August 13, 2003

The Last Bit on Fumento

First, thanks to all of you for visiting, and leaving your comments.

  • Evan, I'm not worried about a suit, he gave me permission, remember? "Tell it to your two readers, etc." It's not my fault he underestimated the blogosphere!
  • Toronto Citizen, I see your point. Still, whether or not hindsight tells us more about SARS or not, at the time, with what we knew, and more particularly what we didn't know, I still think it was prudent to react as the WHO did. Better to overreact than underreact.
  • Pat Berry, thanks for the catch. I've made the correction. Since I'm always a borrower *sigh*, I default to that point of view.*grin*
  • DougL, clip away!
  • FredH, draw up a chair and stay awhile if it suits you.
  • Scott, don't worry about it. I'll answer to almost anything!
  • Steve Story, there's more to Atkins than lowered caloric intake, but I don't want to be accused of being a cultist, so I'll let it be. The important thing, really the only important thing is to find a diet that works, that is safe, and that you can live with. For me, Atkins fits the bill.

Now to new business. I just found out from my buddy SayUncle, that I have been honored by inclusion in Fumento's Advise and Dissent column. He crows about his "victory" over me, gratuitous insults included. The only reason that this is noteworthy is that either he has not quite mastered cut-and-paste, or he is trying to make me look bad by inserting typos in the quote he uses (without links of course).

From the original post:

By your numbers, SARS had an overall mortality rate of approximately 9%. Since other respiratory ailments generally run at less than 1%, even in the elderly, that one factor alone warrants considerable concern.

From Fumento's piece (linked above):

By your numbers, SARS had an overall mortality rate of approxinmately (sic) 9%. Since other respiratory ailments generally run at less than 1% (sic), even in the elderly, that one factor alone warrants considerable concern.

A journalist, particularly a contrarian like Fumento, trades on his credibility. Lose that, and he may as well pack it in. By altering the quotes of an unknown blogger, Fumento opens himself to charges of misquoting anyone if it serves his purpose. In my eyes, he is the Michael Bellisiles of science journalism.

Posted by Rich at August 13, 2003 11:54 PM | TrackBack
Comments

You forget, per the review on my site, he has misquoted studies that don't exist. :)

Posted by: SayUncle on August 14, 2003 9:52 AM

This guy Fumento is a fraud.

He calls himself intelligent (or at least calls others stupid) but the best law school he can get into is the University of Illiniois. That means he didn't have stellar LSAT's or grades (in political science no less). The LSAT is highly correlated with IQ.

He calls himself and expert and gets on others for not having credentials when his only credential is a law degree.

Posted by: on August 14, 2003 9:02 PM

Rich,

Although I will not spend a great deal of time going into it the statistical relevance of SARS is a subject that is far beyond Fumentos words.
If you need to quote someone with sufficient gravitas to put Fumento in his place just repeat some of Dr Murrays words included in these articles.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/apr18/SARS.html


http://www.englishsites.com/news/article_detail.asp?FlashPlugin=1&intNewsId=5398

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/MeganMurray.html

My Sister-in-Law is Dr. Megan Murray (the one mentioned in this article.) She is known among the infectious diseases community as the SARS queen. I do not have the background to get into your argument with Fumento but I think you make a good point about the interest rates and I think Megan would agree with your conclusions.

Posted by: Barry Bozeman on August 16, 2003 9:26 AM

Thanks for the assist Barry.

Based on the comments and mail I've received, Fumento is now blocking the email of anyone who writes him to support me. When he does respond, the tone is increasingly irrational. For example, this message, which was forwarded to me from one of my readers who wrote to Fumento:

NOBODY reads Den Beste, with the possible exception of you (put it into Google) and see how many times it comes up....For that matter, use Google's foreign language feature and see in how many countries I pop up. Then try it with your pal. Pathetic; truly pathetic. And you are now BLOCKED.

Abuse, megalomania and avoidance of reality all in one paragraph. 11,000 page views (Den Beste's traffic yesterday) is a lot to call "nobody." I also took Fumento's challenge and did a google search for Steven Den Beste, which found 67,000 references to him in the blogosphere and traditional press, including the blogosphere ecosystem which shows he has 486 incoming links. I did a similar search for Michael Fumento and came up with 5700 links, including this one which probably won't make him too happy.

While he may be lurking here, I seriously doubt he would respond to any further posts, making "putting him in his place" a waste of time. However, for my own personal information, the links you provided were excellent, and I probably will incorporate them in any future SARS posts.

Thanks again!

Posted by: rich on August 16, 2003 11:14 AM
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