radonc1

I am going to make some comments on this and try mightily not to go bad omni. This also is not a criticism of any poster per se.

One of the great problems we now face in this media driven age is that there is so much information that we allow others to interpret and present the information in neat little bits called "Headlines".

So, for example, in the above case, the poster of this article from the Hill presumed that the article said that "there was no evidence that the virus had been released from the Wuhan lab". In fact, if you read the headline provided by the Hill, the conclusion reached would have been justified. I have pasted below the exact headline that prefaced that article.

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman says evidence suggests coronavirus was not man-made or released from lab

It was not until you actually read the article that the word "purposely" came into the discussion. That word changed the entire meaning of the headline. But it was "purposely" left out. Why?? Which would bring us to agendas and what was the author's (Ellen Mitchell) agenda. That we do not know.

A second example was posted by me on another thread. Someone had posted an article from the WaPo which basically reported on a JAMA article where the WaPo reporter claimed that only 30% of patients admitted through the ER in NYC had a fever, and the take away claim was that fever was not a predominant sign of Covid infection.
Again, when the article was reviewed, there was only 1 data point in 4 large tables looking at temperature at the time of ER evaluation/admission and while it was true that only 30% of those patients had a fever, no other ameliorating cause for the lack of fever was even considered. The reason for that was the study had nothing to do with a fever presentation. It was just a collected data point and not considered further by the authors.

WaPo's writer took a miscellaneous bit of data and extrapolated it to an erroneous conclusion, and then reported in an article that "fact" based on an assumption. Again, what was the agenda of the author for doing that? Again, we have no idea.

We need to be very careful when discussing research articles to do the appropriate reading especially when evaluating the lay press's interpretation of studies and data. Reading just the headline (which I am certainly guilty of doing) can make us victims of any reporter's private agenda.

At a minimum, if we want to cite a study or article, we should at least read it and not just believe the headline