The New York Times – Dr. Google Is a Liar. Fake news threatens our democracy. Fake medical news threatens our lives: “…While misinformation has been the object of great attention in politics, medical misinformation might have an even greater body count. As is true with fake news in general, medical lies tend to spread further than truths on the internet — and they have very real repercussions. Numerous studies have shown that the benefits of statins far outweigh the risks, especially for people at high risk of heart disease. But they have been targeted online by a disparate group that includes paranoid zealots, people selling alternative therapies and those who just want clicks. Innumerable web pages and social media posts exaggerate rare risks and drum up unfounded claims, from asserting that statins cause cancer to suggesting that low cholesterol is actually bad for health. Even stories simply weighing the risks versus benefits of statins, a 2016 study found, were associated with patients’ stopping the cholesterol-lowering drugs — which is associated with a spike in heart attacks…”
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Daily Archives: December 26, 2018
IRS wants to use social media to catch tax cheats
Quartz: “The Internal Revenue Service is looking for ways to scour social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in its ongoing quest to catch tax cheats. That’s according to a request for information issued December 18 by the IRS’s National Office of Procurement. The mining of social media data by the agency has been… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues December 2018
Before the end of 2018, please take some time to catch-up with the cyber related updates provided by Pete Weiss every week on LLRX. Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational… Continue Reading
An Interview with UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye
Digital Rights Monitor: “The latest 2018 Freedom House report presents a dismal picture of internet freedom. Out of 65 countries studied for the report, internet freedom deteriorated in 26 countries including United States of America. The study also noted that more than a dozen countries were putting in place restrictive measures in the name of… Continue Reading
Bill Sets the ‘Strongest Clean Energy Requirement in the Nation
CityLab – “Washington, D.C. is positioning itself on the climate policy fast track. The District of Columbia city council voted unanimously last week to approve an expansive climate bill requiring utility providers to generate 100 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2032. If D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the legislation as expected,… Continue Reading
How private equity firms are fueling the housing crisis
New York Magazine – Intelligencer: “Nationwide, single-family homes — white-picketed symbols of the American Dream — are increasingly owned by far-flung investors, with the percentage held by landlords growing from 13 percent nationally to 17 percent between 2008 and 2016, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. These homes are offered to local residents… Continue Reading
How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually
New York Magazine, The Intelligencer: “How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full… Continue Reading
Top Lawyers Give Props to Their Mentors
Law.com/National Journal: How I Learned ‘Basically Everything’: Lawyers Give Props to Their Mentors – “We asked more than a dozen leaders in Big Law, small law, corporate legal departments and academia to tell us about the people who shaped their career.. Every lawyer has to start his or her career somewhere. And in the backstory… Continue Reading
12 charts that show how policy could reduce inequality
Economic Policy Institute: “With the unemployment rate at 4 percent or below for eight consecutive months, 2018 appears to be the year when the economy finally became healthy again. But while low unemployment is good news, it doesn’t tell the whole story of how typical families are faring in the current economy. As the economy… Continue Reading
More than 4.1M students were in a school lockdown last year
Washington Post: “School shootings remain rare, even after 2018, a year of historic carnage on K-12 campuses. What’s not rare are lockdowns, which have become a hallmark of American education and a byproduct of this country’s inability to curb its gun violence epidemic. Lockdowns save lives during real attacks, but even when there is no… Continue Reading
