[wat10000]

I don’t know what counts as legitimate sources. I’ll let the professionals figure that one out.

> Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences?

It baffles me that you apparently think this is some kind of zinger. Yes!

[ghaff]

Journals less commonly but pretty much every conference out there of any scope is sponsored by companies. In fact, absent sponsors, very few conferences would exist other than small volunteer-run ones.

[wat10000]

If attendees aren’t willing to pay the full cost then maybe the conference isn’t providing enough value and we’re better off without it.

[ghaff]

People (and their companies in many cases) have limited budgets. I do pay out of my pocket for some conferences, and conference organizers and (previously) employers in other cases. You're probably not going to convince me that I'm better off sitting at a desk than getting out and collaborating with people at an event from time to time. For that matter, why should companies sponsor open source projects? If they're that valuable, individuals should just pay for them I guess.

[wat10000]

And you’re not going to convince me that collaboration is so valuable that it’s worth corrupting the whole medical establishment, and simultaneously not valuable enough for you to pay what it costs to do it.

[ghaff]

I have nothing to do with the medical establishment. I do know that the conferences I do attend are subsidized by companies in the tech space in various ways. You're welcome to bemoan that of course although I'm pretty sure neither of us are in a position to overturn decades-long (at least) practice.

[wat10000]

I’m ranting about my desire to ban all advertising. It’s obviously never going to happen.

[yunyu]

Got it. So you want attention to be controlled by the whims of academic/government/publishing bureaucrats or black-box ranking algorithms who are the arbitrators of legitimacy. I can't say I agree with that opinion, but different strokes for different folks.

[wat10000]

I’m very confused. Why would “black-box ranking algorithms” be on the no advertising side?

Medicine has a pretty good system for getting knowledge out to doctors as far as I can tell. I fail to see how advertising contributes to this in any way. Banning advertising is the opposite of controlling attention.

I’d like a total ban on all advertising, but I at least see some merits in the discovery argument for consumer goods even if I don’t agree with it. But saying advertisement is necessary so doctors can find out about new treatments? I hope this is just subtle satire, because, what?

[yunyu]

> Medicine has a pretty good system for getting knowledge out to doctors as far as I can tell.

Yes, it does - it’s called advertising. In the US, the average promotional spend per physician exceeds $20k/yr. As a result, a lot more patients are able to quickly benefit from new medications like Dupixent or Ozempic as a result of wider awareness.

Suppose we banned Google ads and you are searching for a plumber. You are now entirely at the whims of whoever designs the ranking algorithm on Google/the Yellow Pages, who has nothing at stake here. Meanwhile, advertisers have to bid for your attention - making them at least somewhat aligned with your buying intent.

The same applies for doctors searching for state of the art diabetes treatments. It’s hard to say that relying on a fuzzy notion of “legitimacy” (or entrenched status-quo cliques) is a more fair system.

[wat10000]

Your hypothetical is the world I actually live in, except I have to scroll past the ads first. It’s amazing that you’re so invested in advertising as a concept that you’d think a guy who keeps ranting about banning advertising would ever select a plumber from an ad.

The only purpose Google ads serve to me is to take up space and waste my time locating where the ads end and the real results begin.

Otherwise, they’re at best useless. Being able to distinguish the ads from the real results is an important online safety skill these days to avoid getting ripped off or outright scammed. They’re no longer merely parasitic, but are now actually dangerous.

If your argument is that advertising medical treatments to doctors is just like the mundane advertising I see on Google, you’re doing an excellent job of making my case for me.

[yunyu]

Your value to advertisers is probably less than 1% of that of a single doctor or corporate VP. It makes sense that your queries are lower intent - this is hardly contradictory. Fortunately, you are an edge case wrt how firms are actually spending their money, so we’ll leave it at that.

[wat10000]

If you want to argue that advertising is different for doctors than it is for me, and it’s useful for them despite being a drain and a danger for me, then go for it. But that’s the opposite of the argument you laid out.