Something in the water? Maybe?

Sometimes all it takes is five minutes to tell the difference between a good lecturer and a bad one. Even less to tell who is speaking out of his ass. It came as a pleasant surprise to me the other day to hear a series of lectures delivered with clarity, insight and energy come from lecturers at this medical school. I was struck by how eloquent the information was presented, how organized and clear the lecturers made their slides, despite cramming tons of primary literature into the process. It reminded me a lot of lectures at Harvard, especially those from the hummanities and social sciences. One of the lecture at the medschool recently was about smoking and smoking cessation. Yeah, we've all heard plenty on the topic, so I was gearing myself for yet another boring hour with lots of repetitive rhetoric and probably obscure, poorly explained facts. Instead, the lecturer was funny and precise, and she gave plenty of interesting facts:

1) there's very little convincing evidence that nicotine causes cancer (other components of smoke cause cancer)
2) smoking increases wrinkles, infertility (both sexes), early menopause, blindness, hearing loss...etc
3) never too late to quit (even after the age of 65, incremental reversal of pulmonary (heart related) damage happens very quickly, and can add years to life)
4) clinical trials for several new drugs are quite promising at helping people to quit
5) an exciting clinical trial that's going on right now for a nicotine vaccine, with the theory that if we combine nicotine with a hapten and trigger an immune reaction, the nicotine-antibody complex is too large to cross the blood brain barrier, and people who smoke (after receiving the vaccine) would never get addicted to cigarettes...wow! (or it could help addicts lessen dependency on nicotine).

She isn't the only lecturer that's been so engaging in recent months. Infact, it would seem there's an influx of exciting lecturers and professors who know what they're talking about, and can really teach. Where are they all coming from? yep. Harvard.