Gessen’s claim that “Russia is dying of a broken heart” is misplaced in scientific or even social analysis. She attempts to use a kind of middle-range theory, such as the one Ziblatt advocates for, to describe a country of over 144 million people over a range of almost 100 years. Gessen completely fails to examine the scope conditions and any limitations on generalizing her (already questionable) findings. The conclusion that the death rate in Russia is due to cardiovascular disease is quite possibly a solid one – however, she fails to substantiate it with convincing evidence. It is true that the physiological outcome of stress, mediated by many deleterious effects of the hormone cortisol, can lead to immune suppression and increase the chance of contracting disease such as CVD. However, Gessen uses ungeneralizable and unsubstantiated evidence that in no way qualifies as scientific.

Gessen’s emotional approach, beginning with an (irrelevant) sob-story about how she lost many friends to AIDS in the US and then was told she shouldn’t be surprised that her Russian friends were dying as well – literally “crying on a friend’s shoulder” – is antithetical to any type of scientific study. While emotional appeals can be effective in journalism, Gessen’s article masquerades as scientific analysis of Russia’s high death rate, a quantitative statistic. Scientists of all kinds, including those in “soft” sciences, strive for impartiality because emotion leads to distortion such as confirmation bias. Gessen’s emotional connection to the country also dissuades her from considering what Scott proposed – that people may lie to analysts to portray themselves or their culture in a certain light. Parsons’ “long, unstructured interviews” offer only the perspectives of several in millions, and there is no guarantee that that these perspectives are reliable.

The weakest aspect of Gessen’s analysis is when she connects the “brief breaks in the downward spiral” with periods “of greater hope,” namely the Kruschev and Gorbachev eras. There is nothing that indicates causality between these eras and hope, or hope and low death rate. It would be more accurate to discuss the effects of less-repressive regimes and more open economies on, for example, food availability and nutrition, or stillbirths. Gessen states, “death and birth statistics appear to reflect nothing but despair.” Not only does she imply causality here, she implies exclusive causality! This is a huge oversight and inappropriate for any remotely scientific analysis.