Tom Levenson has a major four-part opus up eviscerating Megan McArdle far asserting that a decrease in drug company revenues that might occur due to health care reform would result in decreased life expectancy for Americans. She uses a study to back up this claim, which Levenson notes in Part 2, happens to have been funded by the world�s largest pharmaceutical company.
Now, as Levenson notes, that alone does not make the study wrong in any way, but it would, for most people at least, make one question its claims a bit more closely. (Levenson does so in parts three and four.)
I don�t have a dog in the fight over health care reform in the U.S. due to my grandparents having the good sense to homestead in the socialist hell-hole that is Canada, but that particular point of looking to the source of a particular study certainly came to mind while I was reading this news.
Canada is doing very well in broadband availability, speeds and affordability as compared to other countries, according to a new study funded by the country's largest internet service providers.
The report, commissioned by Bell, Bell Aliant, Rogers, Cogeco, Telus, Shaw and SaskTel and prepared by telecommunications consultant Mark Goldberg, found that Canadians are well served in broadband, contrary to the findings of other international reports.
Well, can you imagine that? The Canadian ISPs have come out with study saying that their service isn�t actually the slow, overburdened, and expensive pile of crap all those international studies comparing them to other countries have said it is. I guess we can all stop complaining then!
Granted, one shouldn�t just dismiss the study out of hand. It is still possible that they have in fact come up with a proper study that does show what they are claiming, even if it just happens to serve their own self-interest, though the fact that it contradicts independent studies does mean one should look at it with increased scepticism at the very least. I look at this and wonder why companies even bother funding such studies when they should know that most people are going to consider them hopelessly skewed and biased. Then I go back to the McArdle example Levenson shows, and the reason companies keep putting out these studies becomes clear again.
There are always those who, quite unlike the CBC reporter who did their job properly in telling the audience just exactly where the report was coming from and that it was contradicted by pretty much every other study with more credible pedigrees, will happily spout the results of said �studies� without questioning, or indeed mentioning, just where it is they come from, so long as it supports their own viewpoint (which is why I�m certain that by the end of the day there will be dozens of posts on right-wing blogs carrying this story �proving� CO2 doesn�t have anything to do with Climate Change).
And so long as there are such shills willing to push such studies, and news organizations willing to pay and promote them as though they are serious journalists, then it makes good business sense to keep producing such studies. Sure, you won�t convince those who know better or who will actually check the claims against reality, but it�s likely enough to keep the waters muddied for everybody else.
I just recently cancelled my subscription to The Atlantic. I'd been a very, very long term reader and subscriber. The clown columnist you mentioned was one of the reasons along with Suillivan et al on the voices blogs - Fallows excluded. I'm generally tried of propaganda masquerading as journalism. I don't give our CBC a pass on this either. The morning show, The Current, with its near hysterical presenter verges on the absurd most day as it struggles to figure out if it really is the modern Ladies Home Journal or simply a mouth piece to any current federal gov't. I'd like some hard old crusts like Edward Smith Hall who, I think, had tattooed on his forehead that a journalist is: "an inveterate opposer rather than a staunch parasite of gov't"
ReplyDeleteGeoff, I don�t generally watch CBC news, and certainly not The Current, so I cannot comment on its content, though I tend to have issues with just about every news service at some point or another. As to Mr. Hall�s formulation, I don�t think journalists have to be inveterate opposers of the government, else Fox News would have to be considered good journalists during Democratic presidencies, but they should be willing to question government�s assertions and present the proper facts when they are contradictory, which isn�t about opposition but merely professionalism.
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