Hard News: A Real Alternative
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And every story like that is a good enough reason for informed consent and patient-centred care.
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To be clear I was referrring to Cecelia's 4.35pm post. My comment got held up in the works somehow.
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I've got even odds of there being a rising perception that this is an Auckland-Otago thing.
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It's disappointing that the Herald and Listener didn't interview a completely objective expert for recent articles.
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Fascinating read. I see PA got a mention, too. And:
That academics would break ranks to publicly criticise another's research is unusual enough, but for a vice-chancellor to do so is almost unprecedented.
Why is that? Is it just considered bad form to publicly discuss each other's research, in case there's a stoush? But it's ok to be interviewed about yr own research/book?
a rising perception that this is an Auckland-Otago thing.
That would be a shame.
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From that Herald story:
Skegg says far from making significant new discoveries about Green's work and the inquiry it provoked, Bryder has recycled a whole raft of arguments raised around the time of the inquiry, thoroughly discussed, and found to be invalid.
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"Historians have a professional duty to produce balanced and fair accounts," says Professor Barbara Brookes, head of the department of History and Art History at Otago University.She says Bryder's book is based on selective evidence of the thousands of pages of written material surrounding the Cartwright Inquiry.
"Professor Bryder has chosen to tell her particular story of good men wronged. She has reversed what she sees as the Coney story as one of good women wronged."
Brookes, who teaches the history of medicine at Otago, says it's good to reappraise the past from different angles. But Bryder's view that Green was merely doing his best for his patients was rehearsed fully at the Cartwright Inquiry. "It seems odd to then present this as a new angle - especially since journalist Jan Corbett, apparently an important source for Bryder, more important indeed than local medical experts, had already raised these issues, and had been rebutted."
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Very interesting story. Chris Barton is a significant asset to that paper.
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The references to the Marsden Fund and Auckland University Press peer review processes were interesting. Just who were they asking?
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Just from Chris' story, it sounds like the answer is no one who knew the basic science enough to point out how incompetently Bryder seems to have engaged with it. Fine for an author to focus on meta-factors, but not at the expense of distorting the underpinnings.
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Why is that? Is it just considered bad form to publicly discuss each other's research, in case there's a stoush?
I think there is a difference between robust debate about research and coming rather close to questioning integrity:
"[Bryder's] book's factual errors and selective quotations make it seem more like an exercise in polemic rather than academic scholarship."(Skegg)
"I must assume that Professor Bryder misunderstands the scientific evidence about Green's study, because otherwise she would be guilty of deliberate obfuscation."(Skegg)
"It seems odd to then present this as a new angle - especially since journalist Jan Corbett, apparently an important source for Bryder, more important indeed than local medical experts, had already raised these issues, and had been rebutted."(Brookes)
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Rather close to questioning integrity?
A layperson reading these comments hears "exercise in polemic", "misunderstands the scientific evidence" and "been rebutted" and thinks, Yep, that's questioning integrity alright.And, while I certainly will not pay to read Bryder's book, I am really interested in the publicity machines of both AUP & the Listener, and just who the former's peer reviewers were (and yes, I am aware that normally peer reviewers for a scientific *paper* are not revealed, but - for a publisher?)
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The references to the Marsden Fund and Auckland University Press peer review processes were interesting. Just who were they asking?
I don't know all of them, but one of them was an Australian historian. Only one was in NZ I believe.
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coming rather close to questioning integrity
Skegg was generous.
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Rather close to questioning integrity?
I'm an academic. It's in my nature to hedge. In the same way Skegg offers up misunderstanding to blunt the possibility of deliberate obfuscation.
And on the Marsden Fund. One of its oddities is that its conflict of interest rules often discount the people best able to judge. On the other hand, it's had recent pressure in the opposite direction, to try and reduce CoI. It's the issue with a small isolated country I guess. At the moment the Humanities panel has a Victoria historian, but when Bryder got her Marsden, if the only historian on the Humanities panel was from Auckland, then they'd stand down. Then you may end up with a philosopher or an english scholar picking referees for a history project...
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And, it's my understanding that the Marsden was for a history of the hospital (which is still being worked on).
This book seems to have been a sideline diversion which came up while doing that work.
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This book seems to have been a sideline diversion which came up while doing that work.
Reality or spin?
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Linda Bryder particularly emphasised at the beginning of her interview with Kim Hill that she had not set out to study "The Unfortunate Experiment" and had thought initially it would be only a minor chapter in her study of the hospital, on the basis that the story was well known and she could readily summarise from the Cartwright report, Sandra Coney's book etc. But, when browsing 1960s-70s British medical literature she found what she took to be an ongoing controversy indicating significant support for Herb Green's view of the non-relation of carcinoma-in-situ to invasive cervical cancer, she decided to look more closely, was surprised by what she found, and thought it important.
She clearly wished to forestall any suggestion that she had set out with anything like a revisionist or anti-feminist agenda. I think that's credible, nevertheless it's abundantly clear that she got the central matters categorically wrong. That's the incredible part that Skegg struggles with - how come? Is “misunderstanding” a justifiable explanation?
I'm interested too in one of the preliminary statements in last week's NZHerald article by David Skegg, that
The Cartwright Inquiry had profound effects on the delivery of healthcare in this country.
While many of the changes were necessary and overdue, others might be regretted.What were those changes that might be regretted? Is this really his view, or just a rhetorical softening?
I guess there's a connection with the strongly negative views on the "Cartwright" outcomes expressed by some medical people, eg in some of the Listener letters and responses to Kim Hill interviews. But it seems no one who accepts (or takes the trouble to acknowledge) that the central findings of the Cartwright Inquiry were correct has identified what these regrettable changes consequent on the Inquiry findings might be. Any thoughts?
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While many of the changes were necessary and overdue, others might be regretted.
He doesn't say who is doing the regretting. I can imagine some health care providers such as doctors, anaesthetics etc would much prefer they did not have to treat patients as real people, and explain the procedures they might need and the implications, let patients decide between options, and ask (and wait) for their consent. Much quicker to be the all-knowing and unquestioned 'authority' (as Dr Green was).
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While many of the changes were necessary and overdue, others might be regretted.
Yes, my first thought reading that sentence was "regretted by who exactly?"
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One of the expat ?GPs? in the RNZ thread made it transparently clear
that she was among those whose authoritay had been eroded - she thought so much that she could no longer work here. -
I remember reading that too - and thinking "make my day".
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The new Metro has a really interesting article by Sandra Coney - debunking Linda Bryder's book. It makes good sense.
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New article by ethicists Martin Tolich and Paul Flanagan
'New Zealanders can learn about themselves
when comparing the “Unfortunate Experiment”
with both the Tuskegee Syphilis Trial and the
Nuremberg Code' in the latest issue of the Health Research Council's
Ethics Notes, p 6-7 -
A review of the women's medical records shows that those who had their cervical cancer treated had only a tiny risk of developing cancer while a large proportion of those who had theirs left untreated did develop it, as well as having a lot of unnecessary biopsies. That counteracts much of the Bryder thesis about best practice of the time.
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