If you don& #39;t come out of this seriously questioning at least one of your priors, I& #39;m going to assume you just don& #39;t do much critical thinking.

Let me think... which priors do I now question:

1) I& #39;m much more skeptical of numbers. They almost necessarily represent an incomplete story about whatever they are trying to describe.

2) I& #39;m *very* skeptical of any reporter using data or numbers or any scientific concept for which they have no foundation. If you& #39;ve been on the "genetics beat" for a couple years, sure, you can probably talk about genetics. Otherwise, your writing is just going to be gibberish.

3) I& #39;m more likely to ask people "on the ground" what is going on. I assumed Seattle hospitals would get slammed & for a while I assumed they were getting slammed. I had to talk to doctors and nurses to discover they were not.