A particularly good Slate Star Codex piece on the societal cost of everything being default illegal for 10 years and $X0 million to a billion in medicine:
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Appears this piece may have been victim of one of the internet's systemic problems.
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Seems that @slatestarcodex story about an old FDA incident was very inaccurate jabberwocking.com/a-3-part-story
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As I understand it, the inaccuracies were in a previous piece about the FDA in general, and "Details Of The Infant Fish Oil Story" is a correction with a detailed (and hopefully correct) story that is based on the same sources as the jobberwocking.com one.
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But Kevin Drum's blog post is also critical of Scott's followup. Probably worth reading Drum's post rather than assuming SA's followup corrects all the issues.
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Right, I read it and it's highly critical of the conclusions of Scott's second piece but doesn't seem to take issue with the facts of the case (presumably because it's based on the same sources?).
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I agree that it's worth reading, but I'd read it in addition to Scott's follow-up rather than instead of it.
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I think the crux is this (excerpted from Drum):
> I have no idea how you can write "they usually carry out their mandate well" in one place and then... just go ahead and repeat your original belief... that the FDA does stupid and destructive things on practically a daily basis.
Personally, I don't see that as a contradiction. The FDA could be good at its mandate and also harmful because there's an issue with its mandate. I would guess that that's what Scott thinks?
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I think that's somewhat of a fishing expedition. You can't really retract so many points of fact and then say your initial argument is substantially unaffected.
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