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There is no data (or even a link to a study) in this article that gives the the reader any sense of what the mortality gap between the wealthy and poor is, or e

There is no data (or even a link to a study) in this article that gives the the reader any sense of what the mortality gap between the wealthy and poor is, or even how "wealthy" and "poor" are defined. I come away from this article with a better idea of the male/female mortality gap than the wealthy/poor gap (one of the article's two headline claims). I've noticed that politicized headlines in non-editorials that aren't suppprted by any facts or data are an increasing media trend in the past few years. I saw this in another article I commented on a few days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794757 If it's a real problem (which I believe it probably is), journalists shouldn't ignore "show, don't tell" in their writing.

Bartweiss 8y ago
I agree that this is common and troubling. I ended up on this soapbox after a recent study showing academic-performance harm from fine particulate matter in the air. The article had no numbers, so the HN thread was full of (weirdly politicized) speculation about American intelligence. Meanwhile, the underlying study showed modest effects in parts of China where daily particulate levels average 10x higher than the very worst "stay indoors" days in America. It was an interesting study, but the headlines it produced were actively making people less informed. It's a particularly damning problem in this article because there are so many different ways to read this result. It could be that rich people get better or more intensive care after diagnosis. Or that they're more likely to get regular checkups and so are on average treated at an earlier stage. Or that with HPV vaccine not on the scheduled list, many insurers won't cover it and so the rich face less cervical cancer. Or simply that rich people are less likely to smoke and live with smokers. Or, especially since the long-term data here comes from a small set of disproportionately-urban regions, wealth is acting as a strong proxy for environmental exposure. And even lay readers can discern those things! If rich people have lower incidence, that's different than lower mortality per incidence. Major risk factors like smoking can be adjusted for. We're told that wealth used to correlate with cancer, but the only summary of the change is the vague "in part to changes in diet and smoking as well as screening and treatment rates". This article needed, at minimum, a graph of incidence and mortality by income.

Bartweiss 8y ago

I agree that this is common and troubling. I ended up on this soapbox after a recent study showing academic-performance harm from fine particulate matter in the air. The article had no numbers, so the HN thread was full of (weirdly politicized) speculation about American intelligence. Meanwhile, the underlying study showed modest effects in parts of China where daily particulate levels average 10x higher than the very worst "stay indoors" days in America. It was an interesting study, but the headlines it produced were actively making people less informed. It's a particularly damning problem in this article because there are so many different ways to read this result. It could be that rich people get better or more intensive care after diagnosis. Or that they're more likely to get regular checkups and so are on average treated at an earlier stage. Or that with HPV vaccine not on the scheduled list, many insurers won't cover it and so the rich face less cervical cancer. Or simply that rich people are less likely to smoke and live with smokers. Or, especially since the long-term data here comes from a small set of disproportionately-urban regions, wealth is acting as a strong proxy for environmental exposure. And even lay readers can discern those things! If rich people have lower incidence, that's different than lower mortality per incidence. Major risk factors like smoking can be adjusted for. We're told that wealth used to correlate with cancer, but the only summary of the change is the vague "in part to changes in diet and smoking as well as screening and treatment rates". This article needed, at minimum, a graph of incidence and mortality by income.