I do a bit of speed reading on stuff, and I admit my first scan of the highlighted bit did make me think that the method used was the “gold standard”. That’s on me and I should slow down.
It’s not until I had re-read the bit after seeing your comment that I saw the spin. Very devious. If they had to include that line at all, a better way to impart the information would have been, “while this study didn’t use what is considered the ‘gold standard’ of control groups and random assignments, it did rely on retrospective data...”
Looking at it again when I checked it out after seeing it on redacted, the Post edited the article further, changing the em dash (—) to a comma before the ‘gold standard’ part. Now it looks like it says it’s the gold standard even more. The only reason to remove something like that is to decrease the emphasis on it and make everything seem more fluid. It’s definitely intentional, and the screenshot of this post proves what the original said.
On that note, redacted has a revolving door of articles now all echoing the same headlines which are all based on this one hit piece. Bad science isn’t better than no science, it’s worse.
I edit work professionally, and the aim is always to impart the information clearly so there’s no misinterpretation of what’s being said.
This one sentence seems like a critical detail to get right, and I’d have debated even adding the “gold standard” bit at all. Just detail the method used and leave it at that.
But I don’t expect WaPo to respect the intelligence of the audience.
I do a bit of speed reading on stuff, and I admit my first scan of the highlighted bit did make me think that the method used was the “gold standard”. That’s on me and I should slow down.
It’s not until I had re-read the bit after seeing your comment that I saw the spin. Very devious. If they had to include that line at all, a better way to impart the information would have been, “while this study didn’t use what is considered the ‘gold standard’ of control groups and random assignments, it did rely on retrospective data...”
But that would require the Post to be honest.
Looking at it again when I checked it out after seeing it on redacted, the Post edited the article further, changing the em dash (—) to a comma before the ‘gold standard’ part. Now it looks like it says it’s the gold standard even more. The only reason to remove something like that is to decrease the emphasis on it and make everything seem more fluid. It’s definitely intentional, and the screenshot of this post proves what the original said.
On that note, redacted has a revolving door of articles now all echoing the same headlines which are all based on this one hit piece. Bad science isn’t better than no science, it’s worse.
I edit work professionally, and the aim is always to impart the information clearly so there’s no misinterpretation of what’s being said.
This one sentence seems like a critical detail to get right, and I’d have debated even adding the “gold standard” bit at all. Just detail the method used and leave it at that.
But I don’t expect WaPo to respect the intelligence of the audience.