This is a problem. Journalists at the The New York Times and elsewhere need to stop this lazy framing, prefacing a story with "Doctors said something clueless" and then jumping to "but weren't they made look foolish?" www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/w... - ThreadSky

greally.bsky.social • 64 days ago

This is a problem. Journalists at the The New York Times and elsewhere need to stop this lazy framing, prefacing a story with "Doctors said something clueless" and then jumping to "but weren't they made look foolish?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/well/ai-drug-repurposing.html

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sorchainenil.bsky.social•64 days ago

Plus journalists, consider carefully giving platforms to would be "experts". It's easy to forget how awful a disease measles (& countless others) are. Promoting quackery can result in death.

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

2/ Trust in the medical profession in the US is now at the point where more people distrust than trust medical professionals. No profession deserves 100% trust, but this degree is mistrust is unwarranted.

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

3/ Knock-on effects include failing to attract the next generation to practice medicine, public indifference when funding for medical care is slashed, and the rise of dangerous home-brew medical solutions, like we're seeing for measles at present.

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

4/ This article is especially sloppy, as the expert that they turn to after the "Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die" was David Fajgenbaum, who has an MD degree.

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

5/ This is not a story of medicine failing and then AI stepping in to rescue the situation, this is a story of a family seeking a second opinion from an independent medical expert, whose advice was presumably acted upon by the care team (who had told him he was going to die)

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

6/ The advice was able to buy a remission that allowed a curative bone marrow transplantation, presumably by the same "doctors". This is medicine working well, and should be portrayed as such. And it's great that the patient had a positive outcome.

greally.bsky.social•64 days ago

7/ Please, journalists, celebrate medicine when it's appropriate to do so, and don't use lazy framing denigrating the medical profession just to make your telling of the story a bit easier.

@nytimes.com

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