On the Media, the NPR show from WNYC, devoted its entire program last weekend to problems in medical reporting. Brooke Gladstone, with a little help from co-host Bob Garfield, enlisted some of the best medical reporters and commentators for the program, including Ben Goldacre, Ivan Oransky, Seth Mnookin and others. It's a nice package.
The program begins with an excerpt from a July, 2011 TED talk by Goldacre, the British doctor and science writer, who speaks so quickly that in the 10 minutes that On the Media gives him, he seems to squeeze in 20 or 30 minutes' worth of slashing critiques of improper and deceitful tactics used by the sponsors of clinical trials to make them turn out the way they want.
Garfield talks to a research librarian at the University of Colorado Denver who has assembled a list of journals more interested in profit than proper publication. Gladstone talks to Oransky about Retraction Watch, Mnookin about vaccines and autism, and there is more–including a look back at the famous Piltdown Man scandal.
It's all presented with On the Media's usual intelligence and humor.
-Paul Raeburn
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