Helmintholog

Playing the tape of my interview with Dan Dennett, I hear myself, and think ‘what was I thinking’; then I can hear in the following silence the other party thinking the same thing and desperately trying to discover some peg in what I have said for what it is they want to say. It’s not that I am incapable of coherent thought, but that most of the time I can only collect it on paper. There is no backspace key in real life, but I am always reaching for one — I get half way through a sentence and then realise that it should have started somewhere else if it is to go where I suddenly realise it wants to. Or I say out loud an idea — the equivalent of bashing it down before I forget — but I don’t have a mouse available to push it to its proper position three paragraphs on. No wonder the poor sod at the receiving end is mystified. The only advantage that my speech has over my writing is that it’s free of typos.

Yet all this comes about because I want the other person to talk freely. If I had a grid of questions, or if I were trying to get them to admit something, how much simpler it all would be — and how very much more difficult.

• The final version eliminates the conclusion that healthcare disparities are “national problems.” The scientists’ draft found that “racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities are national problems that affect health care at all points in the process, at all sites of care, and for all medical conditions — in fact, disparities are pervasive in our health care system.” The final version states only that “some socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and geographic differences exist.”
• The final version drops findings on the social costs of disparities and replaces them with a discussion of “successes.” The scientists’ draft concluded that “disparities come at a personal and societal price,” including lost productivity, needless disability, and early death. The final version drops this conclusion and replaces it with the finding that “some ‘priority populations’ do as well or better than the general population in some aspects of health care.” As an example, the executive summary highlights that “American Indians/Alaska Natives have a lower death rate from all cancers.” The executive summary does not mention that overall life expectancies for American Indians and Alaska Natives are significantly shorter than for other Americans or that their infant mortality rates are substantially higher.
• The final version omits key examples of healthcare disparities. The scientists’ draft concluded that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancer, die of HIV, be subjected to physical restraints in nursing homes, and receive suboptimal cardiac care for heart attacks. The final version drops these examples. The report instead highlights milder examples of healthcare disparities, such as the finding that “Hispanics and American Indians or Alaska Natives are less likely to have their cholesterol checked.”

But all this is only a matter of degree, not of kind, compared to the normal standards of science journalism. Governments get away with it because journalists allow it and readers want them to.

“A Cuban told a German court yesterday that he had been offered £3,000 to bite off the penis of a man who was later eaten by the self-confessed Cannibal of Rotenburg.”