| Index | Last Week | Contact DQ News | Latest Issue |
| Featured Articles | Data & Information | Science & Technology | Education |
| Economics | Business | Law | Medicine |
Filmmakers, Novelists, and Historical Subjects...Creating the Past?
Two articles in The Washington Post's "Outlook" section on February 15th explore the conflict between entertainment and historical accuracy. The first, by Rutgers University history professor Jan Lewis, takes issue with the liberties filmmakers take with historical subjects. Dr. Lewis believes that historians should not be fiction's "fact police." He believes that the real issue is whether the sum total of the mistakes in (say) a film is so great as to not provide anything useful in the way of educating the general public. Dr. Lewis also feels that by focusing obsessively upon facts, historians risk losing sight of how a movie or novel that contains inaccuracies may still advance historical thinking.
Having said that, Dr. Lewis takes issue with current historical films like "Amistad" and "Jefferson in Paris," primarily because the filmmakers fail to connect their inventions to the historical record in a plausible way. Filmmakers who work with historical subjects say that they take liberties with historical subjects for the sake of the story. And because filmmakers often have a particular viewpoint, message, or philosophy, the resulting film or novel is a seamless combination of fact, fiction, and fantasy.
Written by historical novelist Thomas Mallon, the second Post article explores the ways the historical novelist reconciles obligations to literature and history. The article's author recently published two historical novels. He believes that even when done well historical fiction is inferior to perceptively written history. Historical events happened one way and one way only. It's only the meaning that's open to queston.
Mallon believes that two occasions call for the historical novelist: when the facts have been lost to time, and when a time has been lost to the facts. Unlike social historians, who, Mallon says, must eventually resort to statistics, context, and comment, a novelist can give texture to the way people once lived. Because the information revolution has made people, and information about people, instantly accessible, Mallon believes that thinking about what may have happened in the past is increasingly appealing. The articles appear on page C3.
Patient Data to Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Sparks Privacy Fears
A front page report in the February 15th issue of The Washington Post explores the way chain pharmacies send confidential patient data to computer database marketing firms that track customers' prescriptions. Written by Post staff writer Robert O'Harrow, Jr., the report documents the way database marketing firms both manage the pharmacies' data and arrange for drug manufacturers to pay pharmacies for patient names, medication, and other personal information.
Both corporations named in the report - a large East Coast pharmacy chain and an East Coast supermarket chain with pharmacies in its larger stores - are among the thousands of pharmacies across the nation that electronically provide names, prescription information, and other personal information to database marketing corporations. The chain pharmacies claim their efforts will help customers. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are increasingly trying to directly contact customers with specific ailments and then persuading them to ask their doctors to prescribe certain drugs.
According to the Post, pharmacy regulators in Maryland and Virginia are exploring whether the programs violate state regulations. At least one bill has been introduced in the Virginia Legislature that would strengthen rules prohibiting pharmacists from releasing prescription data.
U.S. News Law School Rankings, A Data Quality Circus?
According to an article in the February 19th issue of The New York Times, American law schools are again upset about U.S. News and World Report's yearly rankings of U.S. law schools. So much so that the law schools mailed pamphlets to 93,000 law school applicants with a critique titled "Law School Rankings May Be Hazardous to Your Health!" According to the Times, the results of the magazine's ninth survey of graduate schools, which includes programs in business, medicine, engineering, and law clearly bothers those whose schools are being ranked. Most of the 54 members of the American Association of Dental Schools refused to respond to the magazine's questionnaires.
But the law school deans have made the noisiest concerted outcry. They have railed against the magazine's survey specifically and rankings generally, and commissioned a study to inveigh against the practice.
To compile its ranking, U.S. News uses a complex formula that includes Law School Admission Test scores, incoming grade point average, job placement, student-teacher ratio, and two reputation surveys. Last year, the magazine had to publish an extensive correction after a computational error was discovered. According to the Times, there are other factors that may directly affect the data quality of the U.S. News rankings. These include law school deans denigrating other law schools, wealthier law schools engaging in sophisticated marketing campaigns, and several law schools not participating in the survey at all. The front page article was written by staff reporter Jan Hoffman.