Hard News: A Real Alternative
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Why is it that NZ kids always do so poorly at international maths and science 'elite' competitions, and always do so well at maths and language comprehension in OECD ratings?
From a functional point of view, isn't that the optimal outcome? The education system is producing plenty of students who can be competent engineers, IT specialists and the like, which is what the economy needs. It isn't producing the next Steven Hawking, but doing that would only get us kudos (assuming everyone didn't believe them to be British, like Rutherford).
Also, I think Rutherford made such a contribution that NZ is in credit on "producing great physicists" for the next couple of hundred years.
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they don't even have a school ball
That's a negative? Thinking back to my hormonal teenage-hood, I can't think of anything worse than having to go through a sub-__Pretty In Pink__ (RIP John Hughes) exercise in rejection and bullying.
UK schools didn't have school balls in the 80's. (Maybe they do now, as part of slavish copying of American TV). We had a student organised 6th form party after A-levels, but that was in a club, you weren't expected to bring a partner and there certainly wasn't a prom queen or any of that crap.
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Ping,
Oh dear - I was kidding about the school ball.
I've never felt so much like a walking wedding cake in my whole life, my ball dress was that layered.
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This is off topic but I've just read the new Listener - the article about the Unfortunate Experiment. I'm stunned.
I guess you missed Kim Hill's interview with Linda Bryder on Saturday then - it would be worth listening to off the Radio NZ web-site. I get the impression Linda Bryder has been very careful and thorough, and trust her analysis of the history of wilful and ignorant distortion of what was going on will be affirmed, no doubt after much scrapping over peripheral matters and red herrings.
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Also, I think Rutherford made such a contribution that NZ is in credit on "producing great physicists" for the next couple of hundred years.
Pfft, anyone would think that there wasn't at least one young kiwi physics star right here talking to us.
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Thank you very much ChrisW for responding to my off topic post. I read the Listener and had to find someone somewhere who could put the article into context for me. I have started listening to the Kim Hill interview but it's long and will have to wait till after work.
I MUST reserve judgement but my first thoughts were Listener, Joanne Black as wilful distorters not Coney et al!
I hope Russell does something on this topic. -
I hope Russell does something on this topic.
I do too, or one of the other maestros around here. It's a really important story, on how difficult it is for the truth to emerge in such a melee of media-politics-medical/science and lawyers ...
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I MUST reserve judgement but my first thoughts were Listener, Joanne Black as wilful distorters not Coney et al!
I didn't get that impression at all from the interview with Bryder. She seemed very measured.
I hope Russell does something on this topic.
I have to read the Listener story first ....
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I thought the original 'Unfortunate Experiment' article was a Metro piece? (I haven't got the new Listener & so haven't read the article.)
As for AE funding - just how short-sighted and tunnel-visioned do you have to be to consider dropping funding for AE while you are thrashing about trying to deal with the outcomes of people who drop out of the system at an early age? Even most 5-year-olds can play 'join the dots' but not our new NACTional overlords, it seems.
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I'm not sure of the details but it sounds like Linda Bryder has relied on the official written record rather than interviewing people involved. The written record can miss much of the social context, for example, attitudes to women patients are more than the written account of the medical procedure. She was writing medical history not social history - and probably did a very good job of that.
I have been involved in several historical projects and you need a variety of methods to get anywhere near an understanding of what really happened and to produce social history - interviews, review of official publications, letters, articles etc. But there is never one definitive correct interpretation - just the way the view through the kaleidoscope looks that day. Depends where the researcher stands, what sources they choose to use, what their motivations are etc etc
What did come out of the Cartwright enquiry was our modern system of ethical approval requirements for any medical or health research which strongly emphasises informed consent and protection of participants - and that is surely a good thing.
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maybe the answer is for the government to fund unions .....
LOL.
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What you say makes a lot of sense, Hilary. I have now listened to Bryder on the Kim Hill show. Under pressure from Hill, she admitted that she considered Coney and Cartwright wrong. She was reluctant to couch her opinions in such a black and white manner. The Listener, on the other hand, has a cover page with "got it wrong" in bold letters and a headline inside "Finally, the truth."
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I didn't get that impression at all from the interview with Bryder. She seemed very measured.
Indeed -- and I think Bryder did a bloody good job of laying out exactly what she was, and wasn't, doing in her book and not letting herself get de-railed into some media-constructed bitch off with Coney & Bunkle and the rest of the hairy-legged anti-male Dykeocracy. (Please insert own sarcasm tags, I can't be bothered.)
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Under pressure from Hill, she admitted that she considered Coney and Cartwright wrong. She was reluctant to couch her opinions in such a black and white manner.
Yeah, I could tell Hill was getting rather frustrated with Bryder's tiresome insistence on careful qualification (like exactly where she thought Coney and Cartwright were deficient rather than a crude soundbite like "they were wrong"), and precisely laying out what she was really doing and how she did it. Poor Kim - not.
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Bryder's tiresome insistence on careful qualification (like exactly where she thought Coney and Cartwright were deficient rather than a crude soundbite like "they were wrong")
To be fair to Kim Hill, the way I heard it she'd pretty well read the book and knew what Linda Bryder had to say, but had to work hard to extract it from her in a mere 40 minutes - hardly a matter of soundbites.
And the central conclusion, apparently well documented, is that there was no 'unfortunate experiment' run by Herb Green, in fact no experiment. And a lot more, but not to say Coney-Bunkle and Cartwright got everything wrong, nor that there was no need for improvements in medical-research ethics and respect for patients; however that was happening anyway in accordance with the global trend. -
I agree ChrisW. My point was that she at least pushed the question. My distaste with the Listener was that they uttered a black and white summary of Bryder's book - Coney, Bunkle and Cartwright got it WRONG.
Gee, I'm no analyst of political or historical movements but I have just listened to the feedback to Kim Hill's show and someone wrote in that Bryder's work was an example of "conservative revisionism". That's what I felt but I wasn't able to articulate it.
To quote Hilary Clinton: "It's part of a vast right wing conspiracy." (Just kidding on that one, but ...) -
To be fair to Kim Hill, the way I heard it she'd pretty well read the book and knew what Linda Bryder had to say, but had to work hard to extract it from her in a mere 40 minutes - hardly a matter of soundbites.
I would have found the time a little better used if Hill hadn't spent so much of it trying to bait Bryder (repeatedly) into saying "feminists suck" or "Coney was a liar" -- and thankfully, Bryder wasn't playing. FFS, I thought National Radio was supposed to operate on a marginally higher of discourse than talkback radio or Paul Henry on one of his hairy lady rants?
A running theme around PAS is the low level of fact-based, numerate and intellectually rigourous media discourse around science and public policy. Don't think Hill exactly showed herself as the exception that proves the rule there, which is a shame because she's done a lot of work where science isn't turned into a handmaiden of politics.
Gee, I'm no analyst of political or historical movements but I have just listened to the feedback to Kim Hill's show and someone wrote in that Bryder's work was an example of "conservative revisionism".
Ah, so there are sacred cows academic historians should never analyse critically without being dismissed as having a political agenda? Nice to see another front opening in the War on Reason...
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if Hill hadn't spent so much of it trying to bait Bryder (repeatedly) into saying "feminists suck" or "Coney was a liar" -- and thankfully, Bryder wasn't playing.
Well, that's not how it registered with me - it came across more as Hill trying to pinpoint exactly where Bryder found her points of contention - in the evidence presented (or not) to the inquiry, in particular statements made by those involved, in comparisons with other country's contemporary practice in public health with regards to cervical cancer treatment.
The impression i got was that Bryder found Green's work to be less of an "experiment" than the Cartwright Inquiry found, because it wasn't so out of line with some overseas practice at the time.
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so there are sacred cows academic historians should never analyse critically without being dismissed as having a political agenda?
'Conservative revisionism' is more of a historiographical term than a political one, in this instance.
Linda Bryder was almost my thesis co-supervisor, until I made clear that I wasn't all that interested in the medical aspects of the contraceptive pill. It was always about the social as far as I was concerned...
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And the central conclusion, apparently well documented, is that there was no 'unfortunate experiment' run by Herb Green, in fact no experiment.
Indeed. The simple fact that there were never two groups of women, one deliberately under-treated, is enough to confirm that Green was unfairly vilified. That fact is now not in contention, as even Coney acknowledges. What staggers me is that the Cartwright inquiry replicated the error of the original Metro story, and enshrined this terrible falsehood as fact.
And a lot more, but not to say Coney-Bunkle and Cartwright got everything wrong, nor that there was no need for improvements in medical-research ethics and respect for patients; however that was happening anyway in accordance with the global trend.
Yes, it's probable that the inquiry did introduce better practices. But on the evidence presented by Bryder, its central findings were just wrong.
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I wasn't particularly interested ether, until my partner almost died of blood clotting.
Yikes. Sorry to hear that.
(Don't get me started on the lack of proper testing before setting it loose on unsuspecting women. But that's 'social history' too, in a way.)
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Um, I was expelled from an alternative secondary school, oops. Do I still get to be taken seriously/
For some reason I still have this idea that you were keel-hauled as part of a rehab program, even though you definitely said that you weren't.
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Beneficence, respect and justice are the three ethical principles to come out of a landmark US case in the 1970s. There was clearly not much of that shown to the women attending National Women's during this era.
This case is also about power - gynaecologists, with all that symbolic power over women's fertility that represents versus women patients with all that loaded stuff around being patient and powerless. It's quite hard for us now to realise just what it was like being a woman patient in a teaching hospital in that era, not being given accurate information, with consultants and their teams of students examining your without asking your consent, or even talking to you.
What Sanda and Phillida did was put a big 'Hey, what are you doing here' spotlight on it, and nothing can take that away from them.
The thing about whether there were or not two clear experimental groups is merely a sideline.
I'm sure those shouting out wrong, actually appreciate a bit a beneficence, respect and justice in their health care.
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The thing about whether there were or not two clear experimental groups is merely a sideline.
I'm sure those shouting out wrong, actually appreciate a bit a beneficence, respect and justice in their health care.
I can only repeat what Russell said up thread:
The simple fact that there were never two groups of women, one deliberately under-treated, is enough to confirm that Green was unfairly vilified. That fact is now not in contention, as even Coney acknowledges.
I'm just shaking my head in disbelief (and sadness), that anyone could dismiss that as a mere "sideline". Call me an old crank, if you must, but when it comes to my health care I appreciate the idea that facts are not optional extras.
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Call me an old crank, if you must, but when it comes to my health care I appreciate the idea that facts are not optional extras.
I also appreciate that there have been occasions where my physical and mental wellbeing (and even the safety of others) has depended on fact-based interpretation of sound data.
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