ParentData is expanding and hiring a writer

C

churchface

New member
Thought that y’all might be interested that ParentData - Emily Oster’s platform - is hiring a writer.

“We are looking for a new writer to join us under the ParentData umbrella, writing in a related space (think: infertility, relationships, menopause, teenagers, handling your 20s, etc.…).

We are looking for someone who is an expert in their field, is driven by a love of data, and is passionate about translating scientific papers into understandable and usable insights. You provide the expertise and content, and ParentData provides mentorship (from me, if it’s useful), editing, publishing, back-end support, and a platform of data-loving readers.”

Link to interest form here

I’m not a writer but immediately thought of this group when seeing this.
 
@churchface The obligatory context for the future of this comment section. Oster is controversial because she said "some" drinking during pregnancy is not harmful (in context, it was a question she had after she had a drink before she knew she was pregnant, she wanted to know the effects alcohol throughout pregnancy). She dug into the data and found that it actually takes surprisingly a lot of drinking to raise your risk of negative outcomes.

The public health community didn't like the idea of letting mothers drink any alcohol despite the science saying otherwise and came out pretty harshly against her. So now years later after her book was published, people still debate over if she was right or wrong. It has become somewhat of a tribal debate like safe sleep practices, circumcision, or breastfeeding. It all lacks nuance and is almost rarely about facts.

At the end of the day, if you have the skills and knowledge to review the literature, you will find she is generally right, but most experts are not really interested in encouraging mother to drink while pregnant, so there isn't a lot of motivation to clarify criticisms against her or give her any credit.

(Full disclosure: I generally like Oster writing and subscribe to her newsletter. I also work as a statistician so I appreciate the nuance she brings. I don't always agree with her but her work is generally sound.)
 
@jdthcstl Some of those public health op eds deriding her freaked me out mid pregnancy, half way through my half glass of wine. Stayed up all night digging into the studies about the dangers of “light drinking” referenced in said op eds. IIRC their definition of “light drinking” was a drink every day or 3 drinks in a single sitting… which is not my definition of light drinking.
 
@vlisco Yeah, remember that as well. I found that to be one of the most egregious lies they paint about Oster, it had to be willful too since in some cases they cited the same studies as Oster, only just saying inverse of her claim.

Sadly, I think this very common. Public health community is very used having a monopoly on science communication, so they probably feel like they can push the envelop as to what is consider truthful without impunity.
 
@jdthcstl To be fair the specific study I'm thinking of did say something like "light drinking can cause problems" it's just there's a lot of possible approaches to alcohol hidden in "light".
 
@candycehill Shocking... so shocking, because it is a smear and taken out of context. The sentence right after your highlighted one explains:

“It is humane to pay for AIDS drugs in Africa,” she wrote, “but it isn’t economical. The same dollars spent on prevention would save more lives.”
Click to expand...

Public health has fixed resources, in developing countries doubly so. She is arguing that we could save more lives, and prevent more suffering if we prevented HIV transmission, rather than letting HIV spread and trying to treat the symptoms. Literally, an "ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure", but in this case there is no cure.

Additionally, this conversation happens everyday behind closed doors at every public health institution. They may even be more ruthless than Oster, but because she is a certified "bad person" everyone's hate is spent on her.
 
@thdev Thanks for sharing this article, I like their take on the economical and individualistic manner of Oster’s writing. They’re also spot on on how it appeals to white, upper class groups. I didn’t know anything about her funding and I hate the idea of defunding public education getting tied into that.

The covid specific thing though, has been addressed as Oster’s stance being accurate. The school lockdowns caused more damage than protection.
 
@churchface I’m an ex-teacher (quit after the 21-22 school year) and I don’t know if some of these kids will ever recover. The academic losses are nothing compared to the utter destruction of their emotional intelligence. They got used to doing pretty much whatever they want, lost the skills to compromise and tolerate others, and can’t focus on or process information that doesn’t come from a screen. I swear 10-15% of my students were basically feral.

Admittedly I was a lockdown advocate before it all. My school was virtual for all of 20-21 and it seemed like the right thing at the time. Then we came back in person for the 21-22 school year and it was a living nightmare. This was a school that had maybe a few fights a year before lockdown and after it was several a DAY.

And while schools were closed, so many people were still having parties and dining out and just generally not making it worth it.
 
@churchface That is not the case at all. She was way out of her lane and totally focused on individual, not collective needs.
The lock downs were needed to protect the collective.
Maybe your family didn't suffer due to covid but as someone that lost family members to it, I am a strong supporter of risk mitigation.
 
@thdev My family also suffered due to COVID and I am a supporter of risk mitigation. My family continued to follow social distancing, masking, etc for longer than many in our region.

Data wise though, she didn't start knocking on school lockdowns til late 2020 and 2021. By then, the lockdowns were no longer protecting the collective.

University of Michigan study cost benefit analysis

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health analysis on the effectiveness of lockdowns

National Bureau of Economic Research report on states' response to COVID.

(edited to add supporting articles and links and fix spelling)
 
@thdev Aren't the first two peer-reviewed? Not an economist but wouldn't it be kinda fast to have a meta analysis competed and peer reviewed in just two years?
 
@thdev Honestly, just review their methods yourself.

Your request for a meta analysis for a pandemic that started just 3 years ago comes off as disingenuous. Do you also want them to conduct an RCT on Earth-2 to confirm their findings?
 
@thdev Regardless of whether Oster was focusing on the wrong thing or had some sort of alterior motive - it seems pretty clear that she was right, at least when it came to school closures.

There is now plenty of evidence that longer school lockdowns led to worse educational and behavioral/developmental outcomes for school children - particularly BIPOC school children. As far as I've seen, there is also very little evidence that longer school lockdowns led to fewer cases and deaths among children or the members of their communities.

I understand and somewhat agree with your point that Oster was not necessarily thinking like a public health decision-maker should have. That being said, public health experts in most of the rest of the developed world came to the same conclusions that Oster did: they opened up schools after only a few months in most cases (even when COVID case numbers were high), and generally had far fewer restrictions on children (e.g. no mask requirements, no recommendations to vaccinate).

I think when the dust settles in a decade or so, there's going to be general agreement that extended school closures were one of the largest policy blunders of the COVID years. And a whole generation of children - BIPOC children in particular - are going to be paying for it in the coming years with lower levels of education and economic achievement.

As someone who also lost family members to COVID - I think public health professionals in the US need to take a real hard, critical look at some of their decision-making processes that were focused entirely on COVID while completely ignoring other societal priorities like education and mental health. There just seemed to be an utter lack of nuanced risk-based and cost/benefit-based thinking.
 
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