On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 08:15,<WJhonson@aol.com>
wrote:
See I took Atorvastatin and you wouldn't let
the project report that the
Stanford Medical Journal reported that it causes more damage to the heart than
is acceptable. You want us only to report things once the controversy is
over, in other words once 25,000 people have gotten sick from salmonella
eggs... not just a thousand. No wait, actually after all the lawsuits are over
and the people involved are all dead as well.
We should not be using our own judgment in these matters. If the
London Times or BBC report problems with Lipitor, or anything else,
that's a good enough source for us, and we should not be allowing
editors to stop it from being added to our articles.
Yet both these sources can be sensational. The science reporting is
abysmal at times. When they have a science scare I have to turn the BBC
radio4 news off because of the crap reporting. If any one is in the UK
they'll know exactly what I'm taling about.
Sci-bod: The incidence of harmful side effects is vary low 1:20000
Interviewer: But you can't say with 100% certainty that no one will be
harmed.
Sci-bod: We are 95% sure that it is caused by X.
Interviewer: But you can't say with 100% certainty that it is caused by X.
and so it goes on. A controversy is presented when no real controversy
exists the scare is perpetuated for as long as possible. Most of the
interviewers are as numerically illiterate as are their audience.
The newspapers are worse:
in effect by repeating the nonsense the wikipedia articles become no
better than just another opinionated blog. This opinion piece lasted
some 6 months before being fixed:
It doesn't matter if final outcome is that the scare was correct or
misplaced by repeating the 'latest' news one does a disservice to the
readers. Its not as if the 'scare' isn't being fought out in a 1000
other places.