[Dean's World] Dean: Watching Someone Get Pummelled

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Posted by Dean:
Watching Someone Get Pummelled
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1141245136.shtml


   While Alexander will no doubt be embarrassed to see me linking him in
   an approving way, despite myself I wound up reading and linking
   [1]this recent thread on Daily Kos. Watching the guy take a pounding
   is wince-inducing but fascinating for how much it repeats a pattern
   seen in so many other places.

   It's an interesting thing to contemplate: when did trusting, or not
   trusting, the CDC and the NIH and the drug companies become a "left"
   vs. "right" defining issue?

   I just got the most extraordinary email the other day, from a
   mathematical biologist and associate professor who's built her career
   studying HIV, with papers you can look up in Medline, who has come to
   the conclusion that the whole thing's a charade and this virus can't
   possibly work as advertised. She's about to go public with that, with
   nothing more to gain from it than any of the other scientists I know
   who've done so (i.e. nothing but a big fat risk).

   Question: can the mainstream media keep a lid on this much longer?
   It's not about who's right or wrong, it's about wondering how it is
   that this level of scientific controversy managed to stay completely
   tucked away in some of the world's most prominent medical journals,
   while the mainstream press chose sides instead of dutifully reporting
   what was going on. [2]This month's Harper's was the first serious
   examination to make it into a major mainstream print publication
   since.... well, pretty much ever. At least half the people in
   editorial control of the New York Times and several other prominent
   papers probably read that magazine. You have to wonder what's going to
   come next.

References

   1. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/27/202946/893
   2. http://harpers.org/MostRecentCover.html