“More anxious readers means more clicks”: whoa buddy, that’s the truth. After the Biden inauguration and a year into Covid infections/restrictions/fears, I dumped NPR, Facebook (except for cats!), and a bunch of information sources that jacked up my preexisting anxiety disorder. But The NY Times stayed until 2 months ago. At $360 a year ($20 every 4 weeks) and no unlimited access to the recipes, I was already thinking they have the business model from Office Space. But the Biden bashing was the last straw. And my anxiety does feel a little improved.
I am very close to dumping WAPO. They’ve gotten rid of moderate voices and have kept right wing nutters like Theissan, Will, Wemple, Ponnuru. It’s ALL about the clicks.
The only voice of reason left is Rubin. She’s not enough to keep that subscription.
And I still listen to NPR..though I’m more choosy now which programming I listen to.
Ugh I was seeing so much red after that article, I wanted to have a word with Ms. Parker in person…. I wasn’t previously aware of Parker or her CBF witch hunt. Had I known, I wouldn’t have opened the article at all. As it stands, WaPo and NYT have offered me ridiculously cheap all-inclusive subscriptions that will last about a year (thanks to my trying to cancel both). Like…ridiculously cheap. They must be hemorrhaging subscribers (gee I wonder why). I figured I’d keep an eye on them and try to avoid their clickbait, then decide later if I want to jettison them once and for all. Maybe the loss or threatened loss of so many subs will force them to reevaluate their direction.
They hired a Murdoch evil henchperson to be the publisher, the former publisher was a Reagan fan-boy fanatic who personally reccommended the executive editor, who has been taking them more rightward, they publish way too many quotes of misinformation from the forced birther contingent, with no correction of medical misinformation. As someone who went to years of classes to learn the correct medical information this incenses me. They used to be better.
Look up Will Lewis that was hired by Bezos and started this past January as CEO and publisher of WAPO. He was a wing man for Rupert Murdoch for years. He worked at Murdoch's news media in the UK after the news came out they had hacked cell phones and emails of well known people including Prince Harry and he was accused of trying to do a coverup of everything.. After much of that was resolved, Murdoch placed him at the Wall Street Journal as publisher While there he had a large disagreement with China over news reporters from the WSJ and resigned. He has held multiple positions at different media and seems to have caused controversy at most places he has worked.
Of course they have, the new publisher is a Murdoch man, he was one of the culprits in their phone-hacking scandal. Remember when they hacked the dead child's phone? He was the involved in that.
I would have too. But I’m basically a morning drive time listener. Whatever they were reporting about in Spring 2021 on Morning Edition, it felt like they were catastrophizing with every other story. I couldn’t take it. It wasn’t the veracity as much as the tone. The days of the Founding Mothers era of NPR were well and truly over.
In 2012 or so, I gave up commuting with NPR and turned to audiobooks and podcasts. Their coverage had been crucial to me since my youth, but the political coverage seemed to develop a stench.
Same. I used to listed to NPR both to and from work, until the "both-sidesing" and having crackpots on to say whatever they wanted, and not even asking any follow-up questions or offering corrections. I see how that may have made sense in the past, but this model no longer works. I switched to audiobooks in 2015, and have not looked back.
Yeah, I still like NPR, and listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and a lot of the weekend programming--I just cut back on Morning Edition and All Things Considered during commute times, and my blood pressure returned to normal. Audiobooks greatly improved my mood during the commute.
I was an NPR listener from the early days onward (my dad used to listen so I was listening as a child!). I stoped last year and started audio books through my library for my 55 minute commute each way. I’m a much happier person. I still read Heather Cox Richardson, Jay Kuo, and Robert Hubbell on Substack and the rare Atlantic article but that’s about it.
Same here - we were constant NPR listeners but have fallen away because I find myself yelling at the radio at least once a day. Not good for the blood pressure and scares the birds away from the window feeder.
I still listen everyday. But I've learned to turn a careful ear to the guests and what they say, and the over all tone of the story. (I listen more for the shows like Fresh Air, 1A, etc.) Of course I am retired and have time now to follow up on stuff. If I were still working, I'd probably listen less.
A few years ago there was a reporter, I don't remember her name, that was on both NPR and Fox. The stories she reported on left out critical information, which I knew because I get my information from multiple sources. That's when I stopped trusting them. I had WAPO for a year but it was too expensive, so I dropped it and now I'm glad I did.
Try the Washington Post and/or the Guardian electronic editions. You get more balanced reporting and help the climate. The Guardian did a study of its total impact on the environment. It found that its print edition generated 60% of its total impact, while the electronic edition came in at 20%. And you aren't left with piles of old newsprint to dispose of.
Oh here’s the beauty: I still have my account. I stopped paying for a subscription, but use the app to play Wordle. So far my stats have been correct. I’m definitely playing partly for the streak. If it didn’t make me sound like an ass****, I’d tell you what my personal best is.
We jettisoned our NYT subscription largely because of their click bsit horse race political “journalism”. Substack keeps us up to date. Thanks Jay, RH, HCR et al. Worth not playing the NYT games. However, one can access games but after a month, NYT blocked me from playing Spelling Bee. Still can play Wordle, Mini, and Connections.
Mary I dumped the NYT in February my whole life I Always considered the nyt one of the most reliable sources of information. What a downturn they have taken
But iam so grateful to be here on substack which I believe this is just the beginning of a new way of reporting which is through grassroots platforms like Jay kuo and many others on here.
More anxious readers means more of us dumping the NYT when our anxiety is the content that they report is not worth the electricity used to read off of my laptop.
👍🏾I dumped NYT twice 😵💫 Harmful bias both times such as Jay highlighted about polls. They kept offering me. 50c a week to come back, & it's election year so.. 🤷🏻♀️ Can't remember what finished it for me this time as it was cumulative, but having established other sources of info to trust (Jay being one of the top 👏) I decided to put my $ to local journalism & individuals who have proven trustworthy. Mental health improved 🤸
Methods matter. In today's world of extended car warranties and telephone scams, I'm not sure how any landline poll should be taken seriously. Even if they are calling cell phones, who picks up on an unknown number nowadays?
I have a landline, retiree from Bell, someone called to do a survey, first question was are you a Democrat or republican, as soon as I said Democrat they hung up on me!
Wow, this Lancet thing has a lot more legs than it should, doesn't it? I mean, this got debunked years ago. I don't care how prestigious it is, Lancet sort of owes the public a dedicated issue of their magazine highlighting all the studies that have debunked the original story, as well as an in-depth article on why the original fraud happened. A big ole special issue, just for this.
As for the NY Times, a few people here are familiar with my NY Times Headline Corrector here on substack. I was a journalism student in college a few hundred years ago and my professors would have been appalled at modern editorializing that happens in today's journalism, but the NY Times, like Lancet, almost has a civic responsibility to not *normalize* Trump. They have abdicated that responsibility because, as you said so perfectly, "more anxious readers means more clicks."
It makes me wonder who were the peer reviewers for the 1998 Lancet article when it published the study by Andrew Wakefield suggesting a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
Whenever I read or hear anything about the Wakefield Study, the first thing that pops into my mind is "correlation is not causation". (I have no background in bio-statistics, but I do have an MS in the regular kind).
A lot of lay people confuse correlation with causation. Thus the timing of detecting autism shortly after the kids have gotten their childhood vaccinations "has to mean something" based on their logic. That is a tough nut to crack.
But there is a great website by a data scientist that might break them of that habit.
Tyler Vigen is a data scientist and he has searched out the craziest pairs of highly correlated variables and shares them here:
Hilarious. I read all the correlations on the Tyler Vigen web page. And now I know besides the correlation between hobbits and orderlies in Oklahoma, the existence of Middle Earth must most certainly be under Oklahoma and explains all the earthquakes. It’s not fracking, it’s unruly hobbits.
🤔Well, that explains the major earthquakes in Aotearoa-NZ after the designation of it as Middle Earth because of the filming of Lord of The Rings trilogy here, & Hobbiton now existing as a for-realsies place today that tourists flock to 😂
I’ll be visiting NZ later this year and visiting Hobbiton is lower than the bottom of my list of things to do and places to go. No offense to the books, movies, and the good folks of NZ and their beautiful country, it’s just I’ve already been to Disney Hollywood in Florida and grew up seeing movie stars in Southern California and tickets to TV series filming. I’m over celebrities and what they do for a living. Just another job folks.
For me the worst part about all this is the people who promote it, not the people who believe it. As a parent, I can understand people looking for answers, and I can especially understand the correlation to causation model of understanding, because it can be hard to resist.
What irks me is the people who take advantage of parents who are looking for answers (often in wrong places, of course).
The Wakefield study is especially reprehensible because it was designed as a fraud aimed at those people I've mentioned looking for answers, and it was designed in such a way, through a peer-reviewed journal, that would be much more easily accepted by the more reasoned among those looking for answers.
It's not like these people looking for answers were picking up a copy of Weekly World News at the supermarket and reacting to a story there.
The link is misleading from a semantic standpoint: I try to keep it updated, it's now up to April, but not quite as fully populated as it was when I started.
Totally agree about the Lancet issue. They need to make sure the public knows about the bogus ASD and vaccination connection. What a terribly destructive article that people still cling to!
Before we know it all of the diseases that have been mostly eradicated will come back because of that disinformation.
Additionally, everyone should stop paying attention to POLLS and get rid of their subscription to NYT immediately!
It would also be helpful if writers and pundits would stop linking to the articles too (unless it’s for a story like this).
Especially now with two presidential candidates who, although not major candidates, will make a lot of noise, amplifying the message. I'm thinking of writing to Lancet about this. I'll tell them my letter was peer reviewed by a lot of angry people.
As a former clinical investigator in drug trials, all I can say is that no trial with only 12 subjects should ever be reported as it is nothing but an anecdote and in this case a deliberately manipulated one. Show me a trial with good design, that has appropriately selected subjects including an equal number of controls with at least 3500 subjects and I will start to pay attention. As far as the NYT poll... they have been consistently behind tRump from the get go because he generates clicks and I presume subscriptions for them. I have no doubt that they deliberately commission manipulated polls. I was upset with their coverage in 2016 and dumped my subscription with a scathing letter the day after The Orange Menace won.
Interesting that you mention the N. WaPo had a story about treating people with major psychotic disorders (Bipolar Affective Disorder and schizophrenia) with a ketogenic diet. Interesting outcome, but an initial n of 23. To me, it’s irresponsible to report that at all in a general circulation newspaper. But what do I know: I took stats for nursing undergraduates.
I did a high-powered residency and our assistant program director pointed out (back in the 90's) that all the shoddy little scientific studies got reported to the press on Monday (he called them the 'mouse studies' and got printed in the press on Wednesday and starting on Thursday we had patients waving these press reports based on tiny numbers of subjects - frequently mice and rats in our faces... The creep who published this vaccine / ASD study caused unbelievable harm. Literally billions of people have taken MMR and strangely we only see the sequelae of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella in the unvaccinated. ASD has undergone enormous improvements in diagnosis and naming since before MMR. The people with bad Autism used to just be lumped into the broad category of 'Mentally Retarded" Are there more of them now than there used to be or is this a classification artifact?
Reporting on polls with these types of structural errors (size of sample group, any alliances of pollsters, etc.) should, at least, have the little header "advertisement" over it.
Right? And also: this is clinically meaningless at this time. 🤦🏻♀️ But I foresee seriously ill people trying a wholistic approach to their psychotic symptoms with fats, not proven efficacious medications.
Andrew Wakefield’s study in Lancet had several co-authors. ALL withdrew their support when the critical review was published revealing the non-random selection of patients and the relationship with litigation attorneys became public. His effort to patent an alternative measles (rubeola) vaccine added to the scientific community’s rejection of his findings. Too numerous are the studies which have put the lie to his conclusions.
Brilliant job, Jay, thank you! I wrote surveys for research projects in the US, UK, and Australia, so I know how important bias can be in skewing results. Had many arguments with research clients and non-academic partners who couldn't understand why asking a loaded question would be a problem. That's a rather obvious version of the two skewing mechanisms you discuss.
I got a masters in Stats and one of the most interesting electives I took was called "Survey Design and Analysis" - it was taught by a guy who did this as a professional. It made me very critical of the quality of the surveys floating around.
“That a major presidential candidate and his chosen VP both spout conspiratorial narratives about vaccines is worrisome, and the media needs to work overtime to fact-check and push back against it. The consequences of these false claims were evident in the anti-vax hysteria during the Covid-19 pandemic, with terrible consequences for those who fell victim to the misinformation.”
Yep. Infectious Diseases doctor and Clinical Microbiologist here. When a medical journal retracts an article, it is a big deal. Not something they do lightly. It means it is bogus.
Please read Michelle Goldberg’s revelatory article on Kennedy in today’s NYT. If you are able to get it. It made me sick to my stomach. America is eating itself alive. God help us if these looneys swing the election. Why are we letting the fringe determine how we govern ourselves??
Regarding the polling situation, I don’t put any credence on any results, especially at this time seven months prior to Election Day. And as I have been harping for over a year, HILLARY CLINTON LED IN EVERY POLL AS LATE AS OCTOBER OF 2016! WE NEED TO FOCUS AND DRILL HOME POTUS BIDEN AND HIS OUTSTANDING PROGRESS. PERIOD.
As far as the latest round of polls, good and bad for Biden/Harris, I say the same thing I have been saying for years:
Ever since the Great Polling Debacle of 2016, the polling results have grown more unreliable. I ignore them and urge others to do the same. I also call out those who state any conclusions (eg Biden is behind, Biden is unpopular, etc) based on polling results. There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there are polls. Keep on truckin’ toward a Blue Tsunami in 2024!
I gave up on the New York Times about a year ago when it became pretty obvious they were normalizing Trump as a way to keep a "horse race" narrative alive for the 2024 election. The preponderance of negative stories about Biden as opposed to Trump was pretty much a bridge too far. Negative stories about Biden that are fair? Sure. Ginned up BS stories using Republican talking points? Nope.
Yes, it declined pretty fast after that, his sucessor is far too right-wing, someone said John Solomon, (the massive wingnut) was her mentor at the AP.
As I’ve said since I worked for a polling firm in Canada in the mid 80’s, polls are flat out garbage. They are far too easy to manipulate and the average person doesn’t even look at the methodology or numbers polled when these polls are released. Remember that polling firms are paid to poll, they all have house Psychologists and linguists who help them formulate the questions asked and how those questions are to be answered.
The only polls that actually matter is the one on Election Day.
Get out and vote BLUE like your democracy depended on it, because this time around, it DOES!
“More anxious readers means more clicks”: whoa buddy, that’s the truth. After the Biden inauguration and a year into Covid infections/restrictions/fears, I dumped NPR, Facebook (except for cats!), and a bunch of information sources that jacked up my preexisting anxiety disorder. But The NY Times stayed until 2 months ago. At $360 a year ($20 every 4 weeks) and no unlimited access to the recipes, I was already thinking they have the business model from Office Space. But the Biden bashing was the last straw. And my anxiety does feel a little improved.
I am very close to dumping WAPO. They’ve gotten rid of moderate voices and have kept right wing nutters like Theissan, Will, Wemple, Ponnuru. It’s ALL about the clicks.
The only voice of reason left is Rubin. She’s not enough to keep that subscription.
And I still listen to NPR..though I’m more choosy now which programming I listen to.
I just jettisoned WAPO. The writers you mentioned plus Parker. Her despicable article on Christine Blasey Ford last week was the final straw.
I refused to read her or any of the authors I mentioned. I will not give them my click.
Time to cancel.
I let my subscriptions to both the NYT and WAPO lapse during the last year. Too much misinformation and pushing problematic polls.
Ugh I was seeing so much red after that article, I wanted to have a word with Ms. Parker in person…. I wasn’t previously aware of Parker or her CBF witch hunt. Had I known, I wouldn’t have opened the article at all. As it stands, WaPo and NYT have offered me ridiculously cheap all-inclusive subscriptions that will last about a year (thanks to my trying to cancel both). Like…ridiculously cheap. They must be hemorrhaging subscribers (gee I wonder why). I figured I’d keep an eye on them and try to avoid their clickbait, then decide later if I want to jettison them once and for all. Maybe the loss or threatened loss of so many subs will force them to reevaluate their direction.
They hired a Murdoch evil henchperson to be the publisher, the former publisher was a Reagan fan-boy fanatic who personally reccommended the executive editor, who has been taking them more rightward, they publish way too many quotes of misinformation from the forced birther contingent, with no correction of medical misinformation. As someone who went to years of classes to learn the correct medical information this incenses me. They used to be better.
Look up Will Lewis that was hired by Bezos and started this past January as CEO and publisher of WAPO. He was a wing man for Rupert Murdoch for years. He worked at Murdoch's news media in the UK after the news came out they had hacked cell phones and emails of well known people including Prince Harry and he was accused of trying to do a coverup of everything.. After much of that was resolved, Murdoch placed him at the Wall Street Journal as publisher While there he had a large disagreement with China over news reporters from the WSJ and resigned. He has held multiple positions at different media and seems to have caused controversy at most places he has worked.
Of course they have, the new publisher is a Murdoch man, he was one of the culprits in their phone-hacking scandal. Remember when they hacked the dead child's phone? He was the involved in that.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-washington-post-publisher-will-lewis-infuriated-news-corp-staff-during-murdoch-phone-hacking-scandal
Mary..NPR? What did you find with them that was disconcerting? I would have thought they'd be a trusted source..Would love to hear your feedback.
I would have too. But I’m basically a morning drive time listener. Whatever they were reporting about in Spring 2021 on Morning Edition, it felt like they were catastrophizing with every other story. I couldn’t take it. It wasn’t the veracity as much as the tone. The days of the Founding Mothers era of NPR were well and truly over.
In 2012 or so, I gave up commuting with NPR and turned to audiobooks and podcasts. Their coverage had been crucial to me since my youth, but the political coverage seemed to develop a stench.
Same. I used to listed to NPR both to and from work, until the "both-sidesing" and having crackpots on to say whatever they wanted, and not even asking any follow-up questions or offering corrections. I see how that may have made sense in the past, but this model no longer works. I switched to audiobooks in 2015, and have not looked back.
Same here. We were long time NPR listeners but the both sidesing ended it for us too.
For me it was the squealing, sighing, and many “Wow”s of the anchors and reporters.
I still occasionally listen to This American Life and Fresh Air via podcast. I've learned some great stuff from both over the years!
Yeah, I still like NPR, and listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and a lot of the weekend programming--I just cut back on Morning Edition and All Things Considered during commute times, and my blood pressure returned to normal. Audiobooks greatly improved my mood during the commute.
Something. I didn’t think it was off as much as pushed to the point of theatricality. I loathe manufactured drama outside of books and movies.
I was an NPR listener from the early days onward (my dad used to listen so I was listening as a child!). I stoped last year and started audio books through my library for my 55 minute commute each way. I’m a much happier person. I still read Heather Cox Richardson, Jay Kuo, and Robert Hubbell on Substack and the rare Atlantic article but that’s about it.
Same here - we were constant NPR listeners but have fallen away because I find myself yelling at the radio at least once a day. Not good for the blood pressure and scares the birds away from the window feeder.
Yes, my feeling as well. You put it very well!
That's disappointing...hubby was a huge listener too.
I still listen everyday. But I've learned to turn a careful ear to the guests and what they say, and the over all tone of the story. (I listen more for the shows like Fresh Air, 1A, etc.) Of course I am retired and have time now to follow up on stuff. If I were still working, I'd probably listen less.
A few years ago there was a reporter, I don't remember her name, that was on both NPR and Fox. The stories she reported on left out critical information, which I knew because I get my information from multiple sources. That's when I stopped trusting them. I had WAPO for a year but it was too expensive, so I dropped it and now I'm glad I did.
Try the Washington Post and/or the Guardian electronic editions. You get more balanced reporting and help the climate. The Guardian did a study of its total impact on the environment. It found that its print edition generated 60% of its total impact, while the electronic edition came in at 20%. And you aren't left with piles of old newsprint to dispose of.
I signed on to the Guardian, partly because I can share stories without that pesky subscriber limit on the Times and Post.
I keep thinking I’ll dump the NYT too, but then I realize I’d lose my Wordle streak! Next time I lose, I’ll reassess.
you can play Wordle, Connections, Strands, etc. without a NYT account!
Oh here’s the beauty: I still have my account. I stopped paying for a subscription, but use the app to play Wordle. So far my stats have been correct. I’m definitely playing partly for the streak. If it didn’t make me sound like an ass****, I’d tell you what my personal best is.
You can just subscribe to the games which include Wordle! That’s what I’ve done.
We jettisoned our NYT subscription largely because of their click bsit horse race political “journalism”. Substack keeps us up to date. Thanks Jay, RH, HCR et al. Worth not playing the NYT games. However, one can access games but after a month, NYT blocked me from playing Spelling Bee. Still can play Wordle, Mini, and Connections.
You can just buy the games subscription. :-)
I play Wordle without a subscription. ??
Yeah!
I do too!
You don't need the NYT subscription for Wordle athough some other of their games require it- or just switch to the games subscription
Mary I dumped the NYT in February my whole life I Always considered the nyt one of the most reliable sources of information. What a downturn they have taken
But iam so grateful to be here on substack which I believe this is just the beginning of a new way of reporting which is through grassroots platforms like Jay kuo and many others on here.
More anxious readers means more of us dumping the NYT when our anxiety is the content that they report is not worth the electricity used to read off of my laptop.
👍🏾I dumped NYT twice 😵💫 Harmful bias both times such as Jay highlighted about polls. They kept offering me. 50c a week to come back, & it's election year so.. 🤷🏻♀️ Can't remember what finished it for me this time as it was cumulative, but having established other sources of info to trust (Jay being one of the top 👏) I decided to put my $ to local journalism & individuals who have proven trustworthy. Mental health improved 🤸
Methods matter. In today's world of extended car warranties and telephone scams, I'm not sure how any landline poll should be taken seriously. Even if they are calling cell phones, who picks up on an unknown number nowadays?
I have a landline, retiree from Bell, someone called to do a survey, first question was are you a Democrat or republican, as soon as I said Democrat they hung up on me!
"Even if they are calling cell phones, who picks up on an unknown number nowadays?"
Trumpadoodles do!!
They are called trumpanzees!!
So many names... So little time :-)
I just call them maggots.
Wow, this Lancet thing has a lot more legs than it should, doesn't it? I mean, this got debunked years ago. I don't care how prestigious it is, Lancet sort of owes the public a dedicated issue of their magazine highlighting all the studies that have debunked the original story, as well as an in-depth article on why the original fraud happened. A big ole special issue, just for this.
As for the NY Times, a few people here are familiar with my NY Times Headline Corrector here on substack. I was a journalism student in college a few hundred years ago and my professors would have been appalled at modern editorializing that happens in today's journalism, but the NY Times, like Lancet, almost has a civic responsibility to not *normalize* Trump. They have abdicated that responsibility because, as you said so perfectly, "more anxious readers means more clicks."
Thanks for the details on both of these issues.
It makes me wonder who were the peer reviewers for the 1998 Lancet article when it published the study by Andrew Wakefield suggesting a link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
Whenever I read or hear anything about the Wakefield Study, the first thing that pops into my mind is "correlation is not causation". (I have no background in bio-statistics, but I do have an MS in the regular kind).
A lot of lay people confuse correlation with causation. Thus the timing of detecting autism shortly after the kids have gotten their childhood vaccinations "has to mean something" based on their logic. That is a tough nut to crack.
But there is a great website by a data scientist that might break them of that habit.
Tyler Vigen is a data scientist and he has searched out the craziest pairs of highly correlated variables and shares them here:
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Hilarious. I read all the correlations on the Tyler Vigen web page. And now I know besides the correlation between hobbits and orderlies in Oklahoma, the existence of Middle Earth must most certainly be under Oklahoma and explains all the earthquakes. It’s not fracking, it’s unruly hobbits.
🤔Well, that explains the major earthquakes in Aotearoa-NZ after the designation of it as Middle Earth because of the filming of Lord of The Rings trilogy here, & Hobbiton now existing as a for-realsies place today that tourists flock to 😂
I’ll be visiting NZ later this year and visiting Hobbiton is lower than the bottom of my list of things to do and places to go. No offense to the books, movies, and the good folks of NZ and their beautiful country, it’s just I’ve already been to Disney Hollywood in Florida and grew up seeing movie stars in Southern California and tickets to TV series filming. I’m over celebrities and what they do for a living. Just another job folks.
For me the worst part about all this is the people who promote it, not the people who believe it. As a parent, I can understand people looking for answers, and I can especially understand the correlation to causation model of understanding, because it can be hard to resist.
What irks me is the people who take advantage of parents who are looking for answers (often in wrong places, of course).
The Wakefield study is especially reprehensible because it was designed as a fraud aimed at those people I've mentioned looking for answers, and it was designed in such a way, through a peer-reviewed journal, that would be much more easily accepted by the more reasoned among those looking for answers.
It's not like these people looking for answers were picking up a copy of Weekly World News at the supermarket and reacting to a story there.
Where can I find your NYT Headline Corrector? A search here on substack yielded no results.
https://ruminato.substack.com/p/trump-headline-corrector-february
The link is misleading from a semantic standpoint: I try to keep it updated, it's now up to April, but not quite as fully populated as it was when I started.
Thank you 😊
Quite welcome. The NY Times approach has bugged me for a long time.
Totally agree about the Lancet issue. They need to make sure the public knows about the bogus ASD and vaccination connection. What a terribly destructive article that people still cling to!
Before we know it all of the diseases that have been mostly eradicated will come back because of that disinformation.
Additionally, everyone should stop paying attention to POLLS and get rid of their subscription to NYT immediately!
It would also be helpful if writers and pundits would stop linking to the articles too (unless it’s for a story like this).
Especially now with two presidential candidates who, although not major candidates, will make a lot of noise, amplifying the message. I'm thinking of writing to Lancet about this. I'll tell them my letter was peer reviewed by a lot of angry people.
Great idea! Everyone should write Lancet to set the record straight.
There are now TWO antivaxxers running for president?
No, sorry, I was unclear. There's RFK Jr. and his Veep candidate.
Neuralink. But the side-effect is that there is a constant echo in my brain now about the white replacement theory.
As a former clinical investigator in drug trials, all I can say is that no trial with only 12 subjects should ever be reported as it is nothing but an anecdote and in this case a deliberately manipulated one. Show me a trial with good design, that has appropriately selected subjects including an equal number of controls with at least 3500 subjects and I will start to pay attention. As far as the NYT poll... they have been consistently behind tRump from the get go because he generates clicks and I presume subscriptions for them. I have no doubt that they deliberately commission manipulated polls. I was upset with their coverage in 2016 and dumped my subscription with a scathing letter the day after The Orange Menace won.
Interesting that you mention the N. WaPo had a story about treating people with major psychotic disorders (Bipolar Affective Disorder and schizophrenia) with a ketogenic diet. Interesting outcome, but an initial n of 23. To me, it’s irresponsible to report that at all in a general circulation newspaper. But what do I know: I took stats for nursing undergraduates.
I did a high-powered residency and our assistant program director pointed out (back in the 90's) that all the shoddy little scientific studies got reported to the press on Monday (he called them the 'mouse studies' and got printed in the press on Wednesday and starting on Thursday we had patients waving these press reports based on tiny numbers of subjects - frequently mice and rats in our faces... The creep who published this vaccine / ASD study caused unbelievable harm. Literally billions of people have taken MMR and strangely we only see the sequelae of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella in the unvaccinated. ASD has undergone enormous improvements in diagnosis and naming since before MMR. The people with bad Autism used to just be lumped into the broad category of 'Mentally Retarded" Are there more of them now than there used to be or is this a classification artifact?
Reporting on polls with these types of structural errors (size of sample group, any alliances of pollsters, etc.) should, at least, have the little header "advertisement" over it.
Right? And also: this is clinically meaningless at this time. 🤦🏻♀️ But I foresee seriously ill people trying a wholistic approach to their psychotic symptoms with fats, not proven efficacious medications.
Their 'health writer' is an exposed hack. I forget her name, but after some particular wrong advice I googled her name.
I have seen a few of these wellness articles that are full of anecdotal nonsense and superficial (at best) grasp of the science.
Yes, if I could google her and find out she sucked at her job, why didn't they?
This is such an exceptional analysis. Jay you never disappoint.
Andrew Wakefield’s study in Lancet had several co-authors. ALL withdrew their support when the critical review was published revealing the non-random selection of patients and the relationship with litigation attorneys became public. His effort to patent an alternative measles (rubeola) vaccine added to the scientific community’s rejection of his findings. Too numerous are the studies which have put the lie to his conclusions.
Fascinating, thank you for that additional detail.
Brilliant job, Jay, thank you! I wrote surveys for research projects in the US, UK, and Australia, so I know how important bias can be in skewing results. Had many arguments with research clients and non-academic partners who couldn't understand why asking a loaded question would be a problem. That's a rather obvious version of the two skewing mechanisms you discuss.
I got a masters in Stats and one of the most interesting electives I took was called "Survey Design and Analysis" - it was taught by a guy who did this as a professional. It made me very critical of the quality of the surveys floating around.
“That a major presidential candidate and his chosen VP both spout conspiratorial narratives about vaccines is worrisome, and the media needs to work overtime to fact-check and push back against it. The consequences of these false claims were evident in the anti-vax hysteria during the Covid-19 pandemic, with terrible consequences for those who fell victim to the misinformation.”
Yep. Infectious Diseases doctor and Clinical Microbiologist here. When a medical journal retracts an article, it is a big deal. Not something they do lightly. It means it is bogus.
Please read Michelle Goldberg’s revelatory article on Kennedy in today’s NYT. If you are able to get it. It made me sick to my stomach. America is eating itself alive. God help us if these looneys swing the election. Why are we letting the fringe determine how we govern ourselves??
Here's a gift link to Michelle Goldberg’s article on RFK,jr: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/opinion/rfk-movement-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iE0.s-GM.6h8iV24DBGUm&smid=url-share
Regarding the polling situation, I don’t put any credence on any results, especially at this time seven months prior to Election Day. And as I have been harping for over a year, HILLARY CLINTON LED IN EVERY POLL AS LATE AS OCTOBER OF 2016! WE NEED TO FOCUS AND DRILL HOME POTUS BIDEN AND HIS OUTSTANDING PROGRESS. PERIOD.
🤔Not to mention even if a"poll" is correct, it is a snapshot in time that can be affected by events subsequent - case in point Hillary Clinton 🤷🏻♀️
As far as the latest round of polls, good and bad for Biden/Harris, I say the same thing I have been saying for years:
Ever since the Great Polling Debacle of 2016, the polling results have grown more unreliable. I ignore them and urge others to do the same. I also call out those who state any conclusions (eg Biden is behind, Biden is unpopular, etc) based on polling results. There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and then there are polls. Keep on truckin’ toward a Blue Tsunami in 2024!
I gave up on the New York Times about a year ago when it became pretty obvious they were normalizing Trump as a way to keep a "horse race" narrative alive for the 2024 election. The preponderance of negative stories about Biden as opposed to Trump was pretty much a bridge too far. Negative stories about Biden that are fair? Sure. Ginned up BS stories using Republican talking points? Nope.
When Marty Baron left I knew WAPO was in trouble.
Yes, it declined pretty fast after that, his sucessor is far too right-wing, someone said John Solomon, (the massive wingnut) was her mentor at the AP.
As I’ve said since I worked for a polling firm in Canada in the mid 80’s, polls are flat out garbage. They are far too easy to manipulate and the average person doesn’t even look at the methodology or numbers polled when these polls are released. Remember that polling firms are paid to poll, they all have house Psychologists and linguists who help them formulate the questions asked and how those questions are to be answered.
The only polls that actually matter is the one on Election Day.
Get out and vote BLUE like your democracy depended on it, because this time around, it DOES!
Blatantly CORRUPT trumpwhore Kellyanne Conway was a pollster.
Thanks Jay,my blood pressure is lowering as I read !
I couldn't agree more with your summary.
One of he functions of this poll reporting bias is that it will support arguments in November that the election results are bogus.
🤬