Transcript

Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research

From The BMJ · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 54 min · 8,887 words · 105 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research", an episode of The BMJ published December 29, 2025 (54 min, about 8,887 words). It mentions 19 people, works and ideas, including Cameron Abassi, Matt Morgan, BMJ, Christmas, Tim Feny.

What this episode is about

The discussion explores the intersection of medical neologisms, the challenges of conveying the visceral experiences of medicine, and the implications of longevity science in clinical settings. Additionally, it highlights the importance of effective communication in medicine, emphasizing the need for clarity in medical writing and understanding.

Key takeaways

  • Medicine's unsung language: sometimes words for visceral experiences are the best prescriptions for understanding.
  • Neologisms in healthcare reveal the art of expression; medicine's complexity thrives in the vocabulary not taught in schools.
  • Ever smelled 'hosp'? It's the fragrant fusion of sorrow and sustenance that greets healthcare workers daily.
  • Vein spotting isn't just a pastime; it's a reminder that even mundane moments can reflect our clinical instincts.
  • Language shapes our realities, making it crucial for healthcare to articulate the inexpressible experiences of patient care.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Matt Morgan, Christmas, Cameron Abassi, BMJ
  2. – 10:00: Barry Petit, Dictionary of Blood and Silence
  3. – 15:00: Mati Jooshi, Shivali Fulchund
  4. – 20:00: Christmas, Tim Feny, The Science of Longevity
  5. – 25:00: Christmas
  6. – 30:00: Bapu Jenna
  7. – 40:00: Christmas
  8. – 50:00: Mel Dange, Christmas, EU
  9. – 53:52: Cameron Abassi

Notable quotes from "Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research"

  • Be having a drip for NAD+ or whether they should have their genome tested. And we have a roundup of all our Christmas research.
    about Christmas · at
  • My name is Matt Morgan. I'm an intensive care consultant in Cardiff and also a BMJ columnist.
    about Matt Morgan · at
  • Yeah so I've got a website called the dictionary of blood and silence which collects these words there's about 200 words there now actually. many of them which were made up by…
    about Dictionary of Blood and Silence · at
  • The underlying evidence base for these interventions is thin and the impact is being felt in primary care. Shivali Fulchund, a clinical editor for the BMJ, finds out more.
    about Shivali Fulchund · at
  • Sure. I'm Tim Feny. I'm an epidemiologist at UNC and a research editor at BMJ.
    about Tim Feny · at
  • My name is Bapu Jenna. I'm an economist and internist and professor at Harvard Medical School and I see patients at Massachusetts General Hospital.
    about Bapu Jenna · at
  • Yeah. So we were looking at the effect of the daylight saving time clock changes on health in England. The clock changes affect around a quarter of the world's population but the evidence on.
    about Mel Dange · at
  • BMJ. We'll be back in 2026 when the first issue will feature a series of new year resolutions. Until then, I'm Cameron Abassi. Thank you for listening.
    about Cameron Abassi · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Cameron Abassi — Person · Host · 2 mentions · first at
    Introduces the BMJ Medicine Science podcast Christmas issue and links the episode’s segments together.
  • Matt Morgan — Person · Main guest (segment interviewee) · 2 mentions · first at
    Discusses his project creating medical neologisms and the 'Dictionary of Blood and Silence' website; provides the episode’s first major feature.
  • Tim Feny — Person · Co-host / segment contributor · 2 mentions · first at
    Co-presents the BMJ Christmas research roundup and comments on multiple papers, including US research culture and AI bias.
  • Mel Dange — Person · Main guest (segment interviewee) · 3 mentions · first at
    Presents research on health impacts of daylight saving time clock changes in England using linked primary care and hospital datasets.
  • Shivali Fulchund — Person · Main speaker (segment host/interviewer) · 1 mention · first at
    Leads the longevity medicine segment, interviewing a GP about evidence, biohacking, and impacts on primary care.
  • Mati Jooshi — Person · Main guest (segment interviewee) · 1 mention · first at
    Explains the emerging evidence base for longevity medicine and how consumer biohacking and novel tests affect GP consultations.
    What happens when longevity science meets the consultation room? But I'm in no position as an ordinary clinician to talk about whether they should be having a drip for NAD+ or whether they should have their genome.
  • Bapu Jenna — Person · Main guest (paper author interviewee) · 1 mention · first at
    Explains a study examining reductions/deletions of DEI-related language in NIH grant abstracts amid political pressure.
  • Duncan Jary — Person · Producer / interviewer · 1 mention · first at
    Produces the segment and interviews Matt Morgan about medical neologisms for the BMJ advent calendar feature.
    And I also noticed when I was putting together the little blur for this, you're now a professor for the public understanding of medicine as well. How many hats have you got on?
  • Barry Petit — Person · Referenced contributor (user-submitted word) · 2 mentions · first at
    Submitted the neologism 'devastant' to Matt Morgan’s project; his story illustrates the emotional weight of naming clinical experiences.
    The website and look at them and accept which ones will be published and so on. And I read this one by a GP called Barry Petit or Barry Petit who worked in Cornwall and I…
  • Douglas Adams — Person · Referenced author · 1 mention · first at
    Cited as inspiration for playful dictionary-style word invention, influencing Matt Morgan’s neologism project.
    When I was a kid, I loved reading a book by Douglas Adams called the meaning of lift, which is a dictionary for silly terms effectively. And these two things kind of came…

Books & papers

  • The Science of Longevity — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    An editorial discussed in the episode, focusing on the science behind longevity.
    Madvi Johi and her co-author's editorial, The Science of Longevity, is now on bmj.com.
  • Dictionary of Solemn Sadness and Solemn Sorrows — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at
    A book that inspired Matt Morgan to create medical neologisms, mentioned in the episode.
    Medicine. So, tell us a little bit about what you've been doing. so yeah, it actually started on holiday where I picked up a book from the airport bookshop called the…

Companies & orgs

  • BMJ — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at
    The publisher of the podcast and the medical journal discussed in the episode.
    Professor for the public understanding of medicine, has come up with some medical neogisms, and we've published a selection of them as the BMJ's advent calendar this year. Duncan Jary is our producer spoke to him.
  • University of Surrey — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Matt Morgan holds an honorary title with the University of Surrey.
    Yeah. Do you know that's a an honorary title with the University of Surrey and I've got an honorary title with Cardiff University but it's it's that phrase public understanding…
  • Cardiff University — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at
    Matt Morgan is an intensive care consultant in Cardiff and holds an honorary title with Cardiff University.
    My name is Matt Morgan. I'm an intensive care consultant in Cardiff and also a BMJ columnist.
  • EU — Company · Context · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned in the context of its decision to stop changing clocks, which affects the UK's policy considerations.
    What system to change to. but there has been renewed interest in getting this policy implemented. And it's likely that the UK will re-evaluate its daylight saving time policy…

Products & tech

  • NAD+ — Product · Case study · 4 mentions
    Discussed in the context of longevity medicine and its use in anti-aging treatments.
    What happens when longevity science meets the consultation room? But I'm in no position as an ordinary clinician to talk about whether they should be having a drip for NAD+ or whether they should have their genome.
  • Dictionary of Blood and Silence — Product · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at
    A website collecting medical neologisms created by Matt Morgan, mentioned as a key project.

Places & events

  • Christmas — Event · Setting · 10 mentions · first at
    The episode is part of the annual Christmas issue, featuring festive research and topics.

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Medicine Science podcast from the BMJ. I'm Cameron Abassi, editorinchief. It's time for our annual Christmas issue. We'll hear about some medical neogisms

and it's the smell that hits you when you walk into a ward typically and it's a combination between the food and also almost the detritus of disease.

What happens when longevity science meets the consultation room? But I'm in no position as an ordinary clinician to talk about whether they should be having a drip for NAD+ or whether they should have their genome tested. And we have a roundup of all our Christmas research.

I will say first that it's good to know that I can tell people I was born recently. But first, practicing medicine can be a very visceral experience, and the English language can't always adequately capture the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings that doctors experience. So, Matt Morgan, BMJ columnist, intensivist, and now professor for the public understanding of medicine, has come up with some medical neogisms, and we've published a selection of them as the BMJ's advent calendar this year. Duncan Jary is our producer spoke to him.

My name is Matt Morgan. I'm an intensive care consultant in Cardiff and also a BMJ columnist.

And I also noticed um when I was putting together the little blur for this, you're now a professor for the public understanding of medicine as well. How many hats have you got on?

Yeah. Do you know that's a an honorary title with the University of Surrey and I've got an honorary title with Cardiff University but it it's it's that phrase public understanding of medicine which I was most fascinated with and so yeah that's the bit I I love about that and it includes for example teaching medical students about writing in in medicine which is you know we're going to be talking about words today but I think equally writing in medicine is perhaps a lost art and perhaps something that that needs to be brought back.

Absolutely. [clears throat] I mean, it's really important to be able to express your experiences whilst being a doctor and that's exactly what this new project is about. So, uh the English language has many words, many words borrowed from all over the place, um but still doesn't quite capture, uh all of the sights, sounds, smells, um and feelings of medicine. So, tell us a little bit about what you've been doing. Uh so yeah, it actually started on holiday where I picked up a book from the airport bookshop called the dictionary of solemn sadness and solemn sorrows. And this was a book describing things that we all go through which are sad but don't have words for it. And it was a really powerful book. And I thought back to when I was a kid, I loved reading a book by Douglas Adams called called the meaning of lift, which is a dictionary for silly terms effectively. And these two things kind of came together on

holiday. And I thought, well, medicine's a bit like that. You know, a medical degree is actually a language degree in many ways. We learn more words or more vocabulary than, you know, the average French student does in in in university learning French, for example. But there's something lost. You know, the things we learn are all the fancy Latin names for diagnosis. What we don't learn is what it feels like when you're caring for a patient who's got the same name as your mom, for example, or or the smell of a hospital.

And these are the very everyday experiences. We all know as doctors and nurses and healthcare providers, everybody knows this, but there's no words for it. Uh, and so it was a kind of a a silly fun project where I wanted to gather together and make up words for these really common experiences.

When I first read this and started reading some of your words, it just really reminded me of I'm Scottish. We have loads of words for rain and getting wet that aren't in English language but are really evocative like dri or det and um yeah it's the same sort of feeling with with some of these. So tell us about the first word perhaps that you um came up with. Yeah, the first word actually was a word which is included in in the dictionary in the advent calendar which is hosp and this is a universal experience of any healthcare worker all over the world and it's the smell that hits you when you walk into a ward typically and it's a combination between the food and also almost the detritus of disease. Uh, and it sounds pretty gross, but it's got a very distinct

that smell of kind of between Sunday dinner and a toilet cubicle. And you just know you're in a hospital ward when that happens. And [gasps] as I say, the these words are meant to be evocative. You know, they're not all happy or sad. Some of them are a bit like this. Um, but I think it goes back to what you say said about rain. That's a beautiful description. The the philosopher Vitkinstein said, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." And I think sometimes without describing these things, it's hard to admit they even exist. And you know, he was a mathematician and yet came up with this concept. And interestingly, he he actually worked in hospital. worked at Porter during the war in in Guy's hospital and then later in Newcastle. So he might have almost you know experienced what he he wrote as a quote many years before.

The limit of being able to explain your experience must be um you know very universal to anyone that works in in medicine. Have you had some, you know, feedback? Who, what's the favorite word that you've uh put out amongst the uh general public?

Yeah, probably the favorite word. It does differ by different specialties and different people. I think vein spotting has been a very popular one and this is something I'm very guilty of and this is the act of you know sitting in a coffee shop or a airport lounge and looking around and seeing veins on people's hands and arms and wondering what size canula you can put in them. Um for me in intensive care there's a similar one but it's about what size tracheiotomy can I put in somebody's neck when I look at them for example and it it just kind of shows that you know medicine pierces the skin it gets into you it it changes you it it becomes um part of your life in many ways and these are the things we perhaps don't even think about um uh but equally I I think this is also important for patients actually it's not just for Steph because unless we describe some of these things I think I wrote we risk

lexical eskeeia a narrowing of meaning and ultimately a corrosion of care so you know I think it it does go back to the patient too

you've been collecting these words for a while are you still doing this is this an ongoing project

yeah so I've got a a website called the dictionary of blood and silence which collects these words there's about 200 words there now actually. um many of them which were were made up by me but anyone can submit a word and in fact some of the most popular ones now are are user submitted words and if I may you know one of the most powerful user submitted words is in the advent calendar and it's one uh which is devastant uh and this was a word submitted by a user and the definition is the sudden realization that the illness you're contemplating in in a detached professional way is actually happening to you. Um, now people submit these words and every few weeks I kind of go on the back end of the website and look at them and accept which ones will will be published and so on. And I read this one by a GP called Barry Petit or Barry Petit uh who worked in Cornwall and I thought wow you know that's a pretty powerful one. I wonder

if they've undergone this themselves because it's often from personal experience. And it was a week later that his daughter wrote to me actually and said that the family didn't know he'd submitted this at all. It was submitted from a palative care home where he was at the time and that he'd actually died. He died before I was able to respond and say, "Thank you for your word." So I I reached out to the family and they would were pleased that this word would be included and that story of him would be included as well. And I think you know this is how you know words have power if you like. You know yes there's some funny ones, there's some silly ones, there's some disgusting ones. Um but there's words like this which really gets to the heart of um heart of people and the heart of life. I think

that article, a dictionary for Medson's Unnamed Moments, is available now on bmj.com. And have a look at our social media for all the Malcolm Willlet cartoons we've commissioned to go with each word. Now, Brian Johnson, the tech entrepreneur who's turned his life into an Nofone study on anti-aging. He is the face of the longevity movement. Behind him are many wellness companies using biochemical language and novel tests. They claim to help people biohack themselves to health and wellness, but the underlying evidence base for these interventions is thin and the impact is being felt in primary care. Shivali Fulchund, a clinical editor for the BMJ, finds out more.

Hello, I'm Shivali, editorial editor at the BMJ and today I'm here with Dr. Mati Jooshi. Could I get you to introduce yourself?

Thank you very much, Shivali. Um, my name is Mati Jooshi and I'm a GP in London.

And longevity medicine, I guess, has had a lot more interest as of late, particularly because of these innovations it's associated with. What is the evidence base to support um some of these areas?

So, there are various areas which are under trial. Many of them have been in animal models. Um, some of those have started to cross over into human trials. Many of them are very much at an emerging stage. However, we're finding out a lot of this information um in a very very rapid uh way and and in that process that information is extending beyond the field of research into the wider community. So we are seeing people talking about very experimental areas such as mTor, DNA methylation, aging biomarkers um things that a lot of people outside of research may never have heard of where people are talking about biohacking and being able to modify their own nutritional status, physical status um in order to reportedly reverse the signs um of aging. Now many people in my generation would never have come across some of the complexities of cellular medicine um that we are now coming across now and perhaps the newer

generation doctors will be much more comfortable talking about protein kynases and and DNA methylation. But I know many generations of clinicians will find this a very uncomfortable area to talk about because it's outside of our um area of expertise. And is that something that you're seeing more commonly in general practice now? Um are people coming in asking about these various types of treatments or um biomarkers and so on. How does that affect your practice? Yes, I mean um we're not far away from a shopping mall which offers um introvenous strips and um it's not unusual nowadays for people to to come and ask their doctor if it's okay to go and get their B12 shots as well as glutathione and NAD+.

Um, and I think these are again things that I wouldn't normally be encountering in my day-to-day practice. And this is a challenge because I know that there is some evidence for some people having supplementation, but I'm in no position as an ordinary clinician to talk about whether they should be having a drip for NAD+ or whether they should be going for cancer biomarkers or whether they should have their genome tested. I've I've had patients coming in saying, you know, my child has some learning difficulties and we've had his genome tested. Where do you take that now? And I think I think we're we're getting a lot of um people now coming with um data from their Apple watches, from their aura ring. You know, I think even cardiac um variability, that's not something normal general practice would have known how to answer.

So the way that information is now being collected on your phone um is almost overwhelming for the individual. And whilst some people might be able to say, "Okay, I understand why my heart rate went up when, you know, I I exercised, there will be people who don't know how to make sense of that." And and will be panicked perhaps sometimes by what is actually a physiological process. So one of the areas that is um I guess more challenging nowadays is that a lot of this information on some of these areas like you mentioned lipoprotein a is not coming from traditional medical sources but through influencers or social media.

So could you just share some of your thoughts around that? So I think there is a concern that um publishing information out into the open means that people may not necessarily be able to appraise that information in a way that um medical professionals might perhaps uh appraise that information. We are worried that there are people in the wellness sector, for example, who can talk about measures to improve your longevity, but they're not clinicians. And therefore, where does the responsibility lie sometimes when you're following advice from somebody who who doesn't have that medical legal coverage and that medical legal responsibility?

um what happens in three to five years down the line when somebody's taken a supplement that actually turned out to be harmful and they did that on the back of information that didn't come from their physician, didn't come from a specialist.

Do you think there's also a challenge at all of um medically trained professionals also providing these types of wellness services in the private sector? I mean I know there are many colleagues who work in the private sector and work differently to how they might work in the mainstream. I do see that um sometimes people may use their credentials as a way of validating the information that they are giving out and that might make people feel that oh well you know that's a person who works in that industry and therefore the information they're giving must be valid. However, there is a risk there that people are working outside of their field of expertise and just by being a medically qualified person doesn't necessarily mean that the information you're giving is mainstream and is accepted by the rest of medical field.

Is there maybe a training gap? Do more clinicians need more training on how to handle this volume of data? Is this something that needs to be started from medical school?

I certainly think that there is a knowledge gap for a lot of clinicians. Um, we're just starting to understand how to use AI in our consultations, but now this is a whole different level of information about how AI is making sense of research and how much do we trust what AI is telling us about the research. I think there's certainly a lot of information that most clinicians will not be aware of because it's very much in the research realm. I do believe that our medical students um will be much more familiar with this as they will be exposed to it um during their training. But it'll be a whole generation of uh clinicians who will be able to navigate that information. Right now we have clinicians who just don't have the skill set to be able to understand this information and help our patients navigate that information.

Madvi Johi and her co-author's editorial, The Science of Longevity, is now on bmj.com.

Now, quintessential to the Christmas BMJ, our festive research. Navajo Lauder and Tim Feny, two of our research editors, take us through the papers that make you laugh and then make you think. Well, this year we've got a few papers to share with you. We've got um a paper looking at how recent is recent. We're looking at banned words and US research. what AI thinks doctors look like and what the health impact of daylight savings are. Um, I'm joined by my colleague Tim. Uh, Tim, can you introduce yourself?

Sure. I'm Tim Feny. I'm an epidemiologist at UNC and a research editor at BMJ. Great. Well, I'm looking forward to digging into our Christmas selection box with you. Can you for our listeners tell us what what makes a good BMJ Christmas research paper? Well, I will say that I have handled the Christmas issue in the past, and I wish I could give you a perfect definition of it. I can't do that, but I can give you some um things that I always kept in my mind when I was thinking about Christmas Papers. First, um the question has to be quirky in that it can't be something that would be a fit for the regular issue necessarily, um or a fit for maybe a regular specialty journal issue either. So, it has to be a little bit different. Um, it doesn't necessarily have to be funny, but that helps. It doesn't necessarily have to be Christmas focused, but that uh can help. And um it needs to adhere to the same standards and uh rigor or at

least as close to as possible as our usual research. So, yeah. Yeah, it's it's a little complicated. Uh it's almost like you know it when you see it.

Yeah, that's that's absolutely it. For the Christmas themed, I will say don't go too far on the Christmas theme like

Oh, yeah. I would aim for uh more scientific rigor than humor and Christmas themed because going too far definitely.

We don't we don't need an elf reference in like every paragraph. That's for sure. And it also has to be healthcare relevant as well. It's still it's still like the same standards of BMJ research, the same kind of clinical relevance or maybe not the same but some clinical relevance as well. Um, but just a quirkier research question. I think that's how that's how I look at it, too.

Yeah. Sometimes we get papers that are very outside of healthcare. They're funny and interesting and quirky, but it has no relevance to,

uh, the medical journal. So, yeah. Yeah. So, um, that's kind of what we're looking for. And I feel like we have to we get a lot of submissions and it can be really hard actually. We get there are some great ideas that we get, but just that kind of the the same level of rigor that we're looking for, sometimes that's not there. And so, that can be quite hard. But anyway, we've got we have got some this year. So, let's get on with discussing them. So, let's let's turn to our first one, which is um how recent is recent? So, this is a uh biblioraphic study where the authors got a sample of a thousand papers and they went in to look at exactly the title of the paper. How recent is recent? So we often see papers talk about recent research, recent evidence, recent literature. And they looked at when a paper cites the word recent, they looked up the citation to work out how actually long is that is is that reference, how

dated is that reference. They call that time the citation lag. And what they found is that the citation lag ranges from like a few months in some cases in the kind of good like you know good examples all the way up to 37 years. So like recent was a really elastic term um from all their findings and they look at this by specialty um and by the impact factor of the journals like the higher impact factor journals. recent tends to be a shorter duration of time. Um, and there are certain specialties where like dentistry I think was one of them.

Veterary medicine where recent can mean like a really long time. So Tim, what's your experience of um using the word recent in your research papers or coming across it um as an editor?

Well, I will say first that it's good to know that I can tell people I was born recently. Um, that is very helpful. Uh, you know, it's interesting hearing this. How about the wide range? Um, because I probably have used that term in my own work and there's no definition. So, it just depends on how much you want to spin it. It's really effective. Yeah.

Um, and I think some of that has to do with, you know, how much work has been done overall in that field. And so if you know if one paper was done 20 years ago and the most recent one before that was the 100 years before that then surely it's recent uh compared you know it's all relative.

Yeah. Uh which makes sense why you would think the higher impact journals might have a shorter duration being uh the time before um the time that you would refer to as recent because usually higher impact journals are you know including topics that are very fastm moving or being published on very frequently. So recent, you know, within a few months, I think makes a lot of sense. But it is hard as a researcher. You you want to be honest, but you also want to a little bit signpost that yes, I'm doing something important. And you know, this is the best available information.

Yeah. It's topical, it's relevant right now. You just relax that term a little bit. 5 years, 10 years,

and then suddenly you find yourself at 37 years. 37 years. Yeah. But as you say, in the right context, that might be appropriate. Um but what the um authors conclude by saying is this playful analysis suggests that recent can mean anything from last season to last century. Readers, reviewers, and editors may want to take recent claims with a grain of chronological salt. So a reminder to all of us that when you see the word recent, just make sure you actually check what that what that really means.

Yeah. You know, as I get older, I think to myself, uh, sometimes you refer to things as recent and then someone reminds you, oh, that was like 10 years ago. And you're like, oh, yeah,

yeah, I guess that much time has passed. Yeah. So, maybe it's not all on the authors. Maybe they're just old enough that that is recent.

Yeah. Whatever the kind of human equivalent of citation lag is, I definitely have that, too. The next research paper we're going to look at is one that is trying to explore the impact of Trump administration policies or at least reported policies. There have been news reports about banned words in um research grants, in scientific papers, things like abortion, transgender, minorities, and reports of scientists having to scrub their grant proposals and uh scientific papers that were kind of under submission of these words to make them more, I don't know, palatable, I guess, to the Trump administration's priority.

priorities. Um I mean Tim, you're American, you've just done your PhD, you're steeped in the kind of academic world. What have what has been your experience of this?

It's been unpleasant uh to say the least. I will say these words are I would I would call them shadowbanned, which is, you know, they're not officially banned, but you only have to read the news every day to hear about this constant concern about being, you know, quote unquote woke or being too focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion to know that if grants are being politically evaluated in any way, they're going to be pushing away from those kind of words. And so anecdotally, I know lots of people are trying to make sure that while they're not changing what they're studying, they are going to try and word things in a way that don't cause any flags because I think a lot of people doing their work still feel like what they're studying is important. And so in the short term, people are going to respond a lot with changing the wording in a way that helps them achieve their current goal, study the topic they

want to study, and not be denied funding. And do you know people who've done that?

I don't want to say I know anyone specifically um just because Yeah, fair enough. different times, but I will say that it is definitely a concern and something everyone that I know has been thinking about when they're applying for

grants. And I was just going to say that, you know, in the short term, people are going to adapt a little bit. But I think in the long term, the problem with this kind of shadowbanning list or this list of words that people don't like is that people tend to not move in that direction anymore. They will move away from researching those topics. the topics fall out of favor because you don't think about them.

It's really unfortunate because what we should be pursuing is good evidence and what we're getting is just don't study it at all. Um it's a lot like gun violence uh in the United States which has for a long time been not funded or funded very poorly uh because nobody wants to know the true answer. And you know, the problem is you're just signaling that you're wrong or that you know the answer doesn't look favorably for your cause because if you thought it was positive for you or you thought it was fine, then you would want the truth to be out there, not banning it, you know. So,

yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. Um well, we spoke to the author um of a research paper that's attempting to quantify well assess whether there has been a change in the appearance of certain words that are reported to be banned in NIH grants. And we're going to hear that interview now uh with Bapu Jenna.

My name is Bapu Jenna. I'm an economist and internist and professor at Harvard Medical School and I see patients at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Yes. Yeah. So, could you just talk a little bit more about kind of what what kind of prompted this list of words to to kind of originally be be drawn up?

There were executive orders sort of around um pulling back research funding on areas related to diversity, equity, inclusion, those kinds of topics that command a lot of political attention. But the executive order didn't specify a specific list of words that shouldn't uh be included in grants. I think that came from um probably different individuals at federal agencies and um you know certainly colleagues of mine and others that I've known you you'd hear about this uh were seeing this list. Anecdotally I think lots of people that that I knew were were sort of thinking about what words they could use or could not use when writing research grants. M we we've heard similar as well from people saying that you know there was just this kind of email that went through their department saying you know scrub these words from your grants and it's kind of interesting the the impact that that has you know in the absence of

any official list or you know people are kind of working these things out and acting um you know sometimes in anticipation of of what might you know what what actual lists might come. Tell us then a little bit about what you found in these grant abstracts.

So I think there's two things that we found. The first was just looking at new grants that were submitted to the the National Institutes of Health in 2024 and 2025. We looked at the prevalence of these specific words related to diversity language by month and basically all of 2024 and going up towards basically around August of 20 uh 2025. And what we saw is that following November 2024, if you just start by looking at 2024 versus 2025, there is a reduction around 20 25% something in that range. Now the next question you might say is well maybe this is not about sort of censoring of specific words but a a change in research priorities. So for example if the government is not interested in funding certain types of research it would make sense that researchers would not propose ideas that are tackling those same research topics. And so the way that we looked at that to try to get the specific issue of censoring or deleting

specific words was we look at about 1,900 grants that are renewed by the NIH. So you have a grant that is in 2024 and a grant in 2025. It's the exact same grant and we're simply looking the at the abstract of that grant to look at whether or not there's any change in the language used in in in those abstracts. And what we see is that even though sort of the the at issue words, the words related to diversity language are roughly about 1% of all words in those grants in 2024. They comprise about 10% of all of the deleted words. So those at issue words, words related to diversity language were being deleted from the exact same grant in 2024 compared to then 2025 at much higher rates than all other words that are in those grants. So almost like that previously funded and approved research and science is being repackaged in the current political climate.

Correct. Yeah. And you know just to just to be fair to what we found I mean the diversity words were still largely not being deleted but they were just being deleted at higher rates than all other words uh in in the abstract. So in a relative census was which was quite large. And to us, what's most interesting is that it just reflects that people were cognizant of the policies and the circulation circulating list of words and were modifying the exact same grant uh according to what they were reading. M and one of the things that um I was one of the editors that you know looked at your paper while it was coming coming through our uh editorial process and we were all struck by the kind of quite sharp decrease in the appearance of these words in sort of the fall of um 2024. So even before the presidential election and you know we know that grants can sometimes be you know started to be written months in in

advance. What how did you interpret this kind of earlier drop? That's a great question. You know, this is one of the puzzling things about or difficult things about research is that you don't always know what the answer is behind what you're what you're seeing. You sort of see this pattern. I mean, my best guess of of what is happening and and and this is just, you know, based on sort of reports that we've seen elsewhere is that some of these grants, the language in those grants was being modified sort of retroactively. Right.

So these were grants that were submitted before November of 2024 for which the grants might have been funded by the NIH and the NIH or another institute or in this case the NIH would have you know perhaps someone would have said you should consider the language that's used in these in these grants. Now we don't you know we don't know from the NIH whether they've done it or not. Um, but I think one way to get some insight into that is those grants that were the same in 2024 and 2025, why do we see certain words being deleted at higher rates? I mean, those are grants that were already being funded. Um, they had already been funded uh and yet we see a higher rate of deletion from those words. So, that suggests that something is happening sort of on the back end.

It's really really fascinating. And I guess just to talk a little bit about what this might mean. I mean do you think this is just you know it's just the language changing a kind of you know uh or the terminology is different but the research is the same or do you think we're seeing a shift in you know what's being studied or who is being studied cuz you know the language we're talking about often it's related to characteristics related to race uh ethnicity you know other protected characteristics like um you know studies in trans people. So h what what do you think is going on there?

Good question. I don't think we have a great window into yet just because it's too early to tell is whether the research itself is changing because it's one thing for the language to change but for the research itself to be pretty similar. Um that may not continue to be the case just because of differences in priorities uh of of the administration. I think you know many people would be of the view and I can understand why that this is problematic. It's problematic because non-ressearchers perhaps are getting involved because of political reasons in the funding of of research questions. So that's one sort of uh view. The other view is that the government the taxpayers in this country uh are funding funding research and they should have a say in in what kind of research uh obviously gets funded and the money is scarce. So it's not like there's an unlimited uh pool of money to fund uh research. And it could be the

case that in some of these areas u that the knowledge that was generated by some of that research was still positive meaning the grants are are contributing to the scientific knowledge. But that isn't really the right question. I think the right question is was the money that was spent on those grants best spent there or could it be spent elsewhere in a way that would even more so improve uh the health of let's say minority populations or at risk populations and I think that is a harder question to to to to grapple with but I think we need to be open to that possibility.

So Tim, what do you think? Like there's this degree of political influence, I guess. Um, and okay, we don't know what impact that will have on the research that is ultimately done, whether this just a language issue or will this whether this will lead to people to move away from those topics as you were saying. But I mean, where do you think that leaves us?

Can I tell you an anecdote? Sure. All right. Uh a long time ago before this current administration when I was in undergrad studying molecular biology, I remember my mom complaining to me one time that can you believe that the government spends money on flies and doing research on flies? And my response was absolutely I know you know we've learned a lot so much about genetics from research on flies that we now can use for human healthcare. like we know more about the world, about biology, and how things work because of that research. So just hearing, oh, we're doing work on flies, doesn't tell you what you need to know unless you know what you're talking about. And so I think the concern here is that you're banning all these words because you think they're politically expedient or people don't want to talk about it. But really, you have a large number of experts that have worked a long time in

these fields at the NIH. And while it is true you have to make important decisions about what you can fund because you can't fund everything, those decisions should be made based on the importance of the topic and the science and not based on something you read on Twitter

or blue sky or something that seems, you know, to clickbait or rage bait. You know, there are smart people that have been thinking about this a long time. And I think we should trust the experts and that's what you do in a good democracy, healthy democracy. you let the experts make the decision. So, um yeah, I don't I'm not a big fan of the any any banning words.

Yeah, that always seems a bit sinister and chilling, doesn't it? Um well, let's move from one hot button topic to another in uh AI, and we're talking about generative AI. We've got a paper in this year's Christmas issue, which actually isn't a research paper, but I thought was interesting. and raised some interesting issues. Um, and Tim is a US doctor um, and academic. I would love to get hear your thoughts on it. This is a paper which is using the image generation capabilities in chat GPT to generate images of doctors of different specialties and doctors of different specialties based in the UK uh, and the US. And then there's also a prompt that was used which is doctors in the NHS. And the authors put in a simple prompt, you know, show me a typical pediatric doctor in the UK or in the US or in the NHS and done that for eight specialties and then compared the output, the images generated to the

workforce statistics for those countries and those specialties. And it's really interesting because it shows quite starkly this issue that you know we've discussed quite a lot about the biases inherent in large language models um and in generative AI really interestingly it's the images that it generates lean lean in certain ways. So I'll just summarize these images for you. So uh for the images from the US there are eight images um of different specialties only two of them are of women the others are all of men and the they're all of white men in fact and the women are uh the women doctors are from pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology and actually that's true for the other countries the prompt for the UK and the prompt for the NHS only two women out of eight and in pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology. So on a kind of gender basis there's like a pattern that we're seeing there. And then for the author

also compares it to workforce statistics for race and ethnicity and obviously we're making judgments on an image and like how people appear. Um you know so we don't actually know people's like ethnicity and that they're not real people anyway. But those six male doctors, as I said, they're all white. And then for really interestingly, for the um images that are generated on the UK and NHS prompts, all the doctors that um were generated using the show me a doctor in the NHS prompt are all from look like they're from an ethnic minority background, whereas all the doctors generate the images generated from the UK prompt look like they have a white background. So that's kind of quite interesting.

There's something about kind of the NHS as a descriptor that you know it sort of amplifies kind of the diversity of the workforce but almost too much. Um so yeah so I thought that was really interesting. It's just a kind of very kind of simple illustration of the challenges I guess of um generative AI. And Tim, I wonder what your kind of thoughts are on that research, your experiences of using I don't know. Are you a big user of generative AI?

Oh, I try not to use it as much as possible. Yeah, I thought I thought so. Um I'd rather be slow and use my brain, I suppose, than um just default to that. But yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the um I mean it's not directly related, but it reminds me of the Barbie paper from one or two years ago.

Yeah, I remember. Remind us of that paper. So that was uh essentially a review looking at the different Barbie dolls and how they were displaying different professions and what women would be doing and so that for instance you know most of the doctor Barbies were pediatricians and it was you know and so the recommendation there was to try and have a more diverse Barbie ship. Um, and so that reminds me of this. It's, you know, the problem is you have these prompts and they're feeding back information based on prior information. So they're using what's available to learn and stochastically draw a new image.

That shows that, you know, women aren't as involved in medicine as they clearly are. I mean, there's women are in all fields of medicine and doing very well, but it doesn't really it's not really reflected. M

and so this is almost the same issue that you have with any prediction model where you know a lot of prediction models have race baked in and so it's you know for instance um a lot of the kidney models had race baked in but there's not really

any reason for that uh like that doesn't have any clinical meaning and so there's been a big move to kind of remove that from the prediction models and so you're seeing the same problem here it's reinforcing any type of biases that are already present and the problem with that at least in this case is you know, um I cared about this before, but now I have daughters and so I realize even more acutely that how they see the world impacts what they think they should be doing and what they can do. And so I think it's just important that

everyone realize that there's a place for them in a lot of prof there's no reason why they should. So it's just unfortunate that this is kind of showing up that way.

Yes. The author makes the point in the piece in conclusion that if recruitment campaigns are using these kinds of images or if patients are encountering them that shapes and primes the way that people see typical doctors. And so we have to be really careful and cautious about how we use image generation and just really mindful of the fact that these biases are baked in and have more awareness about that. It is interesting that the UK was more diverse and all I can or not the UK the um NHS and all I can think of is the NHS posters with doctors that are very diverse and so like they've gone out of their way to make the posters more diverse and so I wonder like is the model learning on that saying oh well the NHS is diverse but the UK is very not diverse.

Yeah, it is really interesting and I think the NHS makes a big deal out of its diversity and really celebrates it

and it works and there we go. the models have listened. Yeah. Well, that's almost it for our Christmas research roundup. Um Tim, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me. We did this last year. Um done it again this year. I think we now have a standing tradition as you as our Christmas Grinch.

Yeah, maybe we can write a Christmas paper about that. Maybe we could. Well, we'll see everyone here next year for more Christmas research related fun. But before we go, we've got one final paper for you. The start of daylight savings time often prompts discussions about the health impacts of moving the whole population's sleep schedule and that's what our last paper is looking at and I spoke to the author about that earlier this week. My name is Mel Dange and I'm a research associate at the University of Bristol and I work in the MRC integrative epidemiology unit and this research formed part of my PhD um which was funded by welcome and I have just finished um and passed my PhD Fiverr so I can now call myself daughter.

Oh well that's wonderful news and uh yeah so welcome and thank you for join joining us Dr. Mel Dange. So tell us a little bit what did you study and why?

Yeah. So we were looking at the effect of the daylight saving time clock changes on health in England. The clock changes affect around a quarter of the world's population but the evidence on their effects on health is inconsistent and most of the research is being conducted um outside of the UK. Um, meanwhile in 2019, the EU voted to stop changing their clocks in 2021. Um, but this policy has yet to be implemented, partly due to COVID, Brexit, and the complexity of agreeing what system to change to. Um, but there has been renewed interest in getting this policy implemented. And it's likely that the UK will re-evaluate its daylight saving time policy if or when the EU finally implements its decision to abolish the clock changes. So having robust UK specific evidence is important.

Yeah, you I I have heard debates about whether we should stop changing our clocks, you know, seasonally. I've kind of gone down this rabbit hole since having a baby.

I've gone down various sleep rabbit holes and um it's a very hot topic in those kind of baby sleep communities about whether the clock changes are a good thing or not. Um so it just seems like this topic that everyone is interested in and everyone has an opinion on.

Yeah. So it is something that affects everybody and everyone probably experiences slightly differently. So everyone has their own personal opinion about clock changes.

Yeah. So tell us a little bit more then about um how did you go about studying this then? So to do this we use data from the CPRD gold database and this contains an anonymized routinely collected primary care records for 21 and a half million people from 985 GP practices [snorts] and we were able to link the records of patients registered with English GP practices to their hospital admissions and accident and emergency data. And so our exposures were the spring and autumn clock changes between 2008 and 2019. And we had eight health outcomes of interest which were acute cardiovascular disease anxiety depression eating disorders, road traffic injury, self harm, and sleep disorders. And because accident and emergency data isn't specific enough to identify individual mental health conditions, we also looked at psychiatric conditions in A&E as a separate outcome.

And all those conditions, you chose those because they're of particular interest for this research question. [snorts]

Yeah. So we chose them because previous research from outside the UK has suggested that the daylight saving time clock changes affect particularly cardiovascular disease. So heart attacks and strokes. Um there's also been research showing that it affects rates of depression. And then we wanted to kind of extend that and look at other mental health conditions and particularly ones that are picked up in primary care.

Okay. Um so tell us then what did you find? Yes. So we compared the mean daily number of health events in the week after the clock changes to a control period. And the control period here was the four weeks before the clock change and weeks 2 to four after. [snorts] And in spring, there was really little evidence of differences in the number of health events in the week after the clock change compared to the control period. But what was really interesting was that in the week after the autumn clock change, five health conditions had fewer events. And these included anxiety which decreased by 3%, acute cardiovascular disease which fell by 2%, depression which decreased by 4%.

Psychiatric conditions which was down by 6% and sleep disorders which decreased by 8%. And importantly, our negative control analysis, which was where we repeated our main analysis book, but four weeks earlier, detected little evidence of these downward trends, which suggests that the decreases that we found after the clock change were in fact due to the clock change rather than seasonality more generally.

Obviously, this is an observational study, so we can't say that these clock changes cause these changes. Um although you know you've obviously you've got a negative control in the study, you've designed it in as best you can um for for it to be robust. Um so keeping those caveats in mind, what what do you think um your findings tell us then?

So our findings have implications for the ongoing debate over um whether the UK should abolish the daylight saving time clock changes. um our study only focused on the short-term effects of the clock changes whereas these decisions need to also take into account kind of longerterm effects of being on daylight saving time for seven months of the year. Um that said, I think our results can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, we found that the clock changes weren't associated with any negative health effects. So the spring clock change wasn't really associated with any changes in health events whilst we actually found a bene beneficial effect in autumn. So on this basis it could be argued that we should keep the current system of clock changes.

But on the other hand, our results add to the body of literature which suggests that sleep and morning light exposure are really important for our mental and physical health. So it could be argued that if we do abolish the clock changes, then perhaps we should opt for permanent Greenwich meantime um which prioritizes morning light and sleep.

Okay. Well, this puts a different complexion on the daily battle with I have with my husband over who does the nursery drop off early in the morning. And so may maybe we'll um start arguing about who wants to do it rather than who doesn't want to do it.

Yeah, exactly. I used to do the school run and I think that was actually really good in waking me up and getting me going in the morning. Well, now my kids are too old, they just take themselves to school.

Oh, that's all really fascinating and um definitely something to bear in mind as we kind of come into the festive period where people might be, you know, where lions and things like that might be more likely to be on the cards. Um but uh Mel, it's been really great to talk to you and to learn more about your research which um is available for people to read on bmj.com. Thanks so much.

Thank you. That's it for this festive edition of the Medicine Science podcast from the BMJ. We'll be back in 2026 when the first issue will feature a series of new year resolutions. Until then, I'm Cameron Abassi. Thank you for listening.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research"?

Cameron Abassi (Host), Matt Morgan (Guest), Shivali Fulchund (Guest), Mati Jooshi (Guest), Tim Feny (Guest), Bapu Jenna (Guest), Mel Dange (Guest).

What is "Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research" about?

The discussion explores the intersection of medical neologisms, the challenges of conveying the visceral experiences of medicine, and the implications of longevity science in clinical settings. Additionally, it highlights the importance of effective communication in medicine, emphasizing the need for clarity in medical writing and understanding.

What is mentioned in this The BMJ episode?

19 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Cameron Abassi, Matt Morgan, BMJ, Christmas, Tim Feny, NAD+. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Christmas 2025 - neologisms, longevity and unexpected research"?

The episode runs 54 min; the transcript is about 8,887 words in 105 timestamped sections.

More from The BMJ

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.