The arrogance of expertise

Here is a thoughtful essay by NYT reporter Ed Yong. (Free Gift link! [as opposed to a not free gift]) It ' s long, but worth it. Yong was assigned the Long Covid beat and he found -- as I already knew -- that people who tell their doctors about long-term fatigue, pain, and cognitive difficulties, for which the physicians could find no specific biophysical explanation, commonly found their complaints dismissed or even ridiculed:Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly buffeted by our culture, values and politics. As energy-depleting illnesses that disproportionately affect women, long Covid and M.E./C.F.S. are easily belittled by a sexist society that trivializes women ’s pain, and a capitalist one that values people according to their productivity. Societal dismissal leads to scientific neglect, and a lack of research becomes fodder for further skepticism. I understood these dynamics only after interviewing social scientists, disability scholars and patient s themselves, whose voices are often absent or minimized in the media. Like the pandemic writ large, long Covid is not just a health problem. It is a social one, and must also be understood as such.Dismissal and gaslighting —you ’re just depressed; it’s in your head— are among the worst aspects of long Covid, and can be as crushing as the physical suffering. They’re hard to fig...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs