I've expressed the opinion here that science journalists bring a unique set of qualifications to their work, and that other journalists--and other authorities and experts--often cannot do the job as well as a science writer. A good example of the problem appeared in The New York Times over the weekend.
The Times piece was written by Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist; bioethicist; former White House adviser; the brother of Chicago mayor and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel; the brother of Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel--and an all-around smart guy. In September, he will join the University of Pennsylvania with "a slew of titles," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, including university professor, chair of a department, vice provost, and an appointment in the business school. Penn was apparently able to fill, I don't know, five or six positions just by hiring Emanuel. Smart guy.
But not smart enough, evidently, to turn in a good science story.
Give Emanuel credit for calling out attention to a serious problem--a critical shortage of generic cancer drugs. Not in Haiti, not in Botswana, but right here, in the debt-riddled U.S.A. "Right now cancer care is being rationed in the United States," Emanuel begins, a little awkwardly and abruptly. After a gratuitous swipe at Obama's critics (we "cannot blame this rationing on death panels or health care reform"), he gets to the lede: "Of the 34 generic cancer drugs on the market, as of this month, 14 were in short supply."
We get no source for that. Nor do we get any indication of what "short supply" means. Hospitals and doctors can't get them? City hospitals can but rural hospitals can't? They're available only with unacceptable delay?
And exactly which drugs are we talking about? Emanuel doesn't give us any examples. What kinds of cancer are most affected? Again, no help. "The sad fact is, there are plenty of newer brand-name cancer drugs that do not cure anyone, but just extend life for a few months, at costs of up to $90,000 per patient." Examples? I'm happy to believe that they don't cure anyone, but I'd rather see a little documentation of that, or an example, rather than take Emanuel's word for it.
Older drugs that cost as little as $3 a dose, he tells us, are forcing doctors to use drugs "at more than 100 times the cost." This is fuzzy math. Frankly, $300 a dose doesn't sound too bad to me. Isn't that what you pay for an aspirin in the hospital? How do we get from there to $90,000?
Emanuel then swerves into a discussion of how legislation that restricted increases in drug prices is responsible for the shortage, and suggests two possible solutions: Boost what Medicare pays for generic cancer drugs, or drop coverage altogether. He doesn't express a preference for one or the other, as far as I can tell--but this is an opinion piece, and he should. To further confuse matters, he says there is no problem in Europe, where the generics are only "slightly more expensive." How much more expensive?
I can't guarantee that any science writer you might find walking down the street could do a better job than this, but I'm betting most could--and I know dozens, maybe more, that I would bet on.
Science writers don't get "a slew of titles" at Penn, but they can do a darn good job--better than the many-titled Emanuel did this weekend. (And because I can rarely resist the opportunity to take a shot at the nation's best newspaper--where were the editors who could have helped him?)
- Paul Raeburn
Comments
Prashant,
The invisible wall between news and editorial is not meant to allow bad writing in the editorials. Whichever side of the line we're on, a good story is a good story--and this one wasn't.
Coming from a couple of veteran journalists, I am a little surprised at this take. Or perhaps “confused” is a better word. Isn’t the invisible wall between the News and Editorial sections of the Times precisely meant to permit this kind of latitude in writing? After all, an opinion piece is just what its name suggests. Its purpose, perhaps I was wrong to believe, is to portray the issue as seen through a certain lens. Its goal is to offer – and perhaps even sway – opinion based on facts (not all of which might find their way into the piece). Is it fair, then, to apply the standards of straight reportage to opinion writing? And if we did, what would be the difference between the forms?
That said, it’s near-impossible to disagree with Charlie and Paul. A convincing piece is a convincing piece; there can be no taxonomic quibbles about it.
Thanks, Charlie. I agree--examples add credibility and readability, and should be chosen carefully.
Paul is correct - most reporters could make this theme more convincing. But not many could muscle it up by much in the space that Emanuel's op-ed occupies. That'd take a feature-length piece, maybe a series.
To take a tangent here, this op-ed and the NYT (as would most standard pubs) misses a chance here to take full advantage of the piece on the web. Emanuel, being an academic, could easily have footnoted the thing, or otherwise annotated it with links that back up his primary declarations of fact.
Plus, what reporters do more often than not when fleshing out a theme is to provide just enough examples to make a story compelling and engaging (ie readable), and to imply by small sampling that the reporter was diligent in finding convincing evidence for other generalities, even if there was no room to include it all. Few journalists have room to fully document every assertion of what's typical of this or that situation. Rather, most of the time when we reporters stick in anecdotes and lists of examples, they are not comprehensive. My impression is that the more typical purpose is to give the story a convincing air. Good reporters make sure their examples are in fact representative. If the story stands up, it stands up. Over time, that's how reporters collectively and individually build the trust of readers, and of editors.
Although it is an opinion piece, I maintain that it is a science story--it reports on a situation involving cancer drugs. And my point was not that Emanuel was right or wrong (although I did say that this was an important message), but that he could have made a much better case if he'd done the kinds of things that science reporters do routinely.
You're confused - the Emanuel piece was not a "science story" nor even an full article, but an op-ed *opinion* piece (as you half-heartedly and belatedly point out down near the bottom.) It was obviously not meant to be comprehensive, but to call attention to a legitimate health care issue, which you admit is indeed a serious problem -- which makes Emanuel's piece on target, and that *is* the important bit in any sort of journalism, whether as an opinion piece or a full-blown investigative series.
And Emanuel wasn't just making a "gratuitous swipe at Obama’s critics" in his opening comment -- legitimate discussion and debate about the sorry state of our heath care system was drowned out quickly and early by the loud noise of ignorant, cynical politics very much characterized by the "death panel" nonsense, and at the expense of public awareness of these not so little infrastructural problems like shortages of key cancer drugs and the mostly inexcusable reasons for why.
Actually your depiction of the piece actually smacks much of the political noise that replaced real discussion, especially in your comment, "This is fuzzy math. Frankly, $300 a dose doesn’t sound too bad to me. Isn’t that what you pay for an aspirin in the hospital?"
Really? I happen to personally know of a Eastern European family who at their own expense brought over a sick relative for treatment for cancer in Boston. It involved a couple of months of outpatient treatments and they paid out of pocket for it. The final tab (and, very unfortunately, not with a happy ending): very nearly exactly $200,000.
There have been plenty of other articles the past year about this inexcusable drug shortage and the cost and risk consequences of it, and to varying degrees of science-heaviness. So anyone looking for more details about problem after reading Emanuel's piece need only use a simple Google search (and presumably, most NY Times readers know how to do this, as opposed to, say, Fox News watchers.)
If you are going to pick on science-light opinion pieces appearing in newspapers and other general publications, might I suggest that you focus more on the ones that get things wrong?