Science vs. Populism: Stalking Dr. Steere

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>
>>  The article has nothing to do with either populism in the late 19th
>>  century or Hofstadter's interpretation.
>
>>  Populism in the subject line is just a loose label for the rhetoric
>>  that pits "established experts" against "lay persons" & "maverick
>>  experts" & finds the former's findings to be automatically suspect.
>>  The rhetoric has ill served the patients in the article.
>
>I agree that the patients described in the article suffer from very real
>grievances, and their responses to their problems are not very productive,
>to say the least. Of course the article you forwarded had nothing to do with
>historical populism of Hofstader. But your current usage of the term
>populism -- referring to the irrational responses of common people to forces
>they dimly perceive -- has much to do with historiographical interpretations
>of historical populism, such as Hofstadter's.
>
>mark

I don't think that responses described in the article are 
"irrational," however, in that it is "rational" to want to have your 
medical bills paid by insurance companies.  The populist rhetoric is 
often used by intellectuals, not just by "common people."  E.g., Ivan 
Illich, _Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health_ (1976).  There 
is an interesting criticism of Ivan Illich's theory: Vicente Navarro, 
"The Fetishism of Industrialization: A Critique of Ivan Illich," 
_Monthly Review_ 28.5 (Oct. 1976).  (Navarro's criticism itself has 
an inadequate conceptualization of needs, though.)

Yoshie