4 ms·

National Review is garbage. That article states, "Any assumption that the practice of underreporting is confined to less-developed nations is incorrect. In fact

National Review is garbage. That article states, "Any assumption that the practice of underreporting is confined to less-developed nations is incorrect. In fact, a number of published peer-reviewed studies show that underreporting of early neonatal deaths has varied between 10 percent and 30 percent in highly developed Western European and Asian countries." Yet the article doesn't include references to these "published peer-reviewed studies". Garbage.

all2 7y ago
I had to do some digging, which is frustrating. Proper journalism cites sources (when able to - corroboration is sufficient in some cases). I apologize for not doing my digging before hand. Here you are: 1) the WHO admits that measures in countries it collects data from are often not taken in a consistent manner. "Monitoring progress is challenging in light of weak health information systems in some countries. Problems such as underreporting and differences between official data and estimates made by international agencies are some of the contributing factors." 2) We have "... anecdotal evidence suggests that countries do not use consistent practices in measuring these data [2] [3]" I'll have to do more digging. These are hard to find references. There may be a hard copy of [2] at my university's law library. [0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Life-stages/maternal-and-newborn-health/data-and-statistics http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Life-stages/materna... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193257/#__sec2title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193257/#__sec2... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12343088 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12343088 [3] Hartford RA. New Perspectives on Infant Mortality in the United States: Findings from International Research Studies. Presented at the Association for Social Sciences in Health Meeting at the National Institutes of Health; Bethesda, MD.. Feb. 4, 1992 <-- What's interesting here is that the authors of [1] left a link to scholar.google.com, with no specific reference. This may take a while to track down.

all2 7y ago

I had to do some digging, which is frustrating. Proper journalism cites sources (when able to - corroboration is sufficient in some cases). I apologize for not doing my digging before hand. Here you are: 1) the WHO admits that measures in countries it collects data from are often not taken in a consistent manner. "Monitoring progress is challenging in light of weak health information systems in some countries. Problems such as underreporting and differences between official data and estimates made by international agencies are some of the contributing factors." 2) We have "... anecdotal evidence suggests that countries do not use consistent practices in measuring these data [2] [3]" I'll have to do more digging. These are hard to find references. There may be a hard copy of [2] at my university's law library. [0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Life-stages/maternal-and-newborn-health/data-and-statistics http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/Life-stages/materna... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193257/#__sec2title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193257/#__sec2... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12343088 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12343088 [3] Hartford RA. New Perspectives on Infant Mortality in the United States: Findings from International Research Studies. Presented at the Association for Social Sciences in Health Meeting at the National Institutes of Health; Bethesda, MD.. Feb. 4, 1992 <-- What's interesting here is that the authors of [1] left a link to scholar.google.com, with no specific reference. This may take a while to track down.