– Half of the people suffering from head injuries fake to receive financial help.

How can it be proved that a patient is lying when they say that they have a cognitive problem, such as memory or concentration problems or anxiety There are many people who exaggerate their injuries and even feign them in order to receive more money from insurance companies or obtain a sick leave, according to a pioneering research in Spain. This research was carried out in the Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment University of Granada by Doctor Raquel Vilar López. The conclusions of her study, which focused on patients who suffered from head injuries, speak for themselves: nearly half of the people who go to court feign psycho-cognitive disorders with the objective of profiting from this in some way. They are not hypochondriacs or overanxious or obsessive patients, they just lie in order to receive some sort of compensation, as for example money. They are the so called ‘simulators’.

Until now, in Spain no reliable system existed to detect if a person was faking their symptoms. For this reason the study by Vilar López coordinated by Manuel Gómez Río and Miguel Pérez García is so important: for the first time, Spanish health professionals have a set of reliable tools to prove empirically if a patient is lying when they declare, for example, that their memory problems renders them unfit for work.

Validated Evidence

The work by this researcher has validated a series of ‘tests’ which, when used on patients without them being aware of it, detect which patients are simulators and which are not. These neuropsychological tests were included in a three-hour-long battery of neuropsychological tests which assesses other cognitive aspects of the patient in order to disguise the actual tests and in this way obtain the desired information.

Raquel Vilar López explains that in her research she adapted a series of tests that where already known in the United States – a country with a long history of work in the field of neuropsychology – to the Spanish context, because the neuropsychological tests cannot be extrapolated without adjustments from a context to another”. The percentage of patients who suffer from head injuries that feign symptoms is nearly the same as that obtained by the American researchers.

The study carried out in the UGR also included a method which has become very popular recently due to several television programs: the lie detector, an instrument which registers the physiological responses of blood pressure, heart beat, breathing rate and galvanic skin response. Vilar López used this equipment with a group of 80 Psychology students as the “analogous group”, that is, as no patient would admit being a simulator, a group of people without any disorders were asked to fake them in order to confirm the validity of the test. Furthermore, 54 actual patients were analyzed by the doctor. These patients belonged to different departments of the University Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada.

The researcher explains that “although the lie detector itself has no scientific rigor, it could be an efficient instrument if combined with other tools, as for example the tests that we have validated”. Part of the results of her research were presented at the last ‘International Neuropsychological Society’ and ‘National Academy of Neuropsychology’ conferences – the two most important organizations in the field of neuropsychology in the world – and in the prestigious scientific journal ‘Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology’.
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– Create a database of scientific journals as an alternative to Thomson Scientific products

This release is available in Spanish.

Fruit of a research contract with Elsevier publishing house, the SCImago Group, headed by the Professor of the University of Granada Félix de Moya Anegón, has developed the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) (http://www.scimagojr.com ), a tool based on the contents of Scopus database, created in order to represent an ‘open access’ alternative to Thomson Scientific products. This world’s leading service offers information solutions for professionals in all the research and development stages, from the discovery and analysis to the development and distribution of the product.

The ranking, headed by the UGR, presents data for countries and journals and can be filtered according to large knowledge areas (27), thematic categories (295), country/journal and years (since 1996 to 2006). An additional combination permits to arrange the ranking according to different indicators: SJR, citations per document, h-index, journals titles, documents, quotable documents and total of citations; with the possibility of establishing a minimum level for all of them. SJR is based on the ‘Page Rank’ algorithm to weight citations according to those received by the citing publication.

The SCImago Group has published the new “SCImago journal & Country rank: A new site, two new rankings” in the November – December issue 2007 (vol16, n. 6) of the journal The Information Professional, as well as the open access article, which can be gratuitously downloaded in pdf and html on: http://elprofesionaldelainformacion.metapress.com

Researchers and academic and institutional authorities must support this initiative now with specific facts.

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For further suggestions or comments, those interested should get in touch with the authors by e-mail: scimago@ugr.es

SCImago Research Group the SCImago Group, directed by Professor Félix de Moya Anegón (University of Granada), is composed of researchers of the universities Carlos III and Alcalá of Madrid, of Extremadura and of Granada. They have worked on the use of scientometric indicators as tools that permit to place a country, an institution, a thematic area or a researcher in the world context of scientific production. They have carried out the project “Science Atlas”, in which the Group has focused its work since 1998.

Thomson Scientific ISI

The Institute for Scientific Information -ISI offers the scientific community a citation database including thousands of journals -the Science Citation Index (SCI). The database offers the possibility of identifying the most frequently cited articles, as well as the source of the citation. The ISI allows to know, in addition, the impact of each indexed scientific journal and, therefore, their valuation among the scientific community. All over the world, the bibliometric indicators of the ISI have been used to analyse the scientific production and to direct decision taking in scientific and technological public policies.

For further information you can visit http://www.scimagojr.com/help.php
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– 100 percent of people carry at least 1 type of pesticide.

A study carried out by researchers from the Department of Radiology and Physical Medicine of the University of Granada, in collaboration with the Andalusian School of Public Health (Escuela Andaluza de Salud Pública), found that 100% of Spaniards analyzed had at least one kind of persistent organic compound (POC´s), substances internationally classified as potentially harmful to one’s health, in their bodies. These substances enter the body trough food, water or even air. All of them tend to accumulate in human adipose tissue and easily enter into the organism through the aforementioned mediums.

The study, conceived by Juan Pedro Arrebola Moreno and directed by professors Piedad Martín Olmedo, Nicolás Olea Serrano and Mariana F. Fernández Cabrera, measured the contamination levels of some persistent organic compounds (POC’s) in a sample of the adult population from two areas, an urban one (Granada capital city) and a semi-rural one (Motril), and intended to find the determining factors associated with such levels: diet, lifestyle, activities or residence.

A total of 387 adults, from both sexes, were volunteers for surgeries in hospitals taking part in the study (Santa Ana de Motril and San Cecilio de Granada Hospitals). Once the volunteers had given consent, a sample of their human adipose tissue (fat) was taken during surgery and they answered a questionnaire about their place of residence, lifestyle, eating habits and activities throughout their life.

Analysis of 6 POC´s

The researchers analyzed the samples and measured 6 different POC concentration levels: DDE, a principal metabolite in DDT (a pesticide used in Spain until the 80´s); hexachlorobenzene, a compound used as fungicide and currently released by industrial processes; PCB’s: compounds related to industrial processes; and Hexaclorociclohexano, used as an insecticide and currently used in scabies and pediculosis treatment.

The study carried out by the University of Granada concluded that 100% of subjects analyzed had DDE in their bodies, a substance banned in Spain, and other very frequent components such as PCB-153 (present in 92% of people), HCB (91%), PCB-180 (90%), PCB-138 (86%9) and HCH (84%).

Juan Pedro Arrebola Moreno explains that higher levels of toxic substances were detected in women compared to men and in older volunteers compared to younger people, “possibly due to the great persistence of these substances in the environment, which results in their biomagnification in the food chain and in their bioaccumulation over time”. The scientist added that there is another theory known as “Efecto Cohorte” (Cohort effect) that explains the high quantities of these substances in older people. According to this theory, those born in periods of higher contamination suffered the consequences more than those born with the current bans on such pesticides.

The impact of diet

This study indicates that diet is an important factor in POC concentration, as the ingestion of some aliments, particularly those of animal origin and high fat content, triggers a greater presence of these toxic substances in the human organism.

Juan Pedro Arrebola Moreno states, “There are few studies in Spain measuring POC levels in wide samples of the population, which means that some compound levels in the general population are unknown”. Consequently, this study will improve the knowledge of such levels, and will identify those groups at higher risk of exposure, which is the first step for subsequent follow-up studies determining the cause-effect relations.

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This study is part of a project subsidized by the FIS (Sanitarian Investigation Fund) and by the Andalusian Regional Government, and in which the University of Granada, the Andalusian School of Public Health, and the Santa Ana de Motril and San Cecilio de Granada Hospitals take part.
Reference

Juan Pedro Arrebola Moreno. Department of Radiology and Physical Medicine of the University of Granada.
Tfn: +34 958 242864.
Mobile phone: +34 636 380 300
Correo e.: juanpe000@hotmail.com
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