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Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based."
You don't say!
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CDC Gets List of Forbidden Words: Science-Based, Evidence-Based, Vulnerable, Fetus, ...
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:24AM (4 children)
They publish science-based information which is broad at times. How to deal with an epidemic, for instance, as opposed to how to deal with a smallpox epidemic. For example they might say "when checking what microorganisms are in a water source, an evidence-based approach should include tests x, y, and z."
Ie. this stops them from labelling 'good' procedures as such.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:29AM (3 children)
What procedures which aren't evidence based would be acceptable for them to publish?
Don't socialize while you have a cold? That's based on the evidence that colds are transmissible by actions common while socializing.
If they have no evidence, they are just repeating folk wisdom and can fuck off.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:45AM (2 children)
Actually, no, they aren't necessarily implying evidence-based procedures are okay. "Evidence-based" is actually a technical term in medicine [wikipedia.org], referring to approaches that are more heavily dependent on rigorous stats in evaluating clinical efficacy ( and often specific levels of concern depending on certain study designs, etc.).
All medicine is empirical to some extent (one would hope, anyway), but that doesn't mean it's "evidence-based" according to the technical definition, which require more rigorous evaluation of evidence and study design.
And there are also legitimate concerns about "evidence-based" approaches in medicine that specify too much rigor early on (e.g., since they may overlook small effects in exploratory studies, may misunderstand or misinterpret outcomes due to confounding factors within a complex system like the human body, etc.). And sometimes "intuitive" clinical procedures have later been shown to be effective in a more statistically rigorous study.
I'm not saying this term can't be abused or misused -- obviously it can be. But it also tries to make a technical distinction about statistical rigor in medical studies, and inability to use the term may hamper discussion about that.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:49AM (1 child)
My first sentence is missing a "non" (I.e. not implying non-evidenced-based procedures are okay, at least in the common sense of the term).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:40AM
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