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Podcast: Unsung Science
Episode: From Revisionist History: The Triplicate Program and Opioid Epidemic
Description: I'm sharing a bonus episode from my friends at Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast about things misunderstood and overlooked. This season, Malcolm’s obsessed with experiments – natural experiments, scientific experiments, thought experiments. In this preview, we learn about Paul Madden, who ran the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in the 1930s. He enacted an expensive, burdensome, annoying bit of bureaucratic anti-drug hysteria known as the “triplicate program” that made every doctor in the state miserable because it involved a lot of paperwork. But Madden insisted this kind of paperwork would save lives. Fast forward to the 90s and early 2000...