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The fact that the first half of the article is spent complaining about political matters and seeming almost gleeful that a therapy that was backed by a politica

by Exmoor 6y ago

The fact that the first half of the article is spent complaining about political matters and seeming almost gleeful that a therapy that was backed by a political opponent has not proven effective, despite the fact that the end result is continued suffering and death. This doesn't give me a ton of faith that the author went out of their way to present the most neutral view of the studies that have been done so far.

happytoexplain 6y ago
Preface: I have no opinion about whether the drug works or not, and whether the evidence provided here is good. Wow - where are you finding any "glee" in this article? The only hint of any kind of emotion I can find are very tame reminders of instances of irrational support for the drug, and how important it is to remain objective about things like this. Of course, that's frustration - any glee, if present, would come in the places where the author talks about the evidence to the contrary, but the writing in those places seems very straight forward. Ironically, I think you may be injecting emotion that isn't there due to the intrinsic sociopolitical nature of the story. Emotion the author may indeed have! But it's not in the article, as far as I can tell (again, I'm talking about petty glee, not frustration). And even giving you the benefit of the doubt - that there is something you could at least describe as happiness - it would make sense, since strong evidence either way would be cause for happiness. If the author is happy, it could easily be because something good happened: Evidence against something dangerous (irrational support for a drug). I would hope they would also be even more happy if the opposite, even-better case happened (strong evidence that it works), and I totally understand being skeptical that they would indeed express that attitude, but it's irrelevant since the article is about the opposite case.

by Exmoor 6y ago

happytoexplain 6y ago

Preface: I have no opinion about whether the drug works or not, and whether the evidence provided here is good. Wow - where are you finding any "glee" in this article? The only hint of any kind of emotion I can find are very tame reminders of instances of irrational support for the drug, and how important it is to remain objective about things like this. Of course, that's frustration - any glee, if present, would come in the places where the author talks about the evidence to the contrary, but the writing in those places seems very straight forward. Ironically, I think you may be injecting emotion that isn't there due to the intrinsic sociopolitical nature of the story. Emotion the author may indeed have! But it's not in the article, as far as I can tell (again, I'm talking about petty glee, not frustration). And even giving you the benefit of the doubt - that there is something you could at least describe as happiness - it would make sense, since strong evidence either way would be cause for happiness. If the author is happy, it could easily be because something good happened: Evidence against something dangerous (irrational support for a drug). I would hope they would also be even more happy if the opposite, even-better case happened (strong evidence that it works), and I totally understand being skeptical that they would indeed express that attitude, but it's irrelevant since the article is about the opposite case.