Medical Examiner

Re: A further note on Sourcewatch

dianasatyr — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:41:04 GMT

Ah, the obfuscation is flying thick and fast!

A bit of common sense is in order. Ask yourself, "If someone gives me a lot of money how likely am I to do what he or she wants if I can?" I don't know about you. Some of you will undoubtedly claim indifference to where the dollars come from. But it is human nature to be grateful--and to hope for more gifts! Most of us can always use more money. This is especially true in the USA, where, in the absence of an hereditary aristocracy or even the idea of one, there is only one way to even semi-objectively assign status. There being no Burke's Peerage here, money talks, and most eloquently!

Add to that the fact that money also talks loudly in the area of public relations expertise. Richard Mellon Schaife and friends, alarmed at the movement to the Left of some parts of US society in the 1960s, set up a number of foundations like the American Enterprise Institute to stop that reprehensible movement. Please see this article on the subject: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/ConservThinkTanks.html

Guess what! They succeeded! We all know which way politics in the US has moved since 1980. Likewise the folks hired, directly or indirectly, by major businesses to skew public discussion of more mundane issues have become incredibly clever at influencing public opinion in indirect ways. Try following the stories on this site for a while:
http://www.prwatch.org/

"So business can buy the best manipulation imaginable. So what!" you will say. "Surely those great psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers wouldn't be swayed by their honoraria!"

Go ahead and believe that. You will be just like the people in every poll about advertising who say "Hey, it has no effect on me." This from members of the most indebted population in the world! I urge you, please notice that our society has changed around you. There is little scope for old-fashioned integrity where money flows like water to every opinion leader.

Re: A bit of clarification

Peter D. Kramer — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:37:01 GMT

Note: As a former principal host of "The Infinite Mind," I have posted comments on this controversy on my blog, hosted by Psychology Today, here: http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/200805/drug-money-and-objectivity

Peter D. Kramer

A further note on Sourcewatch

Trevor Butterworth — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:52:04 GMT

Readers (and journalists) should note the following point made by Sourcewatch in a discussion on the accuracy of its entries on Reason magazine's blog Hit and Run:

"we don't claim that SourceWatch's articles are "authoritative" in the sense of containing all the relevant facts on a subject or having a "balance" or "neutral point of view."

Re: A bit of clarification

Trevor Butterworth — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:06:24 GMT

If I were Jeanne Lenzer or Shannon Brownlee, I'd be more concerned about whether I was encouraging people to forgo medicine they actually need than rushing to pick cherries to lob at their critics.

Yes, STATS has received money from Scaife. So has Planned Parenthood. We have not received money from any pharmaceutical company. Our director of research is an award-winning mathematician, Rebecca Goldin, Harvard and MIT educated, and one of the most formidable minds I have had the pleasure of working with. We're affiliated with the Math and the Communications departments at GMU, and CMPA - our sister organization - has been praised by Bill Clinton and funded by the NRDC and Rockefeller Brothers as well as the cherries plucked by Lenzer and Brownlee. That's why we describe ourselves as non-partisan.

One of the reasons so many news organizations trust us is that we take the side of the data, not the party. (It's also one of the reasons why we're so poor). In fact, if you read the piece, we *did* the reporting that Lenzer and Brownlee couldn't be bothered to do - and which would have made their article more credible. Thanks.

At the same time, we think the kind of reporting Brownlee and Lenzer actually did for Slate is intellectually lazy, deeply misguided and, fundamentally, dangerous. And we're not afraid to say that either. Sorry. Sorry too for pointing out that the "minor correction" in the BMJ article was nothing of the sort. But that's the kind of trap a prosecutorial approach to industry can lead you into.

At STATS, we've taken on many unpalatable causes, pointing out what journalists, too quick to jump to conclusions, and too reluctant or scared to do some hard math and science, failed to point out. This has been the case with OxyContin epidemic (which Slate will remember all too well) and Avandia. Yes, I guess that could make us appear to be pro industry; same too with BPA and phthalates. .

But we have also taken on the Global warming deniers, the war on drugs and the boot-camp/tough love industry. Read what's on the site. Compare to Sourcewatch (not the most reliable enterprise in DC, btw - and equally agenda driven. I do appreciate, though, that, after four years of STATS publishing almost daily, Sourcewatch now has taken down the line about us being inactive).

It is precisely because we follow the data wherever it goes that our work has been instrumental in driving the recent Congressional hearings (led by Rep George Miller - a Democrat) and a GAO investigation into an industry that has strong ties to the Republican Party. To give us fair credit would, of course, mean that we're not part of some evil empire of astro-turfing shills.

So where does that leave Lenzer and Brownlee's insinuation that we're just another front group? I suspect offense is the best defense when you've screwed up, but it also makes their position look more and more desperate and partisan.

Re: A bit of clarification

C. Lambeau — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:06:39 GMT

Once again here, Lenzer attempts to discredit a solid idea by launching a McCarthy-like attack implying that the source is somehow "tainted."

Here's what Stats wrote:

Lenzer, a former physician’s assistant turned freelance writer, appears to be of the “industry money corrupts” school of medical reporting. This has its place, but only if an accusation of vested interests can be shown in faulty research methodology and poor statistical methods, or that the drug is pointless or has a greater risk profile than similar drugs without any greater benefit. Otherwise, it’s a way of reporting whose bias is at least as bad as the bias it purports to expose precisely because it’s unscientific in method; it insinuates corruption without demonstrating it in the data.

This paragraph is at the heart of what's wrong with the Lenzer-Brownlee article. Yes, The Infinite Mind should have disclosed Peter Pitts' connections. They've apologized about that. But neither credible journalists nor credible researchers should be viewed de facto as checking their ethics at the door without some indication that the actual CONTENT has been affected by a direct pecuniary connection with a manufacturer. Simply pointing a finger and alleging a connection to witchcraft may have worked in 1692, or for McCarthy in
1952, but hopefully as a society, we are beyond that now.

There's an interesting indication in this last post about where Lenzer's own bias lies, when she starts to talk in broad terms about the "potential life-threatening harms of antidepressants." Yes, SSRIs' like most medications, can have side effects. But there are no credible researchers working in this area that would dispute the fact that the Prozac class of antidepressants have save untold thousands of lives, with a benefit far outweighing their risk. There is no real "controversy" about that. If Lenzer thinks so, that's a key to just how credible she is as a health reporter. Perhaps there's a closet Scientologist in Slate's house?

A bit of clarification

Jeanne Lenzer — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:17:43 GMT

We are concerned about a link provided by NPR’s ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, in her otherwise fine article. In what seems to be a reference to a neutral third party, Shepard cites an article that suggests that “both sides are at fault,” meaning The Infinite Mind and Slate. She gives the following link: http://www.stats.org/stories/2008/prozac_wars_may12_08.html to a post by Trevor Butterworth of Stats.org.

But according to Source Watch, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Statistical_Assessment_Service: stats.org is a “stealth PR operation of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA),” which is funded by the far-right Scaife and Castle Rock Foundations (among others) and has a strongly pro-industry agenda.

Like the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest that we discussed in our article, “Stealth Marketers,” Stats.org thus exists under the guise of impartiality or ‘public interest.’ Their industry ties are not stated up front.

We are also concerned that in Shepard’s piece, Bill Lichtenstein was given space to claim that there simply is no controversy about antidepressants (“no credible scientific evidence”). The Stats.org link claims that we are “at fault” for not talking about how many lives are saved by antidepressants. Yet NPR fails to provide a link or quotation from experts who are concerned about the potential life-threatening harms of antidepressants. However, that wasn’t the topic of our article. Had it been, we would have eaten up a great deal more of Slate’s real estate to discuss the controversy.

Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee