Interesting Links for 18-07-2014

[andrewducker]

• Microsoft Will Cut up to 18,000 Jobs
  (tags: Microsoft jobs )
• Getting to the heart of the psychological differences between Conservatives and Liberals
  (tags: politics conservatives liberal psychology )
• World Health Organisation calls for the decriminalisation of drug use
  (tags: who decriminalization drugs )
• The Jet Propulsion Lab fixes all defects

Comments

[drdoug]

It is a terrible tragedy, and several of the people on the flight were indeed key contributors to HIV/AIDS work. (It's not just research.) But the initial story is, I think, rather overstated in the implied impact on work in this area.

Most outlets are still saying there are "unconfirmed reports" that 100 people going to the conference were on the plane, or more.

There are, as of now, six confirmed dead from conference delegates. More are 'expected', but I'd be surprised if it was as much as that again. (The passenger list still isn't released as of time of writing this, which I hope is not yet another incompetence but is merely so that the relatives can be informed first.) Some are researchers, some are campaigners. Reports about how many were expected at the conference vary, but range from 12,000 to 25,000.

The fight against HIV/AIDS has had a very minor setback, but one in a thousand or so of those attending this conference is not that much in the scheme of things. This is only one of many, many HIV/AIDS conferences each year, although it is maybe the biggest. Before about 2000, the community dealt with a way, way higher rate of attrition from the disease itself, year after year. With a bit of luck the extra attention in the press might even counterbalance the loss in terms of effort against the disease. (I know it's got me thinking about it closely again.)

It remains, of course, a terrible personal tragedy for the people involved and those who cared for them. And is rightly a massive international issue.

My guess is the initial figure was a panicky mistaken early guess. Some reports suggest it was from a scan of email correspondence related to the conference - so maybe someone counted the number of emails mentioning the flight code (which would multiple-count people), or even the number of people flying in on Malaysia Airlines (which would multiple-count people, and also include people on entirely different flights). I'm imagining a desperately stressed conference organiser (conference organisers are always desperately stressed just before it starts) trying to quickly get a handle on what impact this might have on the conference. Without knowing more about the circumstances, I suspect it was a very understandable mistake. But news organisations picking it up and reporting it the way they did was less understandable.

It's salutary to reflect, I think, on how reliable the rest of the reports about the incident are. The story of this story has made me a lot less confident I know what's going on.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that was really informative!

[i_kender]

Thank you for that - a timely reminder that a) there's always more to the story than what first meets the eye and b) the media have sometimes been guilty of printing what will make the better story (and therefore sell more newspapers etc) rather than waiting for all the facts to come in!

Still... a tragedy is a tragedy is a tragedy.