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Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

newsweek.com

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Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#211

Post by WhitneyLand »

pisteoff wrote: post #202
dumbneurologist wrote: post #117

Disclaimer: I am a neurologist The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press. I would love nothing more than to have this kind of therapy be a reality for my patients. However, I am deeply skeptical of this report. Why? Because - hyperbaric oxygen therapy has a big industry of…

"The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press." So fucking what? I suffered a moderate (GCS 8) TBI 6 years ago and it has been the most impactful thing to ever happen in my life, more so than even the births of my children. This article is a small glimmer of hope in an otherw…

We have to separate the points here.

"Hope" is a real, tangible thing, crucial in our lives, and provably effective.

The question is do we need to accept quackery to have it? Is that sometimes the only way? I suspect the answer is, rarely.

There is so much legit and exciting work being done w.r.t. TBIs that it seems we should not have to rely on it in this area. But that's a guess. Until you've walked in someone's shoes...

Sorry to hear of your suffering.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#212

Post by Natsu »

tptacek wrote: post #169
piker wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you both for taking the time to create accounts and respond. Both of these responses are amazing, and it's lurkers/posters like you that make this site great. One question: some of your responses attack only the credibility of the speaker (OP's 1st, 4th and your 4th, 5th points). Is this typical in scientific discourse? They seem to detract from your analysis to me.

It's an Internet myth that the credibility of an argument's source is out of bounds in a debate. If and only if the arguer's credibility has no logical connection to their argument, then attacking the arguer is fallacious. Otherwise, as is very much the case here, it is not.

> If and only if the arguer's credibility has no logical connection to their argument, then attacking the arguer is fallacious.

The arguer's credibility does not affect the truth value of any statements, so it's always more useful to argue over why someone is wrong. You cannot guarantee that any segment of the population agrees with your credibility assessments. And these assessments should be established via appeals to factual evidence to begin with, anyhow, if we're to believe they should carry any weight at all. Otherwise, we're arguing over feelings instead of facts.

For people with wild, unsupported claims, it's better to simply take the tact that we have not yet seen evidence that establishes those claims and that what's on offer presently does not meet the necessary burden. In that argument, it really doesn't matter who is making the claim, only that the claim itself is not supported.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#213

Post by ferentchak »

CydeWeys wrote: post #166
piker wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you both for taking the time to create accounts and respond. Both of these responses are amazing, and it's lurkers/posters like you that make this site great. One question: some of your responses attack only the credibility of the speaker (OP's 1st, 4th and your 4th, 5th points). Is this typical in scientific discourse? They seem to detract from your analysis to me.

Pointing out that someone is a quack is a really effective refutation of their arguments. If you were arguing about WWII history with someone, might it not affect your trust in their credibility if you found out they were a Holocaust denier? Or if you're arguing geography with someone and it's pointed out that they're a flat Earther?

Pointing out someone is a quack is also a great way to keep differing opinions out of a discussion and thus make sure that rational discourse is avoided on issues that are useful to the person pointing.

It's always useful to think of these situation in circumstances where you don't have any emotional involvement because otherwise you mind can play tricks on you.

For example imagine you are a European Scientist who really wants to fit every animal onto tree structure with mammals over here and squid here and all the animals fall into some easy to understand structure that makes total sense to you.

And some weird guy comes back from Australia with natures most awesome animal the platypus. A furry creature that lays eggs with poison feet. Your simple identification chart is totally jacked. It way easier to say he is a quack that evaluate the evidence you don't like. Heck it's totally inconvenient that your life's work is wrong, it's going to cost you money and esteem.

tldr; pointing out a quack is a great excuse for avoiding evaluating their arguments but refutes none of them. Everyone's time is valueable and figuring out what adventures to spend it on is important. Confusing that reasonable justification of where to spend your time with their argument being false is a dangerous habit to get into. You end up always thinking you are right and avoiding things that challenge your beliefs.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#214

Post by dumbneurologist »

paulse wrote: post #142
dumbneurologist wrote: post #117

Disclaimer: I am a neurologist The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press. I would love nothing more than to have this kind of therapy be a reality for my patients. However, I am deeply skeptical of this report. Why? Because - hyperbaric oxygen therapy has a big industry of…

I've read a little about the "Dobkin Technique" where a cold compress is held over the eyes and face of a patient in cardiac arrest to simulate the 'mammalian diving reflex' and delay brain death like shown in these cases. Is there any truth to this or is it pseudoscience? Why wouldn't this be a more known treatment if it works?

the diving reflex is real, and is used clinically to treat supraventricular tachycardia (where a re-entrant electrical feedback loop in the heart can be broken by slowing down the choke-point through which it passes). It slows down the heart and lessens its contractile power consumption. That could conceivably work (in my mind) after a cardiac arrest, but it isn't really related to brain death (which is an issue in the days and weeks following, in the ICU where oxygenation and glucose usually plentiful).

Remember: the "theory" behind any medical idea is almost irrelevant if you have data regarding the outcome. If you have outcome data, it supercedes the theory, and is all-important. The theory simply helps us prioritize which treatments to assess first - the better the fundamentals, the more worthy it is of scarce research resources.

That's one of my biggest criticisms of the lay press: they emphasize the scientific narrative and don't focus enough on the outcomes. The most meaningful outcomes in scientific terms always mean the same thing: a meaningful improvement by blinded observer in something we care about.

"meaningful improvement" - this means that improving survival by a tenth of one percent might not be worth the trouble of implementation

"blinded observer" - because it cancels out the placebo effect and expectations

"something we care about" - such as returning to school. But if you do a SPECT scan and the SPECT scan "looks better" to the doctor? That's not important. We sometimes use things that are well-documented to reflect important things even though they are not important in their own right... we call these biomarkers.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#215

Post by dang »

komali2 wrote: post #188

Come on, whoever you are. You're seriously going to drop words like infarction, thalami, FLAIR hyper intensity, massive cortical infarction on us? What's the point? Maybe 1% of the people on this public forum will have even the slightest clue what you're talking about. Luckily someone else has posted a dictionary underneath you, but I mean, surely you're used to speaking to laymen? You couldn't have just said "tissue…

Would you please not post like this to HN? You may have a point about jargon but it's lost in a bucket of bile. That's exactly how we shouldn't be reacting to people who come to our community to share knowledge with us. Especially because the #1 rule of commenting in this forum is "Be civil": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813572 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#216

Post by dumbneurologist »

pisteoff wrote: post #202
dumbneurologist wrote: post #117

Disclaimer: I am a neurologist The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press. I would love nothing more than to have this kind of therapy be a reality for my patients. However, I am deeply skeptical of this report. Why? Because - hyperbaric oxygen therapy has a big industry of…

"The enthusiastic replies on this thread are understandable, but disappointing to see: we all need to be less credulous regarding the lay science press, and especially the lay medical press." So fucking what? I suffered a moderate (GCS 8) TBI 6 years ago and it has been the most impactful thing to ever happen in my life, more so than even the births of my children. This article is a small glimmer of hope in an otherw…

I am really sorry to hear that you've had such a terrible thing happen to you. I think the scientific community is moving in the right direction in recognizing the insidious nature but ultimate impact that these injuries can have. But by skepticism helps us protect the already-scarce resources we have to study what treatments actually work. Let's not repeat the mistakes of the autism community that spent millions and decades on trying to blame vaccines. The science will eventually come out, but we can literally spend as much money as we want to to reach the same conclusions.

You deserve to have hope, but for me personally, hope comes from the fact that science works. This article is not real progress (even though the child had a good outcome, and that's awesome), but there are a dozen places where real progress is occurring, even if it's less visible.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#217

Post by komali2 »

dang wrote: post #215
komali2 wrote: post #188

Come on, whoever you are. You're seriously going to drop words like infarction, thalami, FLAIR hyper intensity, massive cortical infarction on us? What's the point? Maybe 1% of the people on this public forum will have even the slightest clue what you're talking about. Luckily someone else has posted a dictionary underneath you, but I mean, surely you're used to speaking to laymen? You couldn't have just said "tissue…

Would you please not post like this to HN? You may have a point about jargon but it's lost in a bucket of bile. That's exactly how we shouldn't be reacting to people who come to our community to share knowledge with us. Especially because the #1 rule of commenting in this forum is "Be civil": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=148135…

I fail to see how I'm not being civil, and am happy to receive feedback on a better way to have expressed frustration at what I see as excessive jargon.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#218

Post by Natsu »

tptacek wrote: post #187
otterley wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with that exception in logical thinking. What argument is logically dependent on someone's credibility?

For instance, this Newsweek article and the claims made by the doctor in it depend on the doctor's own reports of their interpretations of MRI scans. Observing that the doctor making those interpretations is disreputable is an important and logically meaningful point. Really what you're observing is that the argument in Newsweek sidesteps logic and appeals implicitly to the authority of that doctor. Presented with th…

It's not necessary to drag one's assessment of their credibility into this at all, though. Points 1-3 of the original post are all that need to be argued.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway7890

Credibility is not "exempt" from scrutiny, it simply doesn't change the truth value of any factual statements about whether the treatment works. If it somehow could change the truth of whether this approach worked or not, then if this guy presented the opposite conclusion, somehow this treatment could either start or stop working based only on the person's opinion and reputation.

There's obviously no causal mechanism for that to happen and believing it would require magical thinking. So arguing over it is irrelevant and inserting it into the argument is pointless. We instead can properly say that he hasn't answered a lot of good questions about his approach or presented sufficient evidence to believe in it, which is the rational approach.

Re: Scientists Reverse Brain Damage in Drowned Toddler?

#220

Post by dang »

Supremacist wrote: post #163

This is why America hates you science. Why do you have to always rain on our parade? We just want to believe in gods and magic, is that so much to ask for?

Commenting like this is not allowed here and will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813211 and marked it off-topic.

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