
Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola - ColinWright
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html
======
ColinWright
Quoting from the article:

    
    
        Part of the problem is that none of these articles were
        co-written by a Liberian scientist. The investigators
        collected their samples, returned home and published
        the startling results in European medical journals.
        Few Liberians were then trained in laboratory or
        epidemiological methods. Even today, downloading one
        of the papers would cost a physician here $45, about
        half a week’s salary.

~~~
Terretta
On the flip side, even Liberia's ministry of health (see author's credentials)
could afford the $45, then disseminate to the clinics.

// Disclaimer: I lived and worked in Cameroon in the 80s, writing software for
tracking and publishing data for various govt ministries.

~~~
impendia
Academic here. There is _____no_ __ __reason why these articles should have to
cost $45. Academics have to publish in name-brand journals to get recognized,
and these high prices are pure rent-seeking on behalf of the publishers.

~~~
autokad
publishers need to make money too. i also dislike this anti 'rent-seeking'
culture. if there is no reason for it to cost that much, start your own
publishing company and give out the materials for free (or some lower price).

~~~
magicalist
> _start your own publishing company and give out the materials for free_

There are many people that are moving exactly to this. As ever, the problem is
that the market is not perfectly fluid and things like academic cultural
biases, impressions of prestige, etc often do not follow the most efficient
contours. Posts like the GP's are called for precisely because they call
attention to this and try to shift perception.

------
DangerousPie
I find the premise of this article very hard to believe. On one hand I am sure
that the researchers shared their results with the responsible agencies at the
time. I very much doubt that they would have just written up this article,
submitted it to the journal and called it a day. These studies are usually
done in direct collaboration with local doctors, and governments, even if they
might not have been authors on the paper.

On the other hand the poor state of Liberia's (and the whole region's) health
system and the threat of infectious diseases has been a known problem for a
long time. I can't imagine that hearing about a small number of cases of
people with Ebola antibodies in 1982 would have made any difference to
Liberia's policies. They were already doing all they could to improve their
health system and Ebola is/was far from the only threat.

~~~
cl42
You should look into the whole "open access" movement in research. There is a
huge, HUGE disparity in access to journals and research between scientists in
North America / Europe and developing countries.

Researchers in the US do not cite African journals and likely do not read
them; African scientists often cannot afford journals from US universities --
journal access on SAGE or Taylor & Francis can run well over $10K per year.

The premise isn't hard to believe if you've spent any time in research
institutions or academies in these countries, and it's extremely unfortunate.

~~~
d5lake
Except that there are initiatives (Research4Life, HINARI, AGORA, etc) to get
free access to researchers in the developing world, especially Africa. If you
move to "open access," African scientists won't be able to get published.

------
SixSigma
While the paper is quite specific, it is 30 years old. A pandemic that will
kill millions is still just around the corner and overdue based on historical
statistics.

Will I get to link to this comment and say "pandemic, I told you so" in 5
years?

In the same way many people predicted the sub-prime mortgage bubble bursting,
saying how and when is the hard part.

------
bill_from_tampa
I found an abstract of at least one article from 1986 discussing the 13.4%
prevalence of antibodies against Ebola in Liberia (from a rainforest area) in
2 minutes using pubmed, which is free and open for all to use. It does not
link to the full text (some abstracts do link to full text), but the basic
information was easily found. You just have to look for it!

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3092415](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3092415)

------
dozzie
We are warned about plenty of threats every day. Why Ebola should be the one
to be acted upon?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias)

~~~
ColinWright
While it's true that "hindsight bias" is a thing, and should be guarded
against, this kind of throw-away comment dismissing issues like this bothers
me. We can similarly dismiss everything said by everyone prominent by
referring to "Argument from Authority," as if that's a bad thing. But in
truth, people with a great deal of experience sometimes rise to a position of
authority purely because they tend to be right, and so Bayesian Analysis
suggests that we really should give more weight to what they say.

Similarly here. Don't simply say "Oh, hindsight bias, this is completely
irrelevant." If you don't provide some sort of evidence that this particular
instance is "simply hindsight bias" then I will tend to dismiss what you say.

You may be right, but you have provided _no_ evidence. Just a baseless
accusation.

I was reluctant to say what follows, as I didn't want to be accused of an _ad
hominem_ attack, but I have decided to say it as I feel that it is information
to be shared. In looking through your previous comments I see that you have a
track record for providing a relentlessly negative response to things. There
is value in that, as such critical and sceptical responses balance the
relentless, boundless positive viewpoints of others, but it means that now I
have a more informed context in which to interpret your contributions.

------
whoisthemachine
Obviously, with the importance of the mortality issues of this study, it is
not comparable in terms of importance, but NY times promoting/warning me that
I only have 10 free articles left is a little ironic.

~~~
downandout
This was my exact thought. In fact before reading the article I actually
thought that this was just an article about Ebola that an HN admin had
retitled after being annoyed by the NYT paywall.

~~~
mathattack
The NYT paywall is easy to get around. (Copy/paste the title and search for it
in Google) Of course that's the irony mentioned, since the article in question
was paywalled.

~~~
downandout
I know but still. I've had to do this enough that I think I am going to just
write a chrome extension that will modify the referrer to be google.com on
every request on specified sites.

------
harrumph
Makes me once again think well of the late lamented Aaron Swartz.

------
jacquesm
What's really grating here is that that paper behind the paywall is one for
which the 'online rights' have never been negotiated for so the paywalled
version should really have been in the public domain. This goes for almost all
scientific papers up to 1995.

~~~
jahewson
Is that really true though? The right to distribute a work isn't tied to a
specific medium. A contract between an author and a publisher can divide up
the right by medium if it wishes but an unspecfied "right to publish" would
include the web already. Seem like you'd need to read the specific contract in
question and have a good knowledge of the relevant precedents to draw a
conclusion here.

Even if you're correct, works after 1923 would not enter the public domain,
because the author never relinquished their exclusive right to web
publication.

Of course even for a public domain work, there's nothing to prevent a
publisher from charging for it.

~~~
jacquesm
> Is that really true though?

Yes, it really is. The chairman of the Royal Dutch Library paid a pretty
expensive lawyer for a reasonably long amount of time to get this figured out
once and for all, the rights did not automatically transfer from the author to
the publisher so technically they still lie with the author or in applicable
cases with their estate.

~~~
jahewson
That's not the public domain though - the authors still own the work, the
public has no right to it. Do you have a citation for the "figured out once
and for all" information, I can't seem to find anything?

~~~
jacquesm
> Do you have a citation for the "figured out once and for all" information, I
> can't seem to find anything?

Not everything that's useful is online. But if you have a legitimate need I
can put you in touch with the relevant people, email in my profile.

------
mayneack
There are many non-Ebola viral hemorrhagic fevers across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Not all might be quite as lethal as Ebola, but they have similar modes of
transmission that you wouldn't need an Ebola specific warning to know not to
touch dead people. I obviously think this shouldn't be behind a paywall, but I
don't think that would help.

Lassa Virus in particular is present in Liberia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassa_fever#Epidemiology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassa_fever#Epidemiology)

~~~
maxerickson
The title of the paper in question is presumably "A serological survey on
viral haemorrhagic fevers in liberia".

(linked in another comment by DangerousPie)

So even if you take a step back from calling it a warning about Ebola, the
question of why it was not well known in Liberia is still an interesting one.

------
DangerousPie
I assume this is the paper they are talking about:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0769261782...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0769261782800282)

~~~
streptomycin
So the main conclusions of the paper were not behind a paywall, just the full
paper. And yet it still went unseen. Probably more because it was an old paper
in a journal with a miniscule impact factor [1]. Even if it was open access, I
really doubt that would have changed anything.

There are problems here, and I'm a huge open access supporter, but blaming
this on a paywall seems like a red herring.

[1]
[http://jis.sagepub.com/content/25/5/413.abstract](http://jis.sagepub.com/content/25/5/413.abstract)
says it is 0.122, which is really fucking low and basically means nobody reads
it

~~~
DangerousPie
0.122 is just the r^2 between the impact factor and the percentage of English-
language articles, isn't it?

But yes, it's definitely not a big famous journal that would have been widely
read.

~~~
streptomycin
Yes, I'm an idiot. If you look in that paper I linked to, it shows the real
impact factor is about 1. Which is still low, but not as crazy low as 0.122.

Also if you look up the original ebola paper there were actually several
papers that cited it and discussed the results, and apparently nobody noticed
those either.

------
peter303
Oh the irony. The NY Times is substionally pay walled.

~~~
venomsnake
Use chrome's/firefox porn mode

------
webnrrd2k
The first sentence is (at least to me) obviously untrue -- their have been
people clearly and publicly saying this is a serious problem since at least
the mid-90's. The book "The Coming Plague" came out in 1995, and discusses
almost this exact scenario: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-
Diseases/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-
Diseases/dp/0140250913)

There is little spending on public health issues, crumbling infrastructure,
and, due to ease of travel and overcrowding, diseases spread faster then ever
before.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Hurricane Katrina was also predicted with a detailed article in Scientific
American explaining the outcome of the exact same scenario a few years before
it actually happened. Naturally nothing was done to prepare.

------
lifeisstillgood
>>> Even today, downloading one of the papers would cost a physician here $45,
about half a week’s salary

And if that's not a good reason to end the publication by private journals, I
dont know one.

------
whyenot
Please stick to the actual title of the article and avoid adding your own
linkbait.

~~~
ColinWright
I found the reference in someone else's blog, and followed the guidelines by
submitting the original, and not the link to the blog. I kept the title as it
was on the blog because that's what auto-completed when I used the
bookmarklet, and it felt justified given the line:

    
    
        Even today, downloading one of the papers
        would cost a physician here $45, about
        half a week’s salary.
    

The mods appear to agree with you, though, so even though the title I used was
the title from where I first found it, and even though it matches one of the
lines in the article, and even though it helps provide more information about
the content/conclusion, it's been reduced to the less informative exact title
of the original.

~~~
lisper
What was the title you submitted?

~~~
ColinWright
As originally submitted:

    
    
        Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola,
            but It Was Behind a Paywall

------
spectrum1234
So they are saying more research needs to be open sourced...

------
tehRealist
population control

