6 ms·

See, I do feel for the FDA. Trying to message things properly is like trying to send a smoke signal in a hurricane. When, for any given thing you want to regu

• wooter 10y ago
  This is apologism. I expect an expensive organization, that I pay for, to make their the case to the public without dirty tricks and intimidation. And I expect the news sources that I am intelligent enough to pick to investigate and report with integrity. I see plenty of fair, loud, and clear venues the FDA could have used.
  • Avshalom 10y ago
    >>And I expect the news sources that I am intelligent enough to pick to investigate and report with integrity. Right, but see you shouldn't because that's hilariously naive.
    • omginternets 10y ago
      You're not using the word "expect" in the same sense he is. He's demanding transparency and good faith from the FDA.
      • Avshalom 10y ago
        No no, it doesn't matter demanding news sources investigate and report with integrity is just as naive as assuming they do.
        • omginternets 10y ago
          Again, I don't think he's assuming anything. I read his comment as using "expect" to mean "they really really realy should, and it's a problem if they're not".
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Indeed. One can expect all one wants, but the business incentives for the media are strongly opposing integrity and truth. Which one can see daily, most obviously when some outlet is reporting on a topic one has direct experience with.
  • moefogs 10y ago
    You're engaging in catastrophism. This isn't a big deal, and the most of the folks claiming otherwise are folks who hate the FDA and government in general, and are dishonestly pretending that this is their reason. Borrow some balls and admit that you think the world would be better if you were legally allowed to sell anything as anything, and THAT is the reason you hate the FDA.
  • Fordrus 10y ago
    Hmm... I intended this to be understanding of the situation, but scathing in tone - as in, "FDA, at least to us, this makes it look like you are engaging in 'Diabolical Action Z,' and we don't really have a good way to discern differently without investing dozens of hours of effort, and even then it's uncertain, given our collective expertise level." Maybe it's better if I put it this way, "I don't actually think the FDA is up to rotten fuckery here, but it sure as hell looks like they're being FUCKING EVIL, and without a method to for to tell that they aren't, they should FUCKING STOP IT."
    • mcguire 10y ago
      Here's the question: are they betting that most people will never see the second article, with the caveats and criticism? Is seems to be the same move as using rebate coupons rather than outright sales.
  • vkou 10y ago
    Do you expect an expensive organization, that you pay for (Pharma company that makes your medicine) to also make their case to the public without dirty tricks and intimidation? If so, I'm afraid you'll be sorely dissapointed.
    • briandear 10y ago
      Private enterprise vs taxpayer funded government agency. Vastly different. A pharma company answers to shareholders, a government agency answers to taxpayers -- except they don't. Pharma companies don't owe you anything because you're a customer. You chose that relationship. However, we don't get to chose the FDA .. it's foisted upon us. Preferential reporters by government agencies ought to be illegal.
      • vkou 10y ago
        You still pay for it, and thanks to patent protection, you need to pay that particular company for it if you don't want to be dead. Why must the pharma company answer solely to shareholders? They are doing medicine - they also have an obligation to do right by the public. Generally, when a medical professional fails to do right by the public, they get replaced with one that will. For many medicines, I have absolutely zero choice in that relationship. It's <Company> selling <Drug that I need to not die>, or the highway (Not to mention that I'm not choosing the medicine - my doctor is prescribing it.). If that is choice, then so is not paying taxes. To be consistent with your position, preferential reporting by anyone with an involuntary relationship with their 'customer' base should be illegal. This would disqualify most pharma companies right off the bat.
  • popmystack 10y ago
    >I expect an expensive organization, that I pay for, to make their the case to the public without dirty tricks and intimidation. They're not using "tricks." The whole sentiment is uncalled for. They're keeping order. EDIT: Oh boy here comes the typical alt-right down vote brigade that showed up on HN over the last year and a half.
    • mcguire 10y ago
      Keeping order? Because publishing a comprehensive news article with both sides is more disruptive than publishing a press release directly?
      • popmystack 10y ago
        That could be seen as false equivocation of positions. The FDA is an organization that needs to broadcast signals to nearly every level of society about certain products. All the way from corporate RnD divisions to consumers. Not being concise, diligent, and stringent on what messages get sent out could have extremely negative effects. Letting news organizations pander to people's fears or general ignorance is a recipe for disaster. I am not even sure why this needs to be explained. I mean, actually at this point on HN I do know why, it's people being disingenuous. Seriously how is this non-sense being upvoted? From the article: >including ones from major outlets such as Fox News Seriously, are we going to just sit here and pretend why this was done? An organization hell bent on bashing largely agreed upon scientific information is being denied the ability to spin information from an organization dedicated to the scientific understanding and safety of products. The FDA is basically refusing to play the game of yellow journalism and rightly so. Spare me the patronizing pathetic attempts at an apology, and excuse me for calling out bullshit from scientific american. Shame on them. And shame on HN for upvoting this.
        • mcguire 10y ago
          So you are saying that the FDA is never wrong and that its activities need no public oversight? I can see no other reason for allowing them uncontested access to spin their "signals". If they were interested in "refusing to play the game of yellow journalism" they would not pre-announce their activities at all. And are you really saying that Scientific American is "an organization hell bent on bashing largely agreed upon scientific information"?
• BurningFrog 10y ago
  What are these "incredibly wealthy special interest groups"? If you're talking about pharmaceutical companies, the FDA has enormous power over them, and I don't remember them ever saying anything critical of the FDA. That would be taking enormous risks.
  • zardo 10y ago
    Special interest groups are organisations that promote a specific interest. I would be shocked if drug companies didn't donate to groups that are critical of the FDA when it is in their interest.
    • BurningFrog 10y ago
      Last time I heard of any real groups - as opposed to Economists or politicians - critical of the FDA was back in the AIDS days. Not that I pay close attention. There might be some, but I think the pharma industry is deathly afraid of antagonizing their regulator.
• mncharity 10y ago
  Is there a name for this pattern? The propagation of (ethically-compromised) dysfunction? An escalating "giving forward" of negative value and technical debt? I seem to be increasingly noticing it. Where a well-intentioned rational actor, because of upstream ethically-problematic dysfunction, chooses a "least-bad option" of creating their own ethically-questionable dysfunction, which then has a similar effect on downstream actors. Where at any point, you could imagine an upstream channel with a "no, that's beyond the pale, you need to stop doing that", but because of noise or other things, such signalling isn't working. Until it does. Sometimes. In this case, company and press lying, tolerated by press and public, prompts government conduct that further degrades the press, increases tolerance of lying, and impairs everyone's ability to improve government conduct. Or consider the attempt to force TPP ratification in post-election session. The Obama administration has only managed to remain kind of functional, by doing end-runs around a dysfunctional legislature and press. But that has a side-effect of disabling legislative and journalistic checks on groupthink and regulatory capture. And press discourse has become loud and low quality, drowning out signals. So while a (now former) White House official, nicely characterized the regulatory capture of US copyright law, as "extremists are people who talk only among themselves", with only our current functionally-degraded mechanisms, it's a struggle for that insight to constrain policy. The larger context might be a decline of civic society and civil discourse. But this seems a particular feedback pattern, of "things are bad, so now I have to make them worse". But does it have a label?
  • r00fus 10y ago
    What you're describing, to me, seems to be a symptom of information asymmetry/warping caused by a corrupt and ineffective corporate media. Everything makes more sense if you don't think of the media as a medium, but a group of self-interested actors who sell tickets to exposing or suppressing what gets published.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • mncharity 10y ago
      Hmm. Some descriptions work better as summaries of black-box behavior, than as insight into white-box causation and potential for intervention. I wonder if "corrupt and ineffective corporate media" is an instance of such. For illustration. Science education is remarkably ineffective, K-14, and worldwide. A rule of thumb that "people don't care whether science education actually works", will rarely steer you wrong. But it is an almost useless description of the underlying tangle of incentives and capabilities and visibilities and costs, which cause that surface behavior. Take a professor teaching cell biology, who isn't disinterested in teaching deep understanding, but who, given severe time constraints, isn't going to disservice their students by trading against a specific superficial understanding that the high-stakes med school MCAT exam tests for. So yes, "don't care", sort of. But change the MCAT, and suddenly... So one can have a observationally good description, one that's fine for spectators, but which isn't illuminating or helpful interventionally. Or take the earlier copyright example. During the fight over SOPA, Hollywood executives publicly and angrily complained about congressmen not staying bought. A surface reading of that isn't a bad description of everyone's behavior. But my understanding is, they were basically saying "we talk among ourselves all the time; and we all agree; only a few weird and confused others disagree; and we're now startled and dismayed to find some politicians disagreeing; and can only imagine that this results from them being bought, or lied to, likely by the tech industry; we payed good money to elect what we thought were good people - why should we pay for the reelection of the corrupt and the gullible?". Will more insight into mechanism help you? Maybe not. But while incentives matter, it's the actual incentives that matter. What if US copyright extensions were fought not with "Constitutional intent" and "public interest", so basically "we want you to give up a few billion dollars a year in Pooh et al merchandising fees", but fought instead with "here's a change in trademark law, or a copyright-excepting guardianship of a national treasure, which will preserve your big revenue streams in perpetuity". Addressing actual incentives, rather than narratives.
• Iv 10y ago
  > So what, exactly, is the answer? More funds for checks and balance. Laws that make it clear what transparency means and actual funds for enforcing these laws. In general the US seems to be stuck in a gordian self-fulfilling prophecy: many people in the US see government administrations evil or inefficient in all matters and they are enough to actually handicap the government administrations, and make them actually inefficient. I think that at one point US citizens have to come to terms with the idea that they need to be protected by efficient government administrations, and that regulations are actually what makes free market move in the direction of social progress. But seeing the resistance there was to Obamacare (which, seen from western Europe is really the bare minimum a civilized country should have) I am not holding my breath.