Krystal Ball: Washington Post "fact check" proves Bernie right

[lapucelle]

163. WaPo says that the editorial was not peer reviewed.

Himmelstein is confusing the editorial he published in 2019, cited by BS and fact checked by WaPo with a study he co-authored a decade ago.

Sanders said 500,000 people were driven to bankruptcy by medical bills. A Sanders campaign aide said he was relying on an editorial published by the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) in March.

The AJPH editorial did not undergo the same peer-reviewed editing process as a research article.

“In AJPH, many editorials are commissioned by the editor-in-chief from experts in their field(s), as a forum to present their most recent or preliminary findings on specific topics, or to coincide with significant dates or events,” said Morgan Richardson, an AJPH editor. “Lack of peer review does not indicate inaccuracy, but editorials are less likely to be cited in the scientific literature as evidence because the standard of rigor is different due to context.”

However, Himmelstein used a methodology similar to what he, Warren and other researchers used in a 2005 peer-reviewed study that they updated in 2009. Warren was a co-author of those two studies, but not the AJPH editorial published in March.

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The study was published in 2005 and updated and re-published 2009. Both iterations were peer reviewed and both were co-authored by Elizabeth Warren.

The editorial that BS cited was published in 2019. It was not co-authored by Elizabeth Warren and it was not peer reviewed.

BS was relying on the information in the editorial (not the peer-reviewed studies co-authored by Elizabeth Warren) when he made the claims that earned him a Three Pinocchios rating.

As for any alleged besmirching of anyone's reputation, my advice to the good doctor would be to go back and carefully re-read what the fact check article actually says.

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Update, Sept. 3: The Sanders campaign objected to this fact check, as did the key researchers of the AJPH editorial. Please see the response below by Himmelstein and his colleague Steffie Woolhandler. We stand by our Three-Pinocchio rating.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-flawed-statistic-medical-bankruptcies-year/?noredirect=on

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The peer reviewed study by David U. Himmelstein, MD, Deborah Thorne, PhD, Elizabeth Warren, JD, and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH:

https://pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf#page=3

The editorial by David U. Himmelstein MD, Robert M. Lawless JD, Deborah Thorne PhD, Pamela Foohey JD, and Steffie Woolhandler MD, MPH that BS cited:

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304901