Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But you don’t have to be an expert to ask the basic questions.
This is true. Towards the end of Hard News’s life as a radio rant in (script posted to the internet) I committed to sussing out the science on GMOs and I did get to the point where I felt I understood basically what was going on even if I didn’t get every word. (i.e.: about where I’d aspire to be on a marae). I certainly started to see the patterns.
But it did take a degree of commitment. I think there’s still a role for journalists, it’s just that journalists need to be better.
The ongoing credulity over the “meth house” panic doesn’t entirely fill me with optimism though. The eagerness to ascribe authority to businessmen who bought testing kits pretty much fits Dr Ben's observations.
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to B Jones,
We’ve been trusting experts since we let electricians put wires in our houses.
And in most cases, we should naturally continue to do so.
Given a follow-up, I’d have put it to Ben that the same might apply to him: on some level we trust him because he’s witty, articulate and convincing. None of which are guarantees that he is right.
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to Bart Janssen,
One thing I knew there wouldn’t be time for in the interview was a discussion about the study in 2008 that found the real trial data – published and unpublished – on SSRIs was underwhelming.
That got promptly written up in the papers (and shouted from some blogs) as the drugs don’t work (example from the Herald, which led with that angle).
The reality of course is that as I wrote at the time it’s a bit more complicated than that.
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(my brother likened it to someone saying something exceedingly stupid whilst leaving an answer-phone message, who then keeps on talking in the desperate hope of making what he’s said seem somehow less stupid, during which time he manages to say a number of even stupider and more ridiculous things).
Can I say, in the nicest possible way, that I had no trouble imagining this?
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I guess I haven't been so deprived as everyone else because Ive been able to visit the Hay-Haywood ranch and observe its impressive transformation.
But I am VERY VERY happy to see this post :-)
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Psychiatrists alarmed by autism meltdowns assume he is dangerous.
It’s notable how differently such behaviour is read by someone who actually understands meltdowns and what different conclusions that understanding produces.
I’ve noted before that with our younger child we had to fend off an awful GSE case worker who pushed for him to be put on antipsychotics – enough until he wasn’t a problem any more. We were in a position to to resists, not everyone is.
I can’t believe there are so many people in the system who still do not understand autism. It’s chilling.
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to Moz,
My fear is that too often one pretty, stricken figure gets the media attention
Which is what we see when drug companies push for Pharmac funding by taking those cases to a willing media.
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Hard News: This. Is. Crazy., in reply to izogi,
There’s another HNZ chemical-contamination story in this morning’s Taranaki Daily News, except as yet nobody seems to know what the chemical is. It’s good to see, at least, that HNZ didn’t use that as an excuse to do nothing or worse in this case.
Same firm as today's story. They claimed to detect but couldn't identify a chemical but they somehow know it's the poison that's making the little girl sick? I'm dubious. To put it mildly.
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Okay, this is getting out of hand. The Taranaki Daily News runs a credulous “Meth house” story:
Hopkins said the discovery was made after potential buyers decided to have the house tested on their lawyer’s advice.
She said an inspector visited her home and took eight swabs – but put them all in one container so it was not possible to identify which area of her home was contaminated.
“A few days later my solicitor rang me and said they’ve pulled out,” she said. “I got a real fright.
“I said that methamphetamine test must have come back positive and she said it had.”
The potential buyers told Hopkins’ lawyer the results from the swabs showed the house exceeded the Ministry of Health’s guidelines.
There is, of course, no way such an absurd, sloppy “testing” procedure could actually tell whether the MoH guidelines have been exceeded. The news media have to stop carrying water for these exploiters. Instead, they quote them like they’re bloody scientists:
Karen Baker, of Detect IT NZ, said she would support the move.
“The consequences of ending up with a house contaminated with meth are quite severe,” Baker said.
“The amount of meth out there is quite prevalent, so when you get these two together you start to get quite a high risk factor."
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Hard News: Ali, in reply to Hilary Stace,
For me Mohammed Ali’s anti-war stand and friendship with Malcolm X were defining.
Later, in high school, I heard about Malcolm X (bless my great New Zealand liberal education), but in 1974 I was 12 years old and was taken by his extraordinary presence in popular culture. You could halve those TV audience figures and they’d still be remarkable. One of the tensions in When We Were Kings is the way Ali plays on the adoration of the people in Zaire while Foreman, another black man, becomes the isolated bad guy.
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