Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Belated Recognition

seems Tom L. over at Inverse Square went on an extended Whack-A-Megan mission while I was on vacation. That link is just the first of four long, good, posts he produced detailing the level of dishonesty involved in just one of Megan's lies in a single post. On one hand I greatly appreciate it when people better qualified for it than I take Megan's work apart on the specifics, it's not really my thing and it reminds folk there's a reason to place zero confidence in any assertion she makes, but on the other hand a smart and decent guy had to stare long and hard into Megan's dense core of stupid, which is never pleasant.
The topic in this case is Megan's old reliance on a Rand study commissioned by Pfizer to argue that the reduced innovation pharma execs would apparently cause via temper tantrum if their profit margins were reduced by health care reforms would cost us all many years of life expectancy, which is to say it would cost lives. I think Susan and I poked at the issue at the time (I'd provide links but the archive search function from Blogger seems to have become completely useless), but Tom goes into a much greater level of detail on this attempted case of emotional blackmail in place of argument.

5 comments:

Susan of Texas said...

Yeah, I mentioned it as par of this long post.

Levenson's posts were great. McArdle's a very special person--the very personification of rationalization.

Susan of Texas said...

part!

Tom Levenson said...

Thanks for the mention. I couldn't do what you and Susan O'T do: confront McArdle day after day. I have to ration myself -- I haven't looked at her since writing those posts, and I won't for at least another week. I've promised my wife that my body will untense by then.

You guys deserve medals. And bourbon.

Tom Levenson said...

Thanks for the mention. I couldn't do what you and Susan O'T do: confront McArdle day after day. I have to ration myself -- I haven't looked at her since writing those posts, and I won't for at least another week. I've promised my wife that my body will untense by then.

You guys deserve medals. And bourbon.

NutellaonToast said...

If you wanna send us either, give us an email and I'll happily give you my address :P.

Thanks. Keep up the good work over there, too.