3 ms·

Inaccuracies, irresponsible coverage, & conflicts of interest in The New Yorker

22 points by atg_abhishek 5y ago

lelandfe 5y ago
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/27/the-struggle-to-define-long-covid https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/27/the-struggle-t... The article in question, since the post does not link to it.
angelzen 5y ago
Rachel Thomas: "Medicine is Political". This is a very dangerous slogan that blurs the lines between descriptive and prescriptive. Naked politics is dysfunctional, to say nothing of partisan politics, which is basically the kiss of death.
- lbarrow 5y ago
  Her full tweet (https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1441569388289609728 https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1441569388289609728) says: Medicine, like all of science, is political: - which questions get asked - which projects get funded - how debates get framed - who the researchers are - context of data (what categories, what labels, which biases, what is left out) - whose suffering is counted 1/ Seems obviously correct to me. Certainly research allocation decisions at the level of grant funding are political.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Are there any other factors in grant funding other than politics? Scientific value and competency come to my naive mind. Perish the thought. There is a world of difference between 'sadly, there is a degree of corruption in the system' and 'the system is corruption'.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
It seems questionable for rigorous, repeated studies of “long” covid to have even taken place less than 2 years after Covid was discovered.
cinntaile 5y ago
Why can't they just let fast.ai be fast.ai?
tyre 5y ago
This is all pretty ridiculous. > Both Khullar and one of his sources, Vinay Prasad, have venture capital funding from Arnold Venture for projects that help hospitals reduce costs by cutting care. Thus, they stand to gain financially by minimizing the reality of long covid. That’s an absurd definition of conflict of interest. It’s like someone writing an article about fruit and noting that the person holds stock in an insulin manufacturer. The piece doesn’t say long COVID isn’t real. It examines one side of patient advocacy, specifically a huge Facebook group that’s whipped people up into a frenzy; now they’re blaming pretty much anything on long COVID and the head of it has made some obviously silly assertions such as there being no mild COVID cases. Have criticism about journalism, fine, but this response is reaching as hard as it can to find things to complain about. Clearly the New Yorker article struck a nerve.

22 points by atg_abhishek 5y ago

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/27/the-struggle-to-define-long-covid https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/27/the-struggle-t... The article in question, since the post does not link to it.

angelzen 5y ago

Rachel Thomas: "Medicine is Political". This is a very dangerous slogan that blurs the lines between descriptive and prescriptive. Naked politics is dysfunctional, to say nothing of partisan politics, which is basically the kiss of death.

lbarrow 5y ago
Her full tweet (https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1441569388289609728 https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1441569388289609728) says: Medicine, like all of science, is political: - which questions get asked - which projects get funded - how debates get framed - who the researchers are - context of data (what categories, what labels, which biases, what is left out) - whose suffering is counted 1/ Seems obviously correct to me. Certainly research allocation decisions at the level of grant funding are political.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Are there any other factors in grant funding other than politics? Scientific value and competency come to my naive mind. Perish the thought. There is a world of difference between 'sadly, there is a degree of corruption in the system' and 'the system is corruption'.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

It seems questionable for rigorous, repeated studies of “long” covid to have even taken place less than 2 years after Covid was discovered.

cinntaile 5y ago

Why can't they just let fast.ai be fast.ai?

tyre 5y ago

This is all pretty ridiculous. > Both Khullar and one of his sources, Vinay Prasad, have venture capital funding from Arnold Venture for projects that help hospitals reduce costs by cutting care. Thus, they stand to gain financially by minimizing the reality of long covid. That’s an absurd definition of conflict of interest. It’s like someone writing an article about fruit and noting that the person holds stock in an insulin manufacturer. The piece doesn’t say long COVID isn’t real. It examines one side of patient advocacy, specifically a huge Facebook group that’s whipped people up into a frenzy; now they’re blaming pretty much anything on long COVID and the head of it has made some obviously silly assertions such as there being no mild COVID cases. Have criticism about journalism, fine, but this response is reaching as hard as it can to find things to complain about. Clearly the New Yorker article struck a nerve.