{"id":43484,"date":"2014-01-29T10:53:52","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T15:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=43484"},"modified":"2014-01-29T10:53:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T15:53:52","slug":"a-snowy-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/29\/a-snowy-evening\/","title":{"rendered":"a snowy evening…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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i·ro·ny<\/div>\n
noun: irony<\/strong><\/div>\n
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  1. \n
    the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Well, my last post provoked a response that was surprising, at least to me [an irony of pharma past…<\/a>]. Ben Goldacre<\/a> took it as a criticism:<\/div>\n
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    I’ll continue to devote an enormous amount of unpaid time and effort, outside my normal work, at probable risk to my medical career, campaigning to fix this problem. You and your friends will no doubt continue writing weird posts like this to derail and slow things down. If historians ever do look back at the road blocks to addressing data transparency, as you suggest they will, I don’t know how they will judge either of us, or anyone else.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n

    So rather than parse or defend my own words, I’ll just say for history that as the words of this blog attest, I’m Ben’s biggest fan, a contributer to AllTrials, and a promoter. I had read Wellcome research fellow in epidemiology<\/font><\/strong> on many of his articles. So, on a snowbound evening, I looked that up. Reading about Sir Henry Wellcome was interesting and I was awed that he had left his huge estate in a trust that has been such a boon to medical research. I also didn’t know that he was such an innovator in the creation of the pharmaceutical industry – tablets instead of powders, advertising, detailing doctors directly, research by pharmaceutical companies. <\/p>\n

    And so I thought it was wonderfully ironic that, probably without knowing it, Sir Henry had built in a fail-safe mechanism to monitor the industry he had a big part in founding. He created a mechanism to support scientists who were studying medicines, and one of them turned out to be Ben Goldacre – a tireless campaigner for honesty and transparency in Clinical Trials. That was to me an irony – and a good one. Those are the thoughts that were in my mind when I wrote that.<\/p>\n

    I reread my post, and I can’t read into it what Ben saw, but this post is for history if it every runs by this little blog in the hinterlands. My post was a testimony to Sir Henry whose heir, Ben Goldacre, has done so much to popularize the right cause. I don’t know if Sir Henry was as golden a guy as the web site says he was, but it doesn’t matter, his heart was in the rightest of places, and I think he would be proud of what Ben is doing. If that last post implied otherwise, I guess I’m going to have to get a writing coach…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    i·ro·ny noun: irony the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. Well, my last post provoked a response that was surprising, at least to me [an irony of pharma past…]. Ben Goldacre took it as a criticism: I’ll continue to devote an enormous amount […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43484"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43488,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43484\/revisions\/43488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}