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UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

reuters.com

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Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#51

Post by Analemma_ »

I think (or at least I hope) this isn’t true for all of them, but some of the report-producing agencies at the UN are absolutely terrible at their job. Their demographic projections, for example, are a complete joke, and no actual expert in the field has taken them seriously for a while.

Opinions vary on whether this is because of ideological bias or just because a UN analyst job is a sinecure handed out for political favors rather than awarded on merit, but whatever the reason, you can’t at all assume that coming from the UN is a guarantor of quality.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#52

Post by fn-mote »

resource_waste wrote: post #42

My two strikes against the UN: >In international relations, no one really takes institutionalism seriously. Bilateral agreements and power are so monumentally more important that it overshadows posturing. >I once read the WHO recommendation on children watching TV. It said 1 minute of TV watching before the age of 1 was detrimental. There was no science, it was just a panel of experts. Anti-science + idealistic organ…

As far as I could determine, the issues in the second point do not exist.

See the actual WHO report [1] from 2019. Page 8 contains the recommendations about "sedentary time" for infants. The box is literally tagged "Strong recommendations, very low quality evidence." The paragraphs at the bottom of the page contain a summary of the evidence from the literature.

I don't see any basis for anti-science thinking in this article. It seems like you may have only seen/read the executive summary page viii.

The UN's page of accomplishments [2] lists plenty of work that you don't have to be an optimist to find value in (e.g., support for refugees, food aid, and vaccines).

[1]: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/311664/978924155...

[2]: https://www.un.org/en/essential-un/

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#53

Post by duskwuff »

kingstnap wrote: post #13

UN library has lot of stuff in it. https://digitallibrary.un.org/?ln=en Like you really have to be a giga nerd to read these. Reading wikipedia is fun but this is just slog fest and you need a lot. Like check out this report its result 12 sorted chronologically: > Strengthening the effectiveness and impact of the Development Account : report of the Secretary-General > The present report has been prepared pursuant to…

> It's a pretty fantastic Rosetta stone of sorts with lots of documents translated professionally into multiple languages.

UN and EU documents have, unironically, been a significant resource in the development of translation software - they're a great source of parallel texts across broad sets of languages.

Given their subject matter, they're not great for colloquialisms - good luck finding a UN report that uses the phrase "fucking bullshit", for example - but they're a great starting point.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#55

Post by lazide »

browningstreet wrote: post #24
bootsmann wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NGO is an incredibly broad category of things. There are certainly many grifter organizations (same as there are grifter companies) but there are also orgs such as the AMF which do incredibly effective work.

A lot of what I was probing called themselves that. I’m not bagging on NGOs in particular. But it’s also how a lot of them refer to themselves. This is more about the lack of clarity in messaging by orgs that ostensibly have a vested interest in making their progress known. At least as long as they’re engaged in public outreach.

IMO, most of the heart string tugging problems that get a lot of donations are not actually tractable if we do things people will tolerate. So orgs optimize towards looking busy while not actually doing anything, because there really is nothing to actually do. But no one can admit it.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#56

Post by saaaaaam »

Honestly not sure why this is any sort of surprise. I very occasionally read UN reports for work. I very frequently see journalists covering those reports using the press release, clearly not having read anything else. And then I see low quality media reporting on the topic clearly having read only the third party reports. When journalists - whose job it is - don’t read them, it’s expecting a lot for anyone outside of the political/lobbying establishment to read them.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#57

Post by lazide »

monkeyelite wrote: post #34
repeekad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In San Francisco a friend ran an event for an LGBT policy non-profit, tons of private security yet no actual members of LGBT, only rich white hetero couples and the discussion was about finances and donations, nothing to do with LGBT policy impact, it was like pulling back a curtain…

Donating to a charity is kind of like outsourcing thinking. There is a market for people who want to help the LGBT community. How do we do that? Idk this group says they know how

Or they want to feel/say they are helping the community while actually not risking getting their hands dirty.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#58

Post by lazide »

monkeyelite wrote: post #35
HPsquared wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians don't even read the bills they sign.

This is kind of like saying you don’t read every line of code for the product you ship

Eh, more like don’t actually do your code reviews.

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#59

Post by lazide »

Analemma_ wrote: post #51

I think (or at least I hope) this isn’t true for all of them, but some of the report-producing agencies at the UN are absolutely terrible at their job. Their demographic projections, for example, are a complete joke, and no actual expert in the field has taken them seriously for a while. Opinions vary on whether this is because of ideological bias or just because a UN analyst job is a sinecure handed out for politica…

Has anyone thought the UN had anything to do with quality before?

Re: UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

#60

Post by FirmwareBurner »

caseysoftware wrote: post #45
cantor_S_drug wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please ignore if my statements are ignorant. I always wondered that whenever such reports or surveys come out why don't these organisations make the whole data and methodology public? Are they afraid that if they made it public, people will know how muddy these waters are?

When they don't release the data and/or methodolgy, you have to treat the result the same: garbage. They could be completely making up data or demonstrating the gold standard example of pristine data collection and brilliant analysis but we'd never know.. and for some reason, they don't want to tell us.

> for some reason, they don't want to tell us

It should be pretty clear why they don't want to show and tell.

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