3 ms·

>They were reporting on the established (at the time) medical opinion. To what end though? I'm not conspiratorially asking "what was their real angle?", but t

>They were reporting on the established (at the time) medical opinion. To what end though? I'm not conspiratorially asking "what was their real angle?", but the much more simple "why did they think it was newsworthy for a non-doctor audience?" I've seen the NYT run articles on a regulated industry I happen to work in. I'm no doctor, but I can see parallels because everything is slow moving and presumably based on expert opinion. Coverage of subtle points is surrounded by laughably bad analysis that drops a line of facts that lead the reader into conclusions they don't include in the print. Because if they printed it, the counterargument would be swift and damning. But without them explicitly saying it I'm "conspiratorial" if I say they're implying it. They then go on to make a wide-ranging hamfisted policy prescription that don't make sense for the subtle issue we started with and I'm 110% on board for fixing, but do make sense if you believe the unstated intermediary conclusion.

ineedasername 7y ago
I think the "why were they reporting is at all" question has more validity than "they didn't do their research". Because, again, the research available supported their position. As for why it was reported at all, a health issue of interest to many thousands of people would seem to be newsworthy. Finally, there were articles published by media outlets that showed potential problems with these prescriptions [0][1] And those were just what I found in a minute or two of searching. All available evidence shows that media outlets used prevailing scientific opinions of the time, and still managed to raise appropriate questions when issue began to arise. [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1997/07/27/first-do-no-harm/437ba30c-08f9-4967-bc03-3799e42e5f49/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/19... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/06/18/dc-internists-case-spurs-concerns-over-prescribed-narcotics/65b00f34-6547-4f4c-a7b3-20105f35d438/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/06/18/dc-i...

ineedasername 7y ago

I think the "why were they reporting is at all" question has more validity than "they didn't do their research". Because, again, the research available supported their position. As for why it was reported at all, a health issue of interest to many thousands of people would seem to be newsworthy. Finally, there were articles published by media outlets that showed potential problems with these prescriptions [0][1] And those were just what I found in a minute or two of searching. All available evidence shows that media outlets used prevailing scientific opinions of the time, and still managed to raise appropriate questions when issue began to arise. [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1997/07/27/first-do-no-harm/437ba30c-08f9-4967-bc03-3799e42e5f49/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/19... [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/06/18/dc-internists-case-spurs-concerns-over-prescribed-narcotics/65b00f34-6547-4f4c-a7b3-20105f35d438/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/06/18/dc-i...