28 ms·

While reading this piece I got a little depressed that most journalism is just such utter trash compared to it. I've read so many articles on ivermectin and non

by csee 5y ago

While reading this piece I got a little depressed that most journalism is just such utter trash compared to it. I've read so many articles on ivermectin and none of them gave me even ten percent of the clarity that this article gave me. Can you imagine if writing and journalism of this calibre was commonplace among practising "journalists"? And look at how this piece compares to the CDC's and WHO's science communication. It's a shame that clear thinking and communication is so scarce.

BurningFrog 5y ago
I think the simple fact is that people with this scientific literacy and ability have much better career option than becoming journalists. This was true before the profession entered the death spiral of the last 1-2 decades, and is extremely true now.
jacquesm 5y ago
This is a huge factor. Dumbing things down creates a dumber audience. If you look at newscasts and newspapers from the 70's and compare them to today the difference is amazing.
- api 5y ago
  There are a lot of conspiracy theories about this but I think it’s just a race to the bottom in search of the largest audience. It seems to still be getting worse. I remember cable news being tolerable 10 years ago. Now when I see it at an airport or something I can almost feel the ice pick ramming up into my brain and swishing around.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Whenever I visit people and they have the TV on I'm fascinated that the people that produce that crap think they can get away with it, it is so blatantly manipulative and often downright false. And then I realize they do. They get away with it all the time.
astrange 5y ago
He has an earlier piece whose point is that the WHO can never be accurate, because they always have to prioritize "sounding trustworthy" over accuracy, and random blogs don't.
- romeros 5y ago
  WHO has no other option than being inaccurate. Society needs a simple answer. Do this. Do that etc. Put on a mask. Wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Use approved vaccines. Take booster shots etc are pretty simple to follow. Likewise don't take non approved stuff. Easy to understand and simple to follow. Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc try to keep things simple. Dr. Fauci knew that a lot of the things he was saying might not be 100% accurate and yet he did it. The reason being that on the whole his message was a net positive effect on the public. Likewise CNN made fun of Joe Rogan for taking Ivermectin because we don't want general public to experiment with alternative medicine. It's better to just stick to the proven stuff. Basically, there is no choice here. Or basically two choices: 1. Be 100% accurate and risk confusing people 2. Be strategic about it and for the greater good. We need a narrative and the cost is accuracy. We need to have more empathy for people who are the decision makers and have to make difficult choices.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    How can you be sure of your assertions? Have you done a randomized controlled trial? I don't think you have tested the alternative.
    - musingsole 5y ago
      The GP's point isn't something that is verified with controlled randomized data...And moreso, it's about what happens after the controlled trial. Communicating science is about taking it from a controlled lab and moving it into the real world where unfortunately politics purposefully muddies all the waters. The point is that WHO is a political organization with a political mission that needs science to get it done. While it employs and funds countless great scientists doing meticulous work...the people you will see and hear from at WHO are international politicians.
notahacker 5y ago
Whilst journalist/PR summaries are so notoriously bad they're a punchline when you talk to actual researchers, I think we have to be charitable here and acknowledge that most communication about COVID doesn't have the luxury of writing about every single trial registered (or making puns on the word "fluke"!) So it tends to summarise it as "initially promising results for Invermectin were fraudulent, whilst large trials found no effect at all. Also it has side effects, like most other drugs, so the people ordering it in doses for horses aren't being as clever as they think" which isn't nearly as entertaining or as thorough as Scott's writing, but is a broadly accurate summary of the state of scientific evidence. (Of course you can also summarise it as "there's weak evidence for Invermectin having some therapeutic benefit which is probably related to preexisting conditions"... but we know how quickly that snowballs into "Invermectin stops COVID, scientists ADMIT IT" by the same people that deny the much stronger evidence for vaccine efficacy. Science journalism is bad, but not as bad as the selective reading of it.)
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Well, I have never witnessed some thing in real life that was correctly reported on the news. Not even once. And I'm talking about basic things like getting the order of the facts correct, or who said what. Some times there is even video of the thing on the news, and the journalist narrates on the sequence, and says something different form what is on the video. I do really not expect those teams to get the details behind medical research right. By the way, with the amount of fraud going on those studies, I wouldn't trust "weak evidence that it has some effect" in any real extent. Also, the Brazilian numbers (that are uncontested on the article, just non-randomized) are completely fraudulent, it's a large scandal here, with the police investigating it and many people that may get some prison time for murdering; the people that took ivermectin died about 3 times more often than the ones that didn't.
nonameiguess 5y ago
While Scott has a pretty decent natural talent for writing, he also has a MD, he's a board licensed practicing psychiatrist who has been working for a decade in the field, and he has spent at least the last twenty years gaining a pretty decent broad exposure to statistical and research methods. I don't believe he disclosed what Substack paid him, but he is in the "paid tier" and has said it was a mistake to even agree to that because the subscriptions he has gotten exceed what Substack paid him. In short, if you want most journalism to hire licensed medical doctors with decades of experience in science and statistics, and natural writing talent on top of that, expect journalism to get a lot more expensive. A market certainly exists for Scott, but I'm not sure the market exists for all journalists to be as highly qualified as Scott. Or, for that matter, even for CDC and WHO PR arms. They definitely aren't paying their communications officers whatever Substack is paying Scott, or probably even what his psychiatry practice is paying him.
- naasking 5y ago
  > I'm not sure the market exists for all journalists to be as highly qualified as Scott I'm not sure we need as many journalists as we currently have. Do we really need another rehashing of the latest culture war nonsense? If you strip out all of these pseudo-journalists and consider only journalists covering real facts and in-depth analysis, that's a considerably smaller group that could plausibly consist of a number of Scotts.
  - _djo_ 5y ago
    That's what the public demands, so that's what news companies cater for in order to make a profit and stay in business. Few journalists like covering that sort of stuff, a whole bunch dreamed of being investigative journalists breaking corruption and other public interest stories. But there simply aren't enough people reading those stories to maintain nearly enough staff for them. Scott Alexander can also do what he does because he's not required to be totally accurate. It's opinion, backed by experience and training, but still opinion. He's also not writing to a deadline, except one he sets himself. Real journalism is a lot harder than informed commentary.
dragontamer 5y ago
NIH is in charge of research. CDC takes the research and makes recommendations. https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2c/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... NIH seems to have pretty good analysis into Ivermectin. For some reason or another, people don't know it exists. Its pretty straightforward frankly. Turns out that people on the internet are terrible at meta-analysis.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > Turns out that people on the internet are terrible at meta-analysis. Color me surprised.
marcodiego 5y ago
No no... You can't expect a journalist to carefully make a very detailed and informed article like this carefully evaluating 30 scientific articles of meta-anilisys sites wich favored a specific view. They are not spcialists in most things and this was published long after the peak of of the pandemic. What they should do is to query specialists to obtain better information, instead of opinions. Consult different views, argue why on view is right or wrong and then inform the public.
- darkerside 5y ago
  And what if you don't understand enough of the topic to pick the right specialist? (Answer: you go with the person who sounds the most confident)
marstall 5y ago
for free online news, perhaps. pay for stat, nytimes, economist, scientific american etc you will find journalists who cover science with good understanding. by the way few good science journalists would cover the story this way. instead they would mostly be quoting experts interpreting the significance of the various studies. And Scott Alexander would never be one of them. Can you imagine a nytimes science writer quoting a psychiatrist on ivermectin's effectiveness? Never happen. (also all of these sources' coverage of ivermectin has been much more limited because of the fact that the drug is a scam)

by csee 5y ago

BurningFrog 5y ago

I think the simple fact is that people with this scientific literacy and ability have much better career option than becoming journalists. This was true before the profession entered the death spiral of the last 1-2 decades, and is extremely true now.

jacquesm 5y ago

This is a huge factor. Dumbing things down creates a dumber audience. If you look at newscasts and newspapers from the 70's and compare them to today the difference is amazing.

api 5y ago
There are a lot of conspiracy theories about this but I think it’s just a race to the bottom in search of the largest audience. It seems to still be getting worse. I remember cable news being tolerable 10 years ago. Now when I see it at an airport or something I can almost feel the ice pick ramming up into my brain and swishing around.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Whenever I visit people and they have the TV on I'm fascinated that the people that produce that crap think they can get away with it, it is so blatantly manipulative and often downright false. And then I realize they do. They get away with it all the time.

astrange 5y ago

He has an earlier piece whose point is that the WHO can never be accurate, because they always have to prioritize "sounding trustworthy" over accuracy, and random blogs don't.

romeros 5y ago
WHO has no other option than being inaccurate. Society needs a simple answer. Do this. Do that etc. Put on a mask. Wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Use approved vaccines. Take booster shots etc are pretty simple to follow. Likewise don't take non approved stuff. Easy to understand and simple to follow. Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc try to keep things simple. Dr. Fauci knew that a lot of the things he was saying might not be 100% accurate and yet he did it. The reason being that on the whole his message was a net positive effect on the public. Likewise CNN made fun of Joe Rogan for taking Ivermectin because we don't want general public to experiment with alternative medicine. It's better to just stick to the proven stuff. Basically, there is no choice here. Or basically two choices: 1. Be 100% accurate and risk confusing people 2. Be strategic about it and for the greater good. We need a narrative and the cost is accuracy. We need to have more empathy for people who are the decision makers and have to make difficult choices.
- dnautics 5y ago
  How can you be sure of your assertions? Have you done a randomized controlled trial? I don't think you have tested the alternative.
  - musingsole 5y ago
    The GP's point isn't something that is verified with controlled randomized data...And moreso, it's about what happens after the controlled trial. Communicating science is about taking it from a controlled lab and moving it into the real world where unfortunately politics purposefully muddies all the waters. The point is that WHO is a political organization with a political mission that needs science to get it done. While it employs and funds countless great scientists doing meticulous work...the people you will see and hear from at WHO are international politicians.

notahacker 5y ago

Whilst journalist/PR summaries are so notoriously bad they're a punchline when you talk to actual researchers, I think we have to be charitable here and acknowledge that most communication about COVID doesn't have the luxury of writing about every single trial registered (or making puns on the word "fluke"!) So it tends to summarise it as "initially promising results for Invermectin were fraudulent, whilst large trials found no effect at all. Also it has side effects, like most other drugs, so the people ordering it in doses for horses aren't being as clever as they think" which isn't nearly as entertaining or as thorough as Scott's writing, but is a broadly accurate summary of the state of scientific evidence. (Of course you can also summarise it as "there's weak evidence for Invermectin having some therapeutic benefit which is probably related to preexisting conditions"... but we know how quickly that snowballs into "Invermectin stops COVID, scientists ADMIT IT" by the same people that deny the much stronger evidence for vaccine efficacy. Science journalism is bad, but not as bad as the selective reading of it.)

marcosdumay 5y ago
Well, I have never witnessed some thing in real life that was correctly reported on the news. Not even once. And I'm talking about basic things like getting the order of the facts correct, or who said what. Some times there is even video of the thing on the news, and the journalist narrates on the sequence, and says something different form what is on the video. I do really not expect those teams to get the details behind medical research right. By the way, with the amount of fraud going on those studies, I wouldn't trust "weak evidence that it has some effect" in any real extent. Also, the Brazilian numbers (that are uncontested on the article, just non-randomized) are completely fraudulent, it's a large scandal here, with the police investigating it and many people that may get some prison time for murdering; the people that took ivermectin died about 3 times more often than the ones that didn't.

nonameiguess 5y ago

While Scott has a pretty decent natural talent for writing, he also has a MD, he's a board licensed practicing psychiatrist who has been working for a decade in the field, and he has spent at least the last twenty years gaining a pretty decent broad exposure to statistical and research methods. I don't believe he disclosed what Substack paid him, but he is in the "paid tier" and has said it was a mistake to even agree to that because the subscriptions he has gotten exceed what Substack paid him. In short, if you want most journalism to hire licensed medical doctors with decades of experience in science and statistics, and natural writing talent on top of that, expect journalism to get a lot more expensive. A market certainly exists for Scott, but I'm not sure the market exists for all journalists to be as highly qualified as Scott. Or, for that matter, even for CDC and WHO PR arms. They definitely aren't paying their communications officers whatever Substack is paying Scott, or probably even what his psychiatry practice is paying him.

naasking 5y ago
> I'm not sure the market exists for all journalists to be as highly qualified as Scott I'm not sure we need as many journalists as we currently have. Do we really need another rehashing of the latest culture war nonsense? If you strip out all of these pseudo-journalists and consider only journalists covering real facts and in-depth analysis, that's a considerably smaller group that could plausibly consist of a number of Scotts.
- _djo_ 5y ago
  That's what the public demands, so that's what news companies cater for in order to make a profit and stay in business. Few journalists like covering that sort of stuff, a whole bunch dreamed of being investigative journalists breaking corruption and other public interest stories. But there simply aren't enough people reading those stories to maintain nearly enough staff for them. Scott Alexander can also do what he does because he's not required to be totally accurate. It's opinion, backed by experience and training, but still opinion. He's also not writing to a deadline, except one he sets himself. Real journalism is a lot harder than informed commentary.

dragontamer 5y ago

NIH is in charge of research. CDC takes the research and makes recommendations. https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-2c/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-... NIH seems to have pretty good analysis into Ivermectin. For some reason or another, people don't know it exists. Its pretty straightforward frankly. Turns out that people on the internet are terrible at meta-analysis.

jacquesm 5y ago
> Turns out that people on the internet are terrible at meta-analysis. Color me surprised.

marcodiego 5y ago

No no... You can't expect a journalist to carefully make a very detailed and informed article like this carefully evaluating 30 scientific articles of meta-anilisys sites wich favored a specific view. They are not spcialists in most things and this was published long after the peak of of the pandemic. What they should do is to query specialists to obtain better information, instead of opinions. Consult different views, argue why on view is right or wrong and then inform the public.

darkerside 5y ago
And what if you don't understand enough of the topic to pick the right specialist? (Answer: you go with the person who sounds the most confident)

marstall 5y ago

for free online news, perhaps. pay for stat, nytimes, economist, scientific american etc you will find journalists who cover science with good understanding. by the way few good science journalists would cover the story this way. instead they would mostly be quoting experts interpreting the significance of the various studies. And Scott Alexander would never be one of them. Can you imagine a nytimes science writer quoting a psychiatrist on ivermectin's effectiveness? Never happen. (also all of these sources' coverage of ivermectin has been much more limited because of the fact that the drug is a scam)