Barbara Streisand effect in play. I never would have thought to be careful about this without this Push to silence criticism.
Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
31–40 of 170 posts
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#32People often wonder what the point of tenure is. Well this is it. Those authors need to not back down, and call attention to this. If they're tenured researchers or professors, they should be able to make publications like this without fear or retaliation from the school or industry.
All tenure does is largely protect you from getting fired. They can still do a fair amount of damage though you still have employment. Lab space can be reduced, it can get harder to get approvals for research, decreased funding etc.
Surely you can leverage your quality research to find better funding. If anything, situations like this should actually help your career—what better signal you’ve found a good vein of research?
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Related thought: the influence of lawyers in tech firms - witness the draconian EULAs users are 'forced' to accept with a false binary choice of accept or not - and the role that corporate law staff have had in software development, by effectively limiting the rights of users. It seems to me that many technology firms copy-and-paste the soul of EULAs to protect themselves (against the worse cases that may aris…
I think this legal arms race is a consequence of America's overly-litigious and profitable legal system. These EULAs are the equivalent of warning labels on soda bottles that loosely read "Warning: Contents under pressure, don't point at your eyes"... who is that written for? We laugh and call it unnecessary, but that warning exists because there is precedent that must now be defended against. When those ludicrous ca…
Do they actually write that on carbonated drinks in USA? That's brilliant.
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this legal arms race is a consequence of America's overly-litigious and profitable legal system. These EULAs are the equivalent of warning labels on soda bottles that loosely read "Warning: Contents under pressure, don't point at your eyes"... who is that written for? We laugh and call it unnecessary, but that warning exists because there is precedent that must now be defended against. When those ludicrous ca…
A warning is not a contract.
I anal but it might be worth looking into making EULA null and void. But first (sorry for sounding like a broken record), we must repeal the cfaa.
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this legal arms race is a consequence of America's overly-litigious and profitable legal system. These EULAs are the equivalent of warning labels on soda bottles that loosely read "Warning: Contents under pressure, don't point at your eyes"... who is that written for? We laugh and call it unnecessary, but that warning exists because there is precedent that must now be defended against. When those ludicrous ca…
Do they actually write that on carbonated drinks in USA? That's brilliant.
A warning appears on some UK labels. Pepsi Max has "pressurised container, please open slowly and handle with care" on the label.
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#36I have no proof they are involved, but my wife and I both had a visit to a dermatologist last year. Both of us were then recommended for excisions. She was 29, I was 28. Everything came back pretty much normal. We were sent to this fern after a friend went there. He also had an excision. Also under 30. Now, we feel pretty much like we were played. Maybe this is relevant to this issue.
This summer I made the mistake of going to a large dermatology practice with several locations because a dermatologist I had seen a few times before was unavailable. I had what turned out to be essentially contact dermatitis. The large corporate practice ended up billing almost $900 for this including an unnecessary biopsy. I assumed that this was simply a rogue practice, but this news story makes me see this in a ne…
Vertical integration is happening everywhere, especially due to advances in technology allowing for much greater economies of scale. Insurers have to combine with each other to get bigger to negotiate with providers and pharmacies, providers have to combine with each other to get bigger to negotiate with insurers, pharmacies have to combine with each other to negotiate with drug manufacturers and PBMs, drug manufacturers combine with each other to negotiate with insurance, and finally, insurance combines with pharmacy and PBM (Aetna/cvs) to negotiate with drug manufacturer and providers.
Telecoms, computers, retailing, everything is trending towards a handful of big players with enough vertical integration to be able to survive. Initially, this is could be good for consumers as the cost savings of economies of scale might be passed on to them, but we will pay for it at the end when there is only 2 vendors to choose from and they dictate the price.
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#37Paper isn’t even that bad really, just stating the obvious. Academia isn’t built to cope with well funded adversaries. Journalists handle the heat much better, at least the NYT got hold of it.
I doubt it is perfect. I agree they're probably built for it but in practice, theory and practice are not the same.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-f...
Archived at https://archive.fo/v5b1x
I'm sure even the NY Times has its limits and so do the likes of al Jazeera and the BBC.
Another question: Could Intel or nVidia or Microsoft or Facebook do something similar for tech journalists?
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#38This isn't discussed much, but the healthcare provider industry has traditionally been a major sector of interest for private equity. Hospital companies like HCA, dental clinics, ambulatory surgery centers, etc. Healthcare providers are attractive to private equity 1) because of stable, non-cyclical cash flow, 2) benefits to scale (ie better negotiating leverage with payers), 3) ability to easily increase revenue at…
There was an NPR (I think it was NPR) story about how medical helicopter rides have skyrocketed in cost. The issue was a lot of private equity folks realized that you could just get in the market and if you didn't get enough rides... you just cranked up the price and went after individuals who where hardly in a position to shop around when they needed the ride. Now there is an excess of medical helicopters, solution?…
In ancient Rome, Crassus owned the fire department. When there was a home on fire, Crassus would negotiate the price for extinguishing the fire with the owners or tenants.
Plus ça change...
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
All tenure does is largely protect you from getting fired. They can still do a fair amount of damage though you still have employment. Lab space can be reduced, it can get harder to get approvals for research, decreased funding etc.
Surely you can leverage your quality research to find better funding. If anything, situations like this should actually help your career—what better signal you’ve found a good vein of research?
> If anything, situations like this should actually help your career—what better signal you’ve found a good vein of research?
How'd it go for Charles Murray?
Re: Some private equity firms are furious over a paper in a dermatology journal
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was an NPR (I think it was NPR) story about how medical helicopter rides have skyrocketed in cost. The issue was a lot of private equity folks realized that you could just get in the market and if you didn't get enough rides... you just cranked up the price and went after individuals who where hardly in a position to shop around when they needed the ride. Now there is an excess of medical helicopters, solution?…
In ancient Rome, Crassus owned the fire department. When there was a home on fire, Crassus would negotiate the price for extinguishing the fire with the owners or tenants. Plus ça change...
I mean, this is close to being right, but it's wrong in every one of the details.
Crassus didn't own the fire department. Crassus owned a bunch of slaves who he had trained to put out fires.
Crassus didn't charge for extinguishing fires. If your house was on fire, Crassus took his team and negotiated to buy your house. If you sold it to him, he'd put out the fire. There was no flow of money from you to Crassus under any circumstances. (But he could get a low price, because the value of your house was constantly dropping while it burned.)
In imperial times, private firefighting groups were illegal since they were viewed as a potential source of rebellion. (Using your own slaves to put out fires on your own property was of course fully legal.) It's in my mind that Crassus benefited from similar laws, but he was active during the Republic. Maybe someone else knows more about the precise timings.