the surgery, will they allow it? I know it depends on hospital/surgeon/etc, but I'm wondering how much doctors are willing to deviate from protocol in general.
Depends on the surgery and how you want to listen.
Ask to have it played in the room? Sure. Want to listen on your own device? We don’t want to be responsible for loss or damage to that device. Want to use earbuds? Same problem if you’re going to be sedated at all, plus there is also the risk of damage to you if there’s metal anywhere.
One of the most commonly used instruments in surgery is electrocautery. A large pad is placed on (usually) a leg and is one electrode; the other is the instrument tip that does the burning. In theory, any metal in the current path could be a point for arcing. This is why you are asked to remove piercings (see your piercer for silicone plugs to fill the holes during surgeries). We don’t want to torch you.
I’m an anesthesiologist. Some of the risks we are guarding against are more theoretical than practical, but until the 1950’s all useful anesthetic gases were flammable and so protocols were focused on not setting the patients or the operating room on fire, and while we no longer have conductive floors and grounding chains around our waists, we do still worry about setting patients on fire (alcohol is still a common solvent for skin prep solutions). And we don’t want to lose or damage your stuff.
If music is so valuable to us humans, then why can't humanity make a site like wikipedia for free music? There is a new generation growing up used to streaming services costing 10 bucks a month.
Wikipedia covers music very well. It often doesn't include the music itself, but there's a ton of great writing and history about music.
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.)
I am always so peaceful when listening to heavy metal ... :D
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).
I'm more a fan of atmospheric black metal, 80's thrash and prog metal, myself but the psychological effects of listening to death metal have been researched. As previously discussed on Hacker News:
Some find music to be distracting, and therefore don't listen to it. This can build a general dislike of music.
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)
The paper mentions it being about total IV anaesthesia with propofol, so it should be generalizable to all surgeries with the same anesthetic conditions.
Better to link the actual study rather than what a know-nothing hack has to say about it: https://mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/view/111...
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!
n=56 doesn't give you much information regarding the margin of error, unless you practice Tarot Reader's cat science. The standard deviation of outcomes and the difference between both outcomes matter just as much.
If I flip a coin 56 times and it always falls on head, I can be pretty much certain that it's not a fair coin. I wouldn't need to flip it 1000 times. We are all someone else's "know-nothing hack"...
That is so incredibly rude of you. Science communication to the general public is valuable.
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.
I’m sure the individual writer is smart educated and thoughtful, but the system of science journalism (science communication is different but equally flawed) is so bent-out-of-shape as to be effectively worthless.
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.
Good points - that's why I follow & support https://theconversation.com/ for news since it's Science Journalism is done by actual scientists working in the field.
Can you point out the issues with the article?
The core issue is that the BBC report inflates what the study actually shows. The paper is a small, single-centre RCT of one specific surgery (laparoscopic cholecystectomy). Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol. It does not demonstrate broadly faster recovery or an across-the-board clinical benefit. The authors themselves are cautious and explicitly list limitations.
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.
> Its primary outcome is a modest reduction in propofol and fentanyl dose under a very specific anaesthetic protocol.
Ooh, that sounds like p-hacking. How many other protocols, and other potential outcomes in general, did they look at before picking the one to publish? If it's on the order of 20, then we can expect they'd encounter such a result by pure chance.
Sure.
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.
> How can you “communicate” something you yourself don’t understand?
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.
I kind of understand where they come from: science vulgarization in pop news has been riddled with misinterpretation or lack of depth which can mislead the general public.
Can't that be communicated without calling anyone a know-nothing hack?
I’m not gonna delete it as it’s just going to make comments like yours confusing for people, but that was poor phrasing from me.
It gave the impression that this specific journalist knows nothing, which is unfair.
I was trying to be funny (always risky online) and intended to be speaking humorously about science journalism in generally. In hindsight, my phrasing doesn’t do that, and actually doesn’t communicate what I was saying very well.
I stand by my criticism of science journalism in general and my request that the article is just posted. But my wording was very rough, ultimately didn’t make the point I intended and yes might frustrate some people. If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
Oof, this comment was really nice up until the end. Accepting responsibility, expressing regret, etc.
> If someone is extremely upset or hurt by my comment then, I think, at some stage that isn’t my fault and the Internet might not be right for that person.
But then you're like "If you're upset, whatever, that's on you" - even though nobody's really suggested someone is "extremely" upset or hurt by your comment.
Also, you can be funny on the Internet - it has nothing to do with that. The real question is whether you can be funny without degrading people.
A while back I had to have a long and unpleasant dental procedure - a bone graft so I could get an implant in an area where the bone had been damaged - this took about 4 hours. During this time the dentist played music - mostly various works selected at random by Hans Zimmer.
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 will have surgery soon. If I ask the surgeon to allow me to listen to music during the surgery, will they allow it? I know it depends on hospital/surgeon/etc, but I'm wondering how much doctors are willing to deviate from protocol in general.
Depends on the surgery and how you want to listen.
Ask to have it played in the room? Sure. Want to listen on your own device? We don’t want to be responsible for loss or damage to that device. Want to use earbuds? Same problem if you’re going to be sedated at all, plus there is also the risk of damage to you if there’s metal anywhere.
One of the most commonly used instruments in surgery is electrocautery. A large pad is placed on (usually) a leg and is one electrode; the other is the instrument tip that does the burning. In theory, any metal in the current path could be a point for arcing. This is why you are asked to remove piercings (see your piercer for silicone plugs to fill the holes during surgeries). We don’t want to torch you.
I’m an anesthesiologist. Some of the risks we are guarding against are more theoretical than practical, but until the 1950’s all useful anesthetic gases were flammable and so protocols were focused on not setting the patients or the operating room on fire, and while we no longer have conductive floors and grounding chains around our waists, we do still worry about setting patients on fire (alcohol is still a common solvent for skin prep solutions). And we don’t want to lose or damage your stuff.
Thanks, that's useful. My procedure is supposed to be 2 hours, laparoscopic. I will ask but without getting my hopes up.
Not the same but I wore ear buds and listened to music while having a tooth pulled, they didn’t mind.
Every hospital bed should have a comfortable pair of noise cancelling headphones with a variety of music for patient comfort.
If music is so valuable to us humans, then why can't humanity make a site like wikipedia for free music? There is a new generation growing up used to streaming services costing 10 bucks a month.
https://musopen.org
https://imslp.org
https://freemusicarchive.org
https://www.jamendo.com
https://ccmixter.org
https://freepd.com
https://incompetech.com
https://audionautix.com
Music is truly a form of medicine!
If it’s so valuable why not pay people that make it?
Lets pay for new music, but how about we have the old stuff be available for free or at cost?
Wikipedia covers music very well. It often doesn't include the music itself, but there's a ton of great writing and history about music.
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.)
I wonder what kind/style of music was used in the study. A further study might even try comparing different music styles.
I am always so peaceful when listening to heavy metal ... :D
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).
I'm more a fan of atmospheric black metal, 80's thrash and prog metal, myself but the psychological effects of listening to death metal have been researched. As previously discussed on Hacker News:
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
Heavy metal/hardcore is good music. Mumble rap is bad music.
Good music is subjective. Aside from the guitar skills involved in shredding, I think heavy metal is probably the worst genre of music.
Some find music to be distracting, and therefore don't listen to it. This can build a general dislike of music.
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)
How did the BBC guy generalize this to all kinds of surgeries? https://mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/view/111...
The paper mentions it being about total IV anaesthesia with propofol, so it should be generalizable to all surgeries with the same anesthetic conditions.
I'm going in for facial blurring surgery like that gentleman next week. I'm hopeful it will help with my social anxiety.
>Even as the drugs silence much of her brain, its auditory pathway remains partly active.
oh that's interesting. From headline I had assumed we're talking post op
Man, all these "study finds" about things that are intuitively obvious to most humans, but others need "studies" to believe.
Sure, but it melts off your face
I think those are a pre-surgery photographs.