<DrumBeat: December 18, 2006 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: December 19, 2006>

68 comments on The Newsweek Special Edition on Energy

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

phineas gage on December 18, 2006 - 2:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Newsweek, Time, & the like are so far out of it...they are last year's old news or worse

Yea, I was getting Newsweek for 10 years and just last year decided not to renew (despite their 4 or 5 tempting "final offers").  I have no energy expertise, but as a physician I cringe to think people read their medical articles and accept that as truth.  At their best, the medical articles are painfully naive.  At their worst, they're just plain wrong.  The articles that predict the future of medical treatment and devices are the worst offenders.  The predictions are often laughable.  These articles invariably follow a simple format:

  1. until recently disease X was a mystery to ignorant scientists and doctors and we were essentially in the dark ages.
  2. a "breakthrough" (or series of breakthroughs) occurred and now we understand things so much better than those dark age idiots did 2 years ago.
  3. New treatments are just around the corner and living with disease X will be revolutionized in a matter of years.

I could read through all this BS when it came to medical stuff, but I dropped my subscription when it occurred to me that the other articles on politics, economics, etc. were probably just as bad, only I didn't know any better.
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
step back on December 18, 2006 - 10:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It is far far worse than just a "bummer" when you have a loved one suffering horribly from disease X. You read in newspaper or magazine Y that Doctor Z has a promising new treatment. You find and call Dr.Z. He tells you the news reporter got it all wrong. Dr. Z is not even out of the in-vitro or animal trials phase let alone getting anywhere close to a human trials phase.

Thank goodness the newspaper journalists are at least accurate when it comes to Peak Oil.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Aniya on December 19, 2006 - 3:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
HI Step Back,

 I'd like to offer empathy.  Also, a suggestion you may know about (though it may be no longer useful to you.)   There are a couple of research companies that will do a lot of looking up on treatments, given a diagnosis, and people have apparently made good use of these.  (I'm not finding the links easily; there was a write-up in the LATimes a couple of years ago and I could look for it, if you're interested.)

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
step back on December 20, 2006 - 8:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for the empathy. Something like this?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.

68 comments on The Newsweek Special Edition on Energy

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version