Oops! Florida Accidentally Praised On Medical Malpractice

from the that-was-wrong dept

My political viewpoints are pretty simple: I don't trust anyone who is clearly associated with a political party when it comes to political issues. People who spout the party line always seem to do so while knowing that they're twisting the facts to make their point (and this happens on all sides of the political spectrum). I'd much rather people admit that there are multiple sides to a story and try to work out a reasonable solution. It's for this reason that I tend not to like reports coming out of most "political think tanks", since they're always biased to one side or the other. So, it must have been quite a shock last week when the conservative (Republican favorite) think tank "The Heritage Foundation" posted a report on their website sayng that Florida's malpractice laws were the tops in the nation. The Republicans have been working like crazy in that state to change those laws. They've been working so hard, in fact, that it only took a few hours for people higher up at the think tank to take the paper down and tell the author he had "misinterpreted" the data. Once again, the web is being used to rewrite history. A new report went up six hours later - and Florida has suddenly dropped from the best ranking (A+) to a failing grade of (D-). Who knows which ranking is right. I'm more interested in how what happened highlights the nature of how (1) information spreads rapidly on the internet and (2) history can be rewritten quickly online.