Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 398 posts

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#101

Post by galangalalgol »

igorkraw wrote: post #66
gyuserbti wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This standard sentiment seems to me to be a machiavellian justification for the status quo and for not trying to improve anything. The costs of the problems are the problem, not whether they are eventually resolved extremely ineffiently.

Yes, we can improve things, but it is important to recognise that the scientific method and process is the best thing we have right now to figure this stuff out. Making it more open and reliable (open acces by default, data and code publication by default,more funding options that encourage public participation and replication studies etc.) is definitely possible but the core is not rotten. Especially some private in…

Those oligarchs and race realists have supporters within academia, when selecting the reforms for academic process, this should be considered. Also, acknowledging the core truth these people build their lies around is fundamental to dismissing the whole ball of infectious meme.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#102

Post by rjsw »

igorkraw wrote: post #53
sillysaurusx wrote: post #35

The truth has a habit of shining through if you are encouraged to keep asking questions and follow up on them. The point is that people are actively discouraged from asking questions and following up on them. People lose their careers and livelihoods for asking the wrong sorts of questions. Truth is no barrier to social backlash. In fact, questions that might be true tend to be the ones that get people the most heate…

On the specific topic of IQ and scientific racism, the "centrist" position of "just asking questions" has been a cloak for agendas and not caring about the truth for a while now. Exhibit A: https://mobile.twitter.com/Simon_Whitten/status/117331966332... Exhibit B, what happens when you actually dig into the science behind the most well known peddler of the IQ is real and important, therefore racism is actually not a…

What if the evidence is valid but there are non-racist reasons for it happening ? Currently the whole subject is off-limits.

I would start with the presumption that slavery would cause differences in a population whatever their skin colour.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#103

Post by pjc50 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #74
igorkraw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the specific topic of IQ and scientific racism, the "centrist" position of "just asking questions" has been a cloak for agendas and not caring about the truth for a while now. Exhibit A: https://mobile.twitter.com/Simon_Whitten/status/117331966332... Exhibit B, what happens when you actually dig into the science behind the most well known peddler of the IQ is real and important, therefore racism is actually not a…

A lot of your points are addressed explicitly by that twitter account. I would encourage you to spend some time reading through and examining the extensive studies being presented. Believe me, I would love to dismiss it as a biased person and be done with it. But the truth seems to be nuanced. Suppose tomorrow someone had concrete scientific evidence that climate change wasn't man-made. (It's a thought experiment, so…

> Suppose tomorrow someone had concrete scientific evidence that climate change wasn't man-made.

This depends entirely on what the alleged mechanism is instead, who is publishing the paper, the extent to which it depends on statistics, and which existing research it contradicts exactly? How difficult is it to reproduce the relevant experiments, or does this rely on analytical interpretation of evidence? How difficult is is to gather more evidence on the same topic?

(Also, are we though-experimenting that it's not happening, or that it is happening but the radiative forcings are much smaller than expected and something else is causing the warming? Because the latter is still a huge problem!)

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#104

Post by sgt101 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #74
igorkraw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the specific topic of IQ and scientific racism, the "centrist" position of "just asking questions" has been a cloak for agendas and not caring about the truth for a while now. Exhibit A: https://mobile.twitter.com/Simon_Whitten/status/117331966332... Exhibit B, what happens when you actually dig into the science behind the most well known peddler of the IQ is real and important, therefore racism is actually not a…

A lot of your points are addressed explicitly by that twitter account. I would encourage you to spend some time reading through and examining the extensive studies being presented. Believe me, I would love to dismiss it as a biased person and be done with it. But the truth seems to be nuanced. Suppose tomorrow someone had concrete scientific evidence that climate change wasn't man-made. (It's a thought experiment, so…

>had concrete scientific evidence that climate change wasn't man-made. (It's a thought experiment, so humor me for a moment.)

I think that there would be a rush to find out what process was causing climate change and to develop mitigations for that.

In fact this is a kind of worst case - AGW has a silver lining; we are doing something to make it bad. If we stop doing that then it will go away (slowly). That's all we have to do (at the moment) - just stop it.

If the kind of radical climate change that we are seeing were being caused by a natural process we would have to take action to counter that. Also we would have to contemplate the idea that the process might not have a human scale end - for example the sun could be warming the earth by 1'C extra every decade for the next million years. The earth would be heated by an extra 5'C in our childrens life times, and 15'C in our grandchildrens.

We know there is a hard stop on AGW. The earth warms by 4'C and civilization disappears (along with most humans). Sure, it takes 500 years for carbon to fall back to "normal" and it's debatable if the climate resets or moves to a new stable state. But in the end, 500, 5000 or 50,000 years from now this to will pass, obliterated by the glacial beat. A natural process might simply cook life off earth.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#105

Post by kaybe »

dhimes wrote: post #52
praptak wrote: post #32

The major and established beliefs in science usually have some fringe competition/opposition. You can only tell in hindsight whether it's "a cabal stifling valid criticism" or "scientists refusing to waste time on distractions".

This is an extremely important point. Since I was a grad student, there have been at least 5 monumental "findings" in physics: 1. A spinning top weighs less if it spins one way than if it spins the other 2. A "fifth force," IIRC it was linked to baryons 3. The climate is warming, not (as people thought) cooling 4. Superconductivity can be achieved at high (liquid Ln2) temperatures 5. Fusion can be achieved at low (ro…

7 is not fair, they explicitly asked for help to find the issue with their experiment. The media took it and ran.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#106

Post by tempsy »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #79
tempsy wrote: post #13

Hasn’t Alzheimer’s been referred to as diabetes type III? It’s inflammation of the brain, and eating a low inflammation diet (low carb, no sugar, fasting) is the best thing one can do to drastically reduce getting it.

I remember seeing that but I really suspect it's a gross oversimplification and not likely to be very explanatory. Almost like science clickbait. But not saying there isn't some connection....

Not every conclusion suggesting a chronic illness is largely preventable through diet and exercise is “clickbait”

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#107

Post by kpmah »

travbrack wrote: post #58
g42gregory wrote: post #47

An honest question: How does this compare to the group-think in the climate change/global warming research? Are we similarly rejecting funding to any research that does not fit into the common consensus? The fact that we call some people "climate change deniers" tells me that we have an unhealthy dynamics going on there. Will it take 30 years to get to the same point?

Another honest question: have we established that humans caused climate change? Is it even possible to do so?

I don't believe for a second that your question is 'honest', because I think you're smart enough to be able to type it in to Google and find the answer if you were actually interested in it.

Read the IPCC report if you actually want to know (Spoiler: yes and yes).

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#108

Post by michaelbarton »

svara wrote: post #100

A super interesting article, but the title is pure clickbait. In this day and age, feeding into the narrative that science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary is downright dangerous. Reality is much more nuanced, and the article actually does a good job of detailing that. In some sense this all started from the very beginning, from when Alzheimer's disease (AD) wa…

> science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary

Just one data point, but in my experience in academia that was almost exactly how I found it. The exception that it wasn't a team sport because there's only space for one first author.

My feeling is that the recognition and 'impactfulness' tied to being successful in academia are antagonistic to conducting unbiased research.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#109

Post by gus_massa »

OneGuy123 wrote: post #49
praptak wrote: post #32

The major and established beliefs in science usually have some fringe competition/opposition. You can only tell in hindsight whether it's "a cabal stifling valid criticism" or "scientists refusing to waste time on distractions".

You are missing the point. The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. Therefore the best approach is to look at everything possible, since we obviously have no idea where to look. If we knew where to look, we would have atleast a partial cure. But no cure works now, none.

There are too many possible alternatives that may lead to a cure.

What about homeopathic cures? I think it is snake oil, but some people think it is useful. If you try everything possible, you should try it. But it would be a big waste of money and allocation of patients and medical doctors. And also, there are many homeopathic recipes, so which one(s) should you try?

What about radiation? A huge amount of radiation may help or may he harmful. I think it's harmful, but at least it can cause a real effect. Should we include that in the list of everything possible?

Antibiotics? I don't think it would work, but it solved stomach ulcers after year of traying other treatments. Which antibiotic?

Exercise? There are some studies from time to time, but I think most of them have the causation link backwards. I think we should make less studies in this field, but nobody asked me.

I can add more and more alternatives. Some are ridicules, like nuns prayers, some may be legit like CRISP9. There are more possibilities than the current level of funding and patients available for clinical studies, so someone has to choose the more promising alternatives and hope they made the correct guess.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#110

Post by ekc »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #74
igorkraw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the specific topic of IQ and scientific racism, the "centrist" position of "just asking questions" has been a cloak for agendas and not caring about the truth for a while now. Exhibit A: https://mobile.twitter.com/Simon_Whitten/status/117331966332... Exhibit B, what happens when you actually dig into the science behind the most well known peddler of the IQ is real and important, therefore racism is actually not a…

A lot of your points are addressed explicitly by that twitter account. I would encourage you to spend some time reading through and examining the extensive studies being presented. Believe me, I would love to dismiss it as a biased person and be done with it. But the truth seems to be nuanced. Suppose tomorrow someone had concrete scientific evidence that climate change wasn't man-made. (It's a thought experiment, so…

You might find this paper interesting for a counter perspective. http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/3334/block99-how_heritabilit...

The person is biased and dismissing is a good option.

Post reply on HN