Viewing profile — skat20phys

It's difficult to go through everything with specific examples, because that would be an essay onto itself. But, for example, in Book 3 (via the Rackham translation; http://www.per…

It's been awhile since I've read this. Rereading about it now, it seems like a conceptual mess. I also have this sense, hard to put into words, that it is written from a perspectiv…

My sense of the literature is that it's accurate in the limited sense that masks often don't have statistically significant effects in studies. It's maybe also accurate in the sens…

In what direction? I think part of the point of this paper is that most masks aren't taking things seriously enough.

Sometime not too long ago there was a blog post or article covered on HN, about data showing student scores on some academic achievement measure over time. If I remember, all stude…

I also think the random deviation from "best" strategy isn't realistic. In the real world, true randomness is kind of unusual. There's usually some kind of spatial or temporal auto…

At one time there was intrinsic cost to the lender in the form of risk. It seems not so anymore, or at least less than it should.

I'd argue that's in part because of the protection racket that's partially at the heart of the moral hazard: the poor regulation of healthcare services, at least in the US. What th…

One thing about case reporting is that they tend to ignore the denominator, the number of tests. I've been tracking DPH reports in our state since they started, and one thing I've …

A colleague of mine pointed out it's important to look at the conflicts of interest and funding sources. One of the patients seems to be from a family funding the study, and some o…

The protocol is actually fairly intensive and expensive, involving tailored brain scans and all-day treatments over multiple days. It's the sort of thing that I could see in inpati…

In the context of the press release it was a little confusing to me because the published paper doesn't really report on anything that would be considered long-term. I assume she m…

I don't mean to sound snarky, but aren't those two problems related?

I'm at the point where it shouldn't matter who did it, what should matter is its integrity. I'd prefer everything was anonymously posted at some level so author background didn't g…

Most of that is oriented toward yeast breads, but as a minor point that was confusing to me for awhile: At least in the US, there is no technical legal definition for baking powder…

I personally don't believe them for a variety of reasons: I don't know that any country's numbers are entirely accurate, the substantial reports of active suppression of reporting …

There have been studies of this from previous pandemics. Together with studies from the Great Recession / financial collapse the gist is there's definitely going to be an increase …

This is nice but I'd also like some kind of detached evaluation of how well they function in practice, in terms of pros and cons. My sense is that in the videochat/conferencing are…

This is great but we really need antibody tests almost as much, if not as much.

Vulnerable world, meet modern academics.

Is there actual good data on aspirin/NSAIDs? Because what I've read was a theory communicated in a letter to the Lancet, and the actual data might suggest the opposite.

A discussion of how regulatory structures contributed to problems in the US (lack of tests, number and variety of providers and services, and so forth).

I have a lot of respect for Ioannidis's work, and kind of lean toward his perspective in some respects, but I think he's misrepresenting certain data and missing certain points. He…

I've been there and have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the boulder has always seemed fishy to me. It's a remote location and I doubt many people would track something…

I've always really liked Rhatigan's (that is, the author of the linked piece) Gina typeface: http://www.ultrasparky.org/work/typefaces/gina/gina_01.html I read something about it e…