Online activists are silencing us, scientists say • Hacker News Board

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#321

Post by SolaceQuantum » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

elefanten wrote: post #296

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yes, the extra information provides context, but not a solid and deep exploration. 2. Yes, it would be different and I think it's very interesting that the broad journalistic investigation "is research influenced by activism?" does not reach to the most prominent topics that come to mind of "topics that have a lot of controversy, for which there are claims that research in this sphere is influenced by activism". T…

I don't think you should draw conclusions about any other areas of research from this piece. I didn't get the impression the article was trying to make any broader statement about activism vs research. The piece gives one example of that tension, but that tension is not the focus of the piece. The article was a specific investigation into the dynamics between vocal CFS activists and researchers pursuing a particular…

The conclusion I'm drawing is that this article isn't about a more controversial subject that this article is now being used to justify positions of the controversial subject in this very thread.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#322

Post by bluntfang » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #292

aikah wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"behavioural genetics" and something else I will not even talk about for fear of being hunted and bullied by an angry mob on the internet. These topics are so sensitive because of the current political climate that they are literally career suicide for any western scientist. It has become way too easy to bully people into submission with tools such as Twitter, but not only, too easy to create harassment brigades agai…

If you say the wrong-think loud enough, Twitter will be the least of your worries. When the credit card companies and banks start refusing to do business with you, you're completely lost in modern society. This has already happened for some people.

could you point to some documentation on this please?

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#323

Post by UnFleshedOne » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #308

doctorpangloss wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s way more complicated than that. The diagnostic criteria changes over time, for many diseases with psychological components, in ways that make formerly pathological behaviors now healthy and vice versa. Placebo doesn’t actually help you, obviously, despite what the outcome you’re measuring suggests. It represents a slack (something not quite an error, but not quite a useful measurement) in the outcomes based meas…

> Placebo doesn’t actually help you What? The first definition of the placebo effect I found was this: " a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment" My highlight.

He means that most of the placebo is covered by a statistical effect, regression to the mean, etc.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-placebo-myth/

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#324

Post by redwards510 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

sewercake wrote: post #181

ip26 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Is it worse in your mouse hand? Don't overlook the mouse. 2) Is the KA2 wide enough for your shoulders? A split keyboard was the ticket for me, due to the set of my shoulders.

what split keyboard are you using? Do you recommend it? Currently in the market for one.

Not him, but... Microsoft nailed it with the Sculpt ergonomic keyboard imho. Detached numpad so you can put the mouse closer to the keyboard, gentle sloping, nice key travel. It's a good split starter keyboard. This one is cheaper than the combo version because it doesn't include the mouse. Don't get the grey bluetooth one. It has a numpad and weird feel along with bt issues. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business...

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#325

Post by internet_user » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #246

Here is a simple rule. Any condition that can be improved with a placebo, has a possible psychological component that can either be a cause or a contributing factor. This is not to say that it is all in your head, or that all people with it have it due to psychological reasons. But some of the people have at least some of their symptoms worsened by psychological factors. Anyone who finds this controversial has psycho…

you know whats funny? CFS has one of the lowest placebo response rates.

Mandatory reference for those unable to google: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15784798

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#326

Post by cpncrunch » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #245

There's a lot of people in the thread who are saying that people are reacting the way they are to this study because of the "stigma" against mental illness. Well, maybe that's part of it. But there are other things going on here. The Reuters article references the PACE study. And people are not just objecting to the "stigma" but the actual consequences of the study. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/12/18/2…

>In other words, the study is being used _by one of the authors_ to deny people state benefits meant to help people with chronic conditions.

No, that is simply not true. You need to be careful who you listen to. Coyne has a history of nasty abuse against people who disagree with him [1], and there is no evidence whatsoever for that particular statement that you quoted (I just looked for it). PACE was funded by DWP, but it is a huge leap to say that they wanted to deny benefits. They are clearly interested in effective treatment, and if you listen to the recent debate of ME in parliament the DWP specifically have a policy of giving benefits for ME.

[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scientists-trade-insults-...

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#327

Post by Emma_Goldman » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #320

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural selection acts to increase the fitness of a species relative to its environment. In the human case 'race' is a misnomer. It simply refers to certain features of humans' external appearance, namely melanin. But this does not track any distinct genetic community, which primarily changes as a function of the total sum of environmental pressures, and not just in proportion to UV radiation (i.e. as is true of mela…

Race is a meaningful medical category since it appears that certain diseases that have a genetic background are more common on some races than others. So it's not a biological race in the sense that you have different genes but the different variations that appear are important( an example is that esophagus cancer is many times more common on Chinese people compared to Western people, a trend that is maintained on im…

Yes but in those cases the role of race is not causal but correlative. It just happens that because more people classified as part of one race have evolved in an environment that has led to medically significant genetic differences from other humans, that those genetic differences correlate with 'race'. But race has nothing to do with it whatsoever. We only use race to speak about statistical medical populations because we lack more precise data about biological populations. This itself is an artefact of racism, i.e. the fact that we classify people according to their melanin, and make this into an important part of society, including census and medical data. Hopefully one of the upshots of the genomic revolution will be to create standardised genetic tests that do away with the need for such crude proxies.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#328

Post by phonypc » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #278

phonypc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be downvoted for being off-topic, excessively contrarian and uttering non-sequiturs. Paleoclimatology bears no relevance to the effects climate change will have on human civilization, and extant life more generally. i.e. it does not follow from the fact that life has (and could again be) adapted to Eocene-like conditions, that "climate change is good".

>You'll be downvoted for being off-topic, excessively contrarian and uttering non-sequiturs. Thanks for once again proving my actual point; which had nothing to do with climate change.

Nah. If you had sincerely posted something critical of climate change (on a more relevant article) that wasn't nonsensical at first sight, and were downvoted without being responded to, then sure. Call HN an echo chamber.

But you were just being a contrarian troll.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#329

Post by DanBC » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

throway832422f wrote: post #240

mattkrause wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes...and yet, no. The brain controls the muscles that constitute your forearm. It’s not impossible to imagine that some sort of central nervous system dysfunction could make your arm go stiff. Limb rigidity is a classic symptom of Parkinson’s disease, for example, and its cause is several steps removed from motor cortex. Even the wrinkling of your fingers when they’re wet involves the nervous system: https://www.ncb…

Definitely. The now [flagged] comment I was responding to was completely over-the-top and utterly lacking in nuance hence my dismissive response of a similar nature.

You cunts need to stop saying that physical symptoms can not be caused by mental illness.

It's fucking stupid and it makes you look fucking stupid.

Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

#330

Post by internet_user » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

nateberkopec wrote: post #10

Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…

Expect that as we speak, the actual biological cause are being discovered.

Just like it turns out 50%+ of fibromyalgia patients have actual neuropathies, that can unfortunately diagnosed by biopsy only, which is expensive - and it's oh so much cheaper and efficient to write off as a psychosomatic disease instead.