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Psuedoscience kills.
May. 16th, 2009 06:02 pmEveryone should read this:
The Doctor Will Sue You Now
( Introduction )
Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost academic distance of this book. For the most part we’ve been interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling, and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand, these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where things really matter?
In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment. AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people have died from it already, three million in the last year alone, and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.
It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers, but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark. ( Read more... )
PDF, Word document. Although they lack the links that are present in the online version.
I've copied & pasted the document into my livejournal not only because it says "Please distribute", but because I haven't seen anyone linking to it. Admittedly, I haven't been around much the past few weeks, but I've been skimming my list when I can. And I know lots of you care about the work of Medicins Sans Frontieres, prevention of HIV and treatment of AIDS. Clearly it's important and should be read. I originally said "everyone who cares about science, knowledge, ideas and humanity should read this", but I don't think it needs qualifiers. Just read it, ok?
The Doctor Will Sue You Now
( Introduction )
Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost academic distance of this book. For the most part we’ve been interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling, and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand, these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where things really matter?
In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment. AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people have died from it already, three million in the last year alone, and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.
It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers, but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark. ( Read more... )
PDF, Word document. Although they lack the links that are present in the online version.
I've copied & pasted the document into my livejournal not only because it says "Please distribute", but because I haven't seen anyone linking to it. Admittedly, I haven't been around much the past few weeks, but I've been skimming my list when I can. And I know lots of you care about the work of Medicins Sans Frontieres, prevention of HIV and treatment of AIDS. Clearly it's important and should be read. I originally said "everyone who cares about science, knowledge, ideas and humanity should read this", but I don't think it needs qualifiers. Just read it, ok?
