At the time of this writing, we are on day 22 of a U.S. Government shutdown. When the U.S. Government shuts down, most people think of national parks and travel delays. But the impact goes much deeper, into the systems that keep health sciences research and clinical practice running. Many federally-funded databases and information services discontinue updates or suspend operations, cutting off the flow of reliable information that healthcare professionals rely on to make clinical and policy decisions.
On October 1st 2025, when Congress reached a funding deadlock, disclaimers started popping up on many government websites, including health-related websites regularly used by librarians to support research needs. PubMed, the “National Library of Medicine’s free, searchable bibliographic database supporting scientific and medical research,”1 displayed this alarming banner:
The same banner can be seen on other websites, including MedlinePlus, an information hub for patient and their families, also maintained by the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Because these tasks are mostly automated, citations are still being uploaded to PubMed, and articles are still being indexed. However, because the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has furloughed thousands of employees, according to Dyer (2025) the indexing of new journals has been suspended.2 But Dyer also notes that when the government resumes its normal activities, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee – the group responsible for evaluating and approving journals for inclusion in PubMed – will no longer be operational. All 15 members of the committee were terminated by the Trump Administration earlier this fall.3
Another service that has been halted is document lending through DOCLINE, the National Library of Medicine’s official interlibrary loan request routing system. The banner on the DOCLINE homepage states that the NLM will not be fulfilling lending requests during the shutdown.4 Fortunately, participating institutions can still request and share materials among themselves. However, in the last few weeks, medical librarians have reported on the Medical Library Association’s listerserv that they are experiencing problems with DOCLINE, specifically that requests are not automatically rerouting as they normally would. As sometimes happens, when the NLM is the only library holding a particular article, requestors are left in the dark, unable to obtain material until government operations resume. For clinicians, researchers, and students who depend on rapid access to medical literature, even short interruptions like this can affect research progress, delay evidence-based decision making and disrupt patient care.
And just as librarians were beginning to adapt, finding solutions and supporting one another as we so often do, another challenge emerged. Last week we learned of the firing of all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) library workers. In an earlier blog post on evidence-based medicine, we noted the importance of the CDC and their publication of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In an interview the Washington Post, former CDC librarian Gail Bang, said: “It’s hard — almost impossible — for the researchers to do valid scientific research without the librarians.”5 Every Library, an non-profit organization that supports libraries and librarians in the United States, has started a petition calling on the government to reinstate CDC library workers. The petition has been shared numerous times among health librarians.
The current government shutdown highlights just how fragile the infrastructure supporting health information can be. From suspended updates to PubMed and MedlinePlus, to halted interlibrary loan services through DOCLINE, and the recent firing of CDC library staff, the consequences are far-reaching. Librarians work tirelessly behind the scenes to mitigate these disruptions, but even our ingenuity has limits when those responsible for governance fail to reach a compromise.
Dyer, O. (2025). PubMed is running on autopilot during shutdown, but key independent committee has been abolished. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 391, r2158. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r2158↩︎
This October, we join the McGill community in celebrating Queer History Month, a time to reflect on the contributions, histories, and ongoing advocacy of LGBTQ+ communities. During this time, we are reminded of the importance of visibility, inclusion and understanding across all areas of university life.
We are especially excited to highlight the Keynote Lecture, delivered by Kai Cheng Thom on Wednesday, October 22nd 2025. Registration is now open.
To complement this year’s events, the Schulich Library has curated a collection of books focused on LGBTQ+ health, from inclusive care practices and mental health, to intersectional approaches to wellness. The collection features a mix of scholarly titles for researchers and practitioners, as well as consumer health books written for the general public, reflecting the breadth of perspectives and experiences in LGBTQ+ Health. These titles are on display in the library throughout October and accessible online through our curated reading list.
You can continue to explore queer topics through our subject guides:
LGBTQ+ Health Guide: resources on inclusive clinical care, public health, research and consumer health.
LGBTQ+ Studies Guide: interdisciplinary resources on identity, activism and cultural representation.
LGBTQ+ Music Guide: explore the voices, sounds and histories of queer musicians and composers.
Whether you’re attending events, diving into our book collection, or exploring our guides, we invite you to celebrate Queer History Month with curiosity and reflection.
Science Literacy Week as a Canada wide event was paused in 2024 when the administration switched hands to the Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC). We had a bit of a science literacy celebration this year, back in March, but we are happy to join in with CASC and other educators and organizations to ring in Science Literacy Week 2025, from October 6 – 12.
The theme for the week is From Sea to Space. Check out our Science Literacy guide to learn more.
We were one of the first universities to join the cross-country effort to celebrate science literacy, way back in 2015, so I thought that it would be fun to dig up the old blog posts and events of the past.
In addition to lectures (I attended Prof. Lovejoy’s talk, Why the warming can’t be natural: Harnessing butterflies for climate closure, and it was amazing), workshops and tours, there were fascinating exhibits at the Islamic Studies Library on the History of Science in Islam, and at the Osler Library on Sanitizing style: Germ theory and fashion at the turn of the century.
We also launched Arduino and Raspberry Pi lending at Schulich Library, that was pretty exciting!
Visits to the hives at Macdonald campus and on the roof of the Schulich Library! And that was in addition to workshops, a hands on session with the Oculus Rift, and a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on women in science. There was a Science of Star Trek exhibit at Schulich Library, and Knowing Blood, Medical Observations, Fluid Meanings, at Osler Library.
This year also marked our first lecture by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, a Science Literacy Week regular, on Eating Right: The Facts and the Myths.
Sadly, our movie nights were not that popular (lessons were learned!) but the same cannot be said for exhibits and events around the theme of From Lab to Life. Who wouldn’t want to knit a petri dish with Let’s Talk Science @ McGill or “drop in and bust myths” at Redpath Museum? We got really techie with augmented reality and Raspberry Pi workshops, and a learn to code session with HackMcGill.
There were 4 different library exhibits, and the Music Library joined in with Phonomenal! Rare sides from the history of sound recording. You can still read more about it from their post at the time.
There was a Doctor Who exhibition, Traveling through space and time, at Schulich Library, and The World That You Know Through the Eyes of Muslim Geographers, at Islamic Studies Library. Some really important Treasures from the History of Science in Rare Books and Special Collections were also on display.
The timing was perfect, coinciding with a Public Astronight talk, ORIGINS: How the Earth Shaped Human History, and the Cutting Edge Lecture in Science: Can we halt global amphibian declines?
There was an exhibit in the Redpath Library building on the theme of the week, Oceans, offering different cartographic views of the oceans of the world.
We learned all about the Data Rescue: Archives and Weather (DRAW) project, and The Art of Explaining Science to Non-Specialists with Dr. Diane Dechief. We also had De-Stress + Sketch Online, SLW edition, with the folks from Visual Arts Collection, and a book club meeting for the book, Data feminism, by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F Klein.
Many of the 2020 offerings were back with the addition of some new workshops, like Chart Making in Excel: Going Further by Telling a Story with your Data. AstroMcGill also hosted an online event, Talking with Martians: A panel on red-planet research, and the Redpath Museum brought us an informative online Secret science spots of McGill.
The theme for the week was Mathematics and Prof. Rhonda Amsel did not disappoint with Stats-wise, a presentation on the ‘why’ of statistics. Dr Joe Schwarcz educated us on Analyzing Risk, and we had library workshops on Data Analysis in Excel, Charting numbers for understanding and communication, LaTeX, and Python.
I offered a workshop on spinning wool into yarn with spindles printed on library 3D printers, and it was a blast!
The theme in 2023 was Energy and we really brought it! There was fun with crochet, LaTeX, satellite and drone images, and repairing personal devices. We also learned what every Montrealer should know about earthquakes from Dr. Christie Rowe.
You can still visit the exhibits page to try out the Rare & Special Collections images digital jigsaw puzzles and colouring pages.
With Science Literacy Week on hold in 2024, we decided to have our own version in March of this year. Among other great activities, the Macdonald Campus Library launched their Seed Library that week and we had a fascinating tour of the Rutherford Museum and McPherson Collection with Curator, Prof. Barrette. This might sound wild, but we also learned about ancient Egyptian animal mummies from Prof. Reznikov!
The latest results from the WCOM 206 Excellence in Communication Award competition are in and we have two winners: Sophia Chen (Fall 2023 term) and Alan Fu (Winter/Summer 2023).
It has been such a pleasure to be part of the team that reads and ranks the undergraduate papers nominated by Communication in Engineering instructors each term. I have learned so much!
Now you can learn about the challenges of monitoring hormone levels for transgender and non-binary individuals, and about models to improve malignant brain tumour survival rates. These two were considered the best of their peer group and the full text of the papers have been added to the McGill Libraries’ repository, eScholarship.
Transgender and non-binary individuals may use Hormone Replacement Therapy as part of their gender transition. During this process, hormone levels are measured using immunoassays, which typically include estrogens, testosterones and progesterones. While commercial solutions can automate blood testing, the blood collection process itself is difficult., invasive, and prone to complications. Because hormone levels change throughout the day, a more robust testing solution needs to be developed. Lateral flow assays, a low cost detection device can be developed for quantitative readouts of hormone levels. However, low concentration of the hormones of interest present in the saliva means that this solution cannot currently be used as a diagnostic device. Future investigation is necessary on detection antibodies that are used for this solution. Intended audience: a biotechnical company considering research and development towards hormone monitoring.
Stagnant growth in malignant brain tumor survival rates indicates a need for more powerful models to advance tumor research and pharmaceutical testing. This paper comparatively analyzes three models: 3D cell line xenografts, genetically engineered mice models, and neoplastic cerebral organoids based on comprehensiveness, scalability, and accuracy criteria. 3D CLXs possess excellent scalability but are unappealing in all other aspects. GEMMs are favorable in the aspects of comprehensiveness and accuracy compared to 3D CLXs, but face issues regarding scalability. Finally, neoCORs outclass GEMMs in both comprehensiveness and accuracy while retaining modest scalability, leading this paper to conclude that neoCORs are the most viable model for future development. Future development of neoCORs, especially of assistive microfluidics devices, is strongly recommended.
We extend our gratitude to Ezra J. Teboul, our Master of Information Studies practicum student at Schulich Library over the winter term. In this guest post, Ezra offers some lessons learned from working with the Mossman Collection on the History of Science and of Ideas.
McGill’s libraries contain invaluable holdings for the historian of science. A researcher at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, I was until June also in the Master of Information Studies at McGill. In my last semester (Winter 2025), I studied the contents of the Mossman Collection on the History of Science and of Ideas at the Schulich Library for Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Engineering. Completed with the patient supervision and many insights of April Colosimo, a big part of my project was dedicated to quantitatively assessing how the collection had evolved since its donation by Donald and Dorothea Mossman in 1974. This teaches us not just about science and how it has evolved, but also about the way history of science has been done (historiography). It’s important to understand both because science is done by humans and requires continual, active investment by the individuals and institutions it needs and affects to have a positive impact.
A graph of the years of publication of items included in the Mossman Collection in the History of Science and Ideas as currently listed in the McGill Sofia Catalogue.
This blog post illustrates how the Mossman can act as a good starting point for doing history and historiography of science and how these fields are interesting from an information access perspective because it is distributed across Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). But how might an undergraduate or junior graduate student interested in the history of science navigate the Mossman collection and the wider McGill catalogue to learn about this complex topic? Below I give an example of a research thread that starts in the Mossman collection before extending to the University collections at large.
The McGill Libraries, like many research institutions, use the Library of Congress Subject Headings for classification and access. The LCSH have a tree structure, with headings, subheadings, and call numbers of increasing specificity, not simply cataloguing every book but also linking them across branches of this knowledge tree.
History of Science, however, is a young field with very interdisciplinary practitioners: historians of course, but also scientists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural and media studies scholars, etc. Many of its practitioners, like Karen Barad, start out in a technical field (theirs was quantum physics) before considering the history of those technical fields. It is also applied to almost every scientific, technological or medical topic: engineering, chemistry, mathematics, physics, biology… In that sense history of science is by definition always at least concerned with perspectives on the same technical topic: scientists, and how scientists’ view of their own work in their specialty has changed. I find it to be a particularly exciting, reflexive exercise that attempts to extend science’s inquisitive perspective (why is it like this?) to the people doing science themselves. But, from a practical perspective, it makes it difficult to categorize history of science and related publications.
Here is a graph of all the subject headings just included in the Mossman collection for the History of Science and Ideas. The blue corresponds to the contents of the collection in 1986, when a catalogue for the collection was made by the Schulich librarians. The red corresponds to the contents of the collection in 2025, when I collaborated with the McGill Libraries Collections department to do this study. To find every book on the online catalogue associated with the Mossman, look up the corresponding “uniform title.”
A graph of the LCSH headings for the items in the Mossman collection, for 1986 and 2025.
In this graph you’ll notice that most books are in the Science or Technology classes (LCSH classifications Q and T respectively) but there are 19 other headings as well. For a full list of the heading letters and their meaning, see Library of Congress Classification Outline. T, unsurprisingly, is technology, but science is Q and History is split across multiple headings: C, D, E and F (but it is notable to see that only very little of the Mossman items fall in any of these). The LCSH was first published in 1898, and this imbalance reflects the biases of scholarship in the United States at that point: a lot of academia was dedicated to historical research, while technology and science were only just becoming formal scholarly specialties. Engineering in the US and Canada had only had professional societies since 1852 with the American Society of Civil Engineers.
So doing history of science, is, from a bibliographic perspective, an interesting challenge. You can’t simply go to the stacks and find the right shelf. Books you will learn the most from may be shelves apart!
This is the value of collections like the Mossman, which used to show many of the best books on an interdisciplinary topic in the same location. With the increasing popularity of digital catalogue browsing, and the shift for the bulk of McGill collections to a robotic collections center, browsing the stacks is becoming a bit of a lost art—making all the more important the maintenance of specialized collections’ identities and purpose. If the much larger Osler history of medicine library has remained in its physical location on campus, the Mossman has been distributed across other branches, including off-site storage.
This makes the Schulich library a generous study space, but it means scholars have to trade luck in the stacks for clever digital browsing tactics. Indeed the Mossman—which over the years has included at least 6500 or so individual titles— mostly remains accessible somewhere in some form, and the rest of this post gives you a personal example of how you might access them and link them to resources from the rest of the collection.
Many of the references central to my own research are in or around the Mossman. My personal specialty is in the history of electronics, which mostly requires a knowledge of chemistry, elementary physics, signal processing, industrial manufacturing techniques, and computer science (and a few other things). One of my favorite books in the Mossman Collection is What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical Historyby Walter Vincenti (1990). Its call number is TL515 V44 1990. Here is how that call number is constructed:
T: Technology L: Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics 515: History, General Works V44 1990: "Cutter" number and year. These are determined by each library for further subdivision
You can already see how some categories unrelated to history (e.g. “Technology: Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics” will get a historical subheading (e.g. “515”). You can also see how some subheadings (e.g. “General Works”) are somewhat vague. Classification systems like LCSH can only get you so far when doing thorough literature reviews, and it helps to speak to other researchers and subject librarians for ideas of other headings and subheadings to consider investigating.
In my case, although aeronautics may only seem partially related to electronics research, it turns out that during the Cold War, a significant amount of electronics research was undertaken for various Air Forces, especially in Canada and the U.S. Furthermore, the rapid expansion of those countries’ industrial production capacity via machine shops was in no small part funded by defense contracts which financed private companies to supply the corresponding militaries. In that sense, learning about how aeronautical engineers produce knowledge maps very informatively to the way that electrical engineers consume and produce knowledge as well. This is made clear in David Noble’s Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation, another landmark publication included in the Mossman collection. Published in 1984, it was therefore purchased by the Schulich librarians with the Mossman endowment, rather than by Mossman himself (since his collection was donated to McGill in 1974).
In Forces of Production, Noble traces the way that machining advances in the 20th century were in large part motivated by the exacting precision required to manufacture cutting-edge aircraft during the Cold War. Automated milling machines, now called CNC (computer numerical control) and CAD/CAM (computer assisted design / computer assisted machining) was an area of high research investment, resulting in dozens of electrical and electronic inventions which were easily exported (like some of the first analog/digital converter hardware architectures and prototypes) to a variety of other fields. Also in the Mossman, Forces of Production has the call number TJ1189 N63 1984:
T: Technology J: Mechanical engineering and machinery 1189: Numerical control of machine tools
Interestingly, TJ14 is a category for philosophy and history of machinery. The decision that lead a social history of automation to not be under this subheading are lost to the circumstance of the cataloguer at the Library of Congress that made that decision. TJ1189 is not an illogical choice, and this simply highlights that knowledge classification systems always contain ambiguities that can only be addressed through experience, rather than simple common sense.
From Noble’s book we may want to consider histories of shop machinery prior to the adoption of CNC technology. Here Mossman collection text, Robert Woodbury’s 1960 History of the Milling Machine; a Study in Technical Development (TJ1225 W6 1960) is another interesting reference:
T: Technology J: Mechanical engineering and machinery 1225: Machine Shops and Machine Shop Practice - General Works
From there we may want some additional context on the geopolitical conditions of the cold war and their impact on scientific and technological policies. Audra J. Wolfe’s Competing With the Soviets: Science, Technology and the State in Cold War America(2013)is a concise, clear and extremely informative summary of those exact topics. It is not in the Mossman collection, but it is clearly relevant to the history of science as a research discipline. From a collection development perspective, the Mossman is an interesting, specialized subset of the Schulich catalogue that does not include all the references which might fall under its purview (being tagged with the Mossman uniform title is more dependent on whether or not the Mossman endowment fund was used to purchase the resource). Furthermore, Competing with the Soviets call number is squarely in the sciences, as part of its specialized history subheading:
Q: Science 127: History, by region or country U: United States
T: Technology 23: History, Special Regions or Countries: Canada
Overall, this illustrates the LCSH system’s approach to classification of interdisciplinary topics. Although Jones-Imhotep work is clearly about technology, and T23 is a meaningful and helpful cataloguing heading for it, it is not entirely unrelated to science, and could easily have been part of the Mossman Collection, even as an ebook.
When doing a literature review for a new subject, it is always informative to keep track of the additional labels entries are tagged with, often drawing from multiple cataloguing systems. Cataloguing librarians know very well that only giving one label is rarely a fair representation of our complex thoughts and rich publications, and this is why additional labels are attributed to each entry. For example, with Jones-Imhotep’s book in the Sofia catalogue:
A screenshot from a catalogue record showing subject headings.
All of these are hyperlinked so that books with that tag are just a click away. Keep in mind, too, that history and historiography of science and its many connected disciplines are active projects with lively communities in constant change!
To learn more on the topics in this post, the articles below will provide you with extensive context and additional examples. They are all accessible through Sofia as well.
Barr, Zachary, Alex S. Ratowt, and Stephen P. Weldon. 2024. “The Isis Bibliography: Information Practices from Sarton’s Vision to the Digital Age.” Isis 115 (3): 491–502.https://doi.org/10.1086/731408.
Hérubel, Jean-Pierre V. M. 2006. “Clio’s View of the History of Science: A Preliminary Bibliometric Appreciation.” Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 24 (2): 69–91.https://doi.org/10.1300/J103v24n02_03.
———. 2007. “Periodizations and History of Science: A Perspective and Approach for Collections.” Collection Management 31 (3): 59–72.https://doi.org/10.1300/J105v31n03_05.
Stone, Alva T. 2000. “The LCSH Century: A Brief History of the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and Introduction to the Centennial Essays.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 29 (1–2): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1300/J104v29n01_01.
Whitrow, Magda. 1964. “Classification Schemes for the History of Science.” Journal of Documentation 20 (3): 120–36.https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026344.
If you have taken or are currently taking any kind of class in the health sciences at McGill, you will have probably heard about a term called Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) or Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). EBP/EBM is about “integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from a systematic search.”1 As the librarian for Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME), I am embedded in the EBM portion of first year courses, where we often show students this diagram:
This a classic visual representation of Evidence-Based Medicine and shows how EBM sits at the intersection of three essential components:
Clinical Expertise: this refers to the clinician’s own skills, knowledge and past experiences in treating patients
Best Evidence: this refers to the most current and relevant research available, often from rigorous clinical trials and systematic reviews
Patient Preferences and Values: these refer to the patient’s own experiences, concerns, needs and cultural beliefs that they bring to the encounter.
If any one of these elements is missing or ignored, clinical decision making becomes less effective and the quality of care you are providing diminishes. That’s why it’s so important to consider the broader context, including how recent political shifts – regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum – have influenced the way we understand, access and apply evidence in healthcare today.
Since arriving in office back in 2016, the Trump Administration has issued executive decisions that pose a serious threat to one of the EBM elements – Best Evidence. And if you’re thinking that it doesn’t matter because we’re in Canada, think again. These decisions have implications on a global scale.
Politicization and Decimation of Public Health Agencies
Public health is a pretty self-explanatory concept – it’s all about the protection of people in the community, aimed at promoting healthy behaviours, preventing disease and protecting the public. In Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada work together to keep us healthy. The United States has several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), among others.
When public health agencies and departments are politicized, the credibility of health recommendations can be undermined, leading to public mistrust, confusion among healthcare providers, and challenges in maintaining evidence-based practice.
In December of 2017, The Washington Post reported that the CDC was given a list of words that were forbidden, including “evidence-based” and “science-based”.2 I don’t know about you, but personally I don’t think a person who doesn’t trust the word science instills a lot of confidence. Back in the 2020, Trump-appointed HHS officials tried to block the CDC from releasing data in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) because the administration believed the CDC used language that could hurt the president’s chances for re-election.3 Thousands of public health officials rely on that report to inform their own practice and decisions in their communities.
More recently, in the early months of 2025, Trump gutted key health agencies, slashing funding and firing staff at an alarming rate. Newly appointed Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10 thousand jobs were being cut at HHS alone. Additional cuts were reported at the CDC, the FDA, and the Agency for Health Research and Quality, which lost half its staff.4
Among those who were unceremoniously fired was Carrie Price (not that Carey Price, Habs fans…), a Biomedical Librarian at the National Institutes of Health. Her post on LinkedIn went viral, with hundreds of librarians who work with clinicians supporting her and sounding the alarm about the importance of librarians for founding sound research.
Public health works best when smart, dedicated people — researchers, clinicians, librarians, and public health officials — have the tools and support they need to keep us safe. When funding gets slashed and expertise gets sidelined, it’s not just bad for science — it’s bad for everyone. Evidence-based practice relies on good information, and good information doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It’s built by teams of people working behind the scenes, often quietly and carefully, to make sure what you hear from your doctor, pharmacist, or public health office is actually trustworthy.
Changes in Research Priorities and Funding
Politics doesn’t just shape laws; it also shapes what kind of science is conducted. When federal funding priorities shift, so do research agendas at health agencies. One administration might pour money into a certain disease, while the next focuses almost entirely on another, or cuts programs altogether. An administration’s research priorities play a role in which questions get answered, which problems get solved, and which communities get left behind.
The Trump administration has never been a fan of climate change. The words themselves make people in the White House duck for cover. Through a series of executive decisions, Trump has pulled back climate change funding, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and rolling back pollution and fossil fuel regulations, a decision which has major implications for respiratory diseases and weather-related health crises.5
Another thing the Trump administration doesn’t like: gender. They have made it very clear that they will not be spending money on research related to sexual and gender minorities, putting the health of these groups at risk. All transgender-related research was halted at the NIH6 and suddenly, scientists like Theo Beltrán and Jace Flatt, who have spent decades dedicating their lives to these fields, found themselves in limbo.
So what does this have to do with evidence-based medicine? A lot, actually. EBM depends on having high-quality, up-to-date research to guide decisions. But if certain areas of science aren’t being funded, that evidence might not exist in the first place. If climate-related health risks or gender-related topics aren’t being studied, clinicians are left with gaps in the evidence and that makes it harder to give patients the best possible care. If the research isn’t there, the “best available evidence” part of EBM starts to fall apart.
Inconsistent Guidelines
A clinical practice guideline is a set of evidence-based recommendations designed to help healthcare professionals make informed decisions. They’re developed by experts, who systematically review the best available evidence to help guide clinicians to what’s most likely to work, what to look for, alternate options, etc. They help with the standardization of care in that they ensure that patients receive consistent and high-quality treatment no matter where they are and who is treating them. But what happens when these guidelines collide with politics?
Reproductive healthcare is a prime example. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, clinicians in many U.S. states have found themselves caught between evidence-based recommendations and restrictive state laws. In some cases, treatment for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies has been delayed out of fear of legal repercussions, even when the medical guidelines are clear and the patient’s health is at risk.7
Organizations like The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the World Health Organization (WHO) continue to publish guidance that supports timely, patient-centered care, but in politically charged environments, following those recommendations isn’t always possible. The result is a broken system where the quality of care can depend more on geography than science, a situation that undermines the very foundation of evidence-based medicine.
While these developments are happening south of the border, they still have implications here in Canada. Canadian clinicians and researchers often rely on U.S.-based studies, guidelines, and collaborations. When reproductive health research is restricted or politicized in the U.S., it can slow progress for everyone. Even though abortion remains legal in Canada, access varies widely by province, and we’re not immune to political pressure. These moments remind us how important it is to protect evidence-based guidelines and ensure healthcare decisions stay grounded in science, not ideology.
Final Thoughts
At the heart of it, evidence-based medicine is about trust — trust that the research behind our care is solid, that guidelines are grounded in good data, and that health decisions are made with patients’ well-being in mind. Librarians are a big part of that picture: we help students learn how to find reliable evidence, support clinicians in staying current, and quietly make sure the information pipeline runs smoothly. When politics starts to mess with science, things can get murky.
The good news is that there are still a lot of people, from researchers to clinicians to librarians, working hard to keep the evidence strong and the science honest! Even when it might seem like we’re on shaky ground, the foundation of EBM is still standing — and we’re here to help keep it that way.
Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. A., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 312(7023), 71–72. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7023.71 ↩︎
Sun, L. H., & Eilperin, J. (2017). CDC gets list of forbidden words: Fetus, transgender, diversity: Agency analysts are told to avoid these 7 banned words and phrases in budget documents. Washington, D.C. ↩︎
Dyer, O. (2020). Trump appointees tamper with renowned CDC publication, claiming that scientists are trying to “hurt the president”. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 370, 1–2. ↩︎
Looi, M.-K. (2025). Trump’s 10 000 job cuts spark chaos in US health services. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 389, r682. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r682 ↩︎
Wagatsuma, K. (2025). Implications of President Trump’s Second Term Executive Orders on Global and Public Health. International Journal of Public Health, 70. https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2025.1608402 ↩︎
Kozlov, M. Exclusive: Trump White House directs NIH to study’regret’after transgender people transition. Nature. ↩︎
Roper, K. L., Robbins, S. J., Day, P., Shih, G., & Kale, N. (2024). Impact of State Abortion Policies on Family Medicine Practice and Training After Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Annals of Family Medicine, 22(6), 492–501. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.3183 ↩︎
Want to learn about all the exciting research that McGill students in engineering are doing on sustainability topics? Tomorrow, attend the Sustainability Changemakers Showcase, an event at the Faculty Club highlighting graduate student research on sustainability. It is being hosted by TISED, the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design, where researchers and students are working to become a hub of green innovation and a centre of excellence both locally in Montréal, Québec and worldwide. The event is open to the public. To register and learn more about the speakers, please consult the registration page . To get a sneak preview of the speakers in action, you can check out brief talks they gave on their research last December.
If you’re interested in joining these researchers in designing the green solutions to engineering problems that our world needs, TISED is now accepting admissions to their new masters in Sustainability in Engineering and Design program. The deadline for fall has been extended until Apr. 1 for US candidates and June 21 for Canadian ones.
Attend tomorrow’s talks and learn all about what TISED graduate student work looks like in action!
Science Literacy @ McGill Week is around the corner! From February 22 to 28, we will delve into this year’s theme, From Lab to Life and explore science in the everyday. There is a wide range of events planned including tours of the Maude Abbott Medical Museum and the McGill Physics Collections, a look into ancient Egyptian animal mummies from the Redpath Museum, Science History Treasures in McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections, and much more. The details of the various events are listed below. We hope to see you there!
In honour of Black History Month, we are proud to highlight the works of Black scientists within the McGill community. From exploring structural racism in minority health research to fostering inclusion in scientific societies; from a poem about Canadian-Caribbean immigrants experiences to the effects of maternal mental health on child development, each work pushes the boundaries of knowledge within STEMM. As part of Science Literacy @ McGill, we invite you to join us in celebrating the remarkable achievements of Black scientists and the lasting influence of their work on society.
With Natalie Reznikov, Assistant Professor in the Department of Bio-engineering, whose research focusses on biomineralization — the study of structure-function relationships, formation and biomechanics of bone, teeth, eggshells, and mollusk shells.
Dr. Jessica Ford set out to determine what toad tadpoles were eating and how they impacted the environment, and in the process, came across unexpected results. Join us to hear about how old, obscure scientific papers can be vital in answering new research questions.
A fascinating repository of materials dating from the early 19th century that documents the study and practice of Medicine at McGill University and its associated teaching hospitals.
The Rutherford Museum contains a collection of the original apparatus used by Ernest Rutherford to investigate the newly-discovered phenomenon of radioactivity when he was Professor of Experimental Physics at McGill from 1898 till 1907. The McPherson Collection is comprised of antique physical instruments and apparatus dating from the mid-19th century to about 1920, many of them used in teaching and scientific research at McGill.
From the earliest illustrated natural history encyclopedia to Isaac Newton’s annotated copy of Opticks, our collections span the evolution of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Join us for a rare chance to marvel at medieval manuscripts, early printed books, original artwork, and other highlights from our history of science collections.
Housed in a 130-year-old building, the library has recently undergone a complete restoration that thoughtfully integrates historic charm with the latest technology, making it a true gem on our campus. Discover why the Schulich Library is a central hub for scientific learning and research in the University!
Every year, a team at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in Bethesda, Maryland, reviews their subject headings to ensure accuracy, relevancy and timeliness. This includes purging the list of outdated terms, adding any new terms that they’ve deemed important (think, Covid in 2020…), and updating the language of terms. To date, there are over 30,000 MeSH terms to choose from! Let’s take a look at some of the new additions:
Mother Earth: Other than replacing the words peas, lettuce, chicory and ginger with their government names (Pisum sativum, Lactuca, Cichorium intybus and Zingiber officinale, respectively, in case you were wondering), the NLM has done some work surrounding the environment and climate change. They’ve added the term Climate Anxiety (the “persistent and difficult to control psychological distress over climate change” that you feel, too, right?) and updated terms to include severe phenomena that are becoming all too common, like Wildfires. I wonder if walking in a forest will cure any of my anxiety? I should search PubMed! And when I do, I’ll be sure to include the new Forest Therapy MeSH term in my search string.
Focus on People: There has been a move towards describing professions in terms of the people who do them, not just the discipline itself. Believe it or not, until recently, Psychologists was not its own MeSH term. The same goes for Personal Trainers, Frontline Workers and Opticians. They’ve also expanded the list of people in general to include those that might require care or present differently because of their occupations (Truck Drivers), because of immunization status (Unvaccinated Persons), or because of social circumstances (Battered Men).
As far as important changes go, the NLM tries to keep up with updated terminology. Language changes rapidly, and as we learn and become more sensitive and inclusive in our everyday communications, the language we use to describe articles should reflect that growth. Here are some noteworthy changes:
OLD TERM
UPDATED TERM
Disabled Persons
Persons with Disabilities
Persons with Mental Disabilities
Persons with Intellectual Disabilities
Sex Reassignment Procedures
Gender-Affirming Procedures
Sex Reassignment Surgery
Gender-Affirming Surgery
Homeless Persons
Ill-Housed Persons
Surrogate Mothers
Gestational Carriers
Pregnant Women
Pregnant People
Have you come across a MeSH term that you think needs changing? Or have you tried to find a MeSH term that doesn’t exist but you think it should? The NLM welcomes feedback! You can make suggestions here.
Still not sure why you should be searching using subject headings? We have a page for you! Check out the McGill Libraries Health Sciences Research Tips to get the answer to that question and many more!
What’s my favourite MeSH term, you ask? This year, MeSH added a term for Lacrosse. For all your lacrosse-related research. It’s not so much the term, but the fact that the NLM took the time to research the sport and include the rules in the definition. I’ve seen diseases described with less accuracy. Big lacrosse fans over at the National Library of Medicine, it seems…
Schulich Library now has a collection of engineering standards in printed format that is browsable within the library catalogue! It is called the Schulich Library Standards Collection and it currently contains over 200 standards and growing. You can access the collection at: Schulich Library Standards Collection.
What are engineering standards anyway? They are very important technical documents that allow engineers to design products and processes that are high-quality and safe. They are produced by industry experts, academics and others brought together by professional organizations, non-profits and government organizations, like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and many others.
To borrow a standard from the new collection, please make note of the item’s call number and ask for it at the Schulich Library service desk on the main floor. You can also search for a standard produced by a specific organization by accessing the collection and modifying the search string at the top of the screen to include the organization’s name. For example, to search the ASME standards in the new collection, add ASME to the existing search string: ut: Schulich Library Standards Collection. So your search would look like this: ASME AND ut: Schulich Library Standards Collection.
Please note, most standards held at McGill Libraries are available in printed format only, with the exception of engineering standards produced by select organizations like IEEE. Also, engineering standards are one of the rare item types that generally cannot be request through the Libraries’ interlibrary loans service.
To find out more about the new collection and all the engineering standards available through McGill Libraries, including a list of standard-issuing organizations from which McGill Libraries have standards, please see: McGill Libraries’ Patents, Standards, and Technical Reports Research Guide or email us at schulich.library@mcgill.ca
If you would like the staff at McGill Libraries to consider purchasing a standard for the new collection, please use the email options on the right-hand side of the page to contact the Schulich Librarians for physical sciences and engineering topics and the Macdonald Campus Librarians for agricultural, environmental science, nutrition and parasitology topics. Please keep in mind that standards normally take a few weeks to be acquired and made accessible.
/2025/Communications/Graphics/Digital%20screens/QHM%202025_Keynote_16x9.png?e=4%3ae64dcd6cd92b42c5a133de7f5ae1b824&web=1&sharingv2=true&fromShare=true&at=9&CID=8a881348-288f-4002-8eab-5d876ce80e82)
