Last updated on March 18, 2015
Following up on Monday’s post, here is a “conversation” I had on Twitter earlier this week about my post on the New York Times’ love of “evidence-based wishful thinking.”
I’m glad Lawrence Haddad (whose work I’ve been reading and admiring since my second semester in grad school) got the final word–and was not afraid to call a spade a spade in his last tweet.
Gotta love Lawrence! His energy and patience are remarkable. The NYT piece was unfortunate but sadly typical of the NYT on the subject; I really enjoyed your “evidence-based wishful thinking” post on it.
From Coffey quoted in the NYT we see that the percent underweight is 42% for Indian women, 25% for Indian men, and 16% for African women. Unless we are willing to state that Indian men suffer from more discrimination than do African women, we must conclude that discrimination is not the only (or even biggest) variable. That said, the gap is worrisome, and discrimination surely explains some of it.
I would also like journalists to explain “how” something like discrimination affects health. Through what channels specifically? I don’t doubt it, but I’d like to see a clearly stated explanation. The article is vague, to say the least.