(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Now, I know CBS News is a disreputable tabloid organization – not a highly reliable source of information, like, say, the National Enquirer. But here at JPGB we’ve always said that empirial research should be judged on its own merits, not on the identity of the researcher.
CBS is reporting that states checking up on H1N1 diagnoses have found that only a small (sometimes tiny) portion of those diagnosed by their doctors as having swine flu actually had it. California tested 13,704 cases of people who were told by their doctors that they probably had swine flu and found that only 2% actually had it. Florida tested 8,853 cases and found that only 17% had swine flu. Other states found similar results.
CDC stonewalled CBS’s FOIA requests for the data, saying the state agencies that reported the data didn’t feel confident enough in their accuracy to have them publicly released. Sorry, we’d love to help, but our hands are tied. In the report you can see the CDC spokesman promise that he’ll get those data right to CBS just as soon as the states tell him it’s OK with them to release them.
But when CBS went to the states and asked for the data, they handed them right over.
I can’t imagine why the CDC might feel like it has something to hide. Surely it has nothing to do with the president’s use of swine flu panic as an excuse to claim “emergency powers” to sweep away “bureaucratic obstacles” (formerly known as the rule of law).
Update: OK, admittedly we don’t have all the details here. Maybe there will turn out to be some issue of selection bias at work. But the reason this information isn’t readily available is because of the CDC stonewall. That’s the story here.
Posted by Greg Forster 
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