Questioning Academics and Their Research

I just spent 30 minutes on the phone getting yelled at by an academic who insisted it is not a journalist’s place to question academics and their research. Which is my job. https://t.co/2IHlaIH1oi

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

At one point, she asked whether I would go into the cockpit of a plane and demand to know the pilot’s training. I pointed out that journalists had exposed how the corporate culture at Boeing had led to the crashes of the 737 Max planes.

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

If I just listened to people with MDs and PhDs and taken everything they said on faith, I never would have been able to properly report about monkeypox, because so many people with doctorates were pushing for reporters to deceive the public and to exaggerate the risk to non-gays.

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

So much of my reporting about the HIV prevention pill, PrEP, has been grounded at maintaining a highly skeptical approach to researchers' dogma, such as the persistent falsehood the research establishment pushed as they claimed PrEP hasn't accelerated the decline in condom use.

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

And all this said, one of the things I'm most proud of in my career is that the academics I work with widely trust me. They know that I am very thorough, am meticulous about fact checking, and will properly represent their work and their words in print.

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

Here I am, writing about people at the CDC with MDs and PhDs lying to the public: https://t.co/1GqyDcYlrG

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

Here's an article I wrote about a decade ago about leaders in the HIV field deceiving the public about the imminence of an HIV cure: https://t.co/RicS2QCvbk

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

Here's a new piece of mine that uses research to show why PrEP is failing to bring down the nation's HIV rate. In it, I challenge the argument made by many people with PhDs and MDs that if PrEP were just widely avaialable, the problem would be solved. https://t.co/7pHQwDg5is

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

Eighteen year old Theo Baker @tab_delete, meanwhile, exposed through his reporting that the president of Stanford allegedly fabricated scientific data. Yes, journalists, including those without degrees of any kind, should question people with doctorates. https://t.co/1pbL0jhKKL

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, censorship was such a hot topic. Were the parental advisory stickers on CDs censorship, everyone wanted to know. I don’t hear the word censorship much these days, even when the idea of censorship remains so highly charged. Why is this?

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023

Case in point of why people should not automatically defer to the expertise of someone just because they have a doctorate: Denise Dewald, MD. pic.twitter.com/96CcGDMQLf

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 20, 2023