Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

Re:Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg by srcreigh on Saturday December 18, 2021 @01:21AM (#29602207)

Your argument is basically that this article may be largely speculation, assuming that no information was withheld (even though the article contradicts itself in its own communication about FDA review of the trial)... and that this speculation is the same as minimal conclusions based on available evidence.

I disagree. One bad study doesn't mean all scientific conclusions are bad. One bad study doesn't mean Pfizer's trials are bad. Ignorance doesn't prove anything...

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Re:Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg by quadrangle on Monday December 20, 2021 @01:26AM (#29622037)

I don't know if you imagine me to be partisan here. I was arguing simply that headlines are hard to balance, and that people can interpret articles with a slant.

I wasn't saying that one bad study means the overall trial was bad.

The issue is that SOME people might think that. (Also others might think that if it's ONE study that's bad, the overall trial WAS fine, when that's not clear either).

The risk is whether real people take away a too-strong message and run with it.

In other words, journalists have SOME responsibility to not mislead people even when the main way people get off-track is their own erroneous jumping-to-conclusions as readers. We KNOW that readers do such things, so we have to be careful to minimize it.

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