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.
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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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It's also possible that no system exists which discovers and validates for everyone the drugs they need without delay, and yet does not allow unsafe medication to market.
But the journalism required to be a check and balance for such a system can't really support contradiction.
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Agreed that no system exists which neither delays good drugs nor allows unsafe ones onto the market. There's some Pareto frontier and that's it.
It also seems clear to me that we aren't on that frontier, and I think Scott has some thoughful suggestions for getting closer.