I was very happy with NEWSWEEK recently, specifically because of its lengthy expose of Oprah Winfrey and her promotion of pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery on her talk show. However, I haven't always been that thrilled with NEWSWEEK's coverage of medicine and science. For example, NEWSWEEK's science columnist Sharon Begley has gotten on my nerves on more than one occasion, most recently when she castigated doctors for not enthusiastically embracing comparative effectiveness research, making the unjustified slur against physicians that they "hate science." Indeed, she even managed to irritate Steve Novella with her slur, and that's not nearly as easy a thing to do as it is to irritate me sufficiently to want to lay down a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence or to irritate PZ enough to type up a slapdown.

Oops, she did it again.

Last week, Begley produced an article that, quite frankly, annoyed the crap out of me, called From Bench To Bedside: Academia slows the search for cures. It never ceases to amaze me how some pundits can take an enormously flawed idea as to why a problem exists and run right off the cliff with it.

Begley begins by pointing out that President Obama has not yet appointed a Director of the NIH. That's a fair enough criticism. Personally, I'm not happy that there's no permanent NIH Director. I'd like to think, as Begley hopes, that it's because Obama realizes how important this pick is and wants to get it right. But that's about all I agree with Begley on. After that introduction, she runs straight off the cliff:

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