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

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

#191

Post by igorkraw »

zozbot234 wrote: post #95
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…

There's definitely a lot of agendas being pushed. But I'm not sure why we're being expected to trust numbers like 100% and 0% - what makes these numbers inherently more "objective" than other possibilities such as, let's say 90% and 10%?

Well in this case, because they are numbers in an example given and you are nitpicking. In the general case, it's more complicated, but (controversial statement ahead) truth exists,some ideas are wrong either by data or by definition

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

#192

Post by clairity »

svara wrote: post #164
leftyted wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think that narrative is correct. We can't fix the problem if we don't discuss it. The whole "I believe in science" thing (which you seem to be pushing) is really quite silly. Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politic…

I actually agree with much of what you wrote, but I think the politics of the funding game just reflect a fundamental problem for which I don't see an obvious solution: Science has to be conservative, in order to protect the integrity of the record of published findings. This can lead to a situation where a field gets stuck in a local optimum from which progress is no longer possible, because things that don't seem t…

science doesn't have to be conservative at all, so why presume it? most (advanced) knowledge is tentative anyway, so why not take the strategy of accepting it all while it's uncertain? negative results are just a valuable as advances, and contradictions are just areas begging for more research.

what you really seem to be asking is "why can't science be more efficient?" and science shouldn't be more efficient. it should be wholly less efficient. we should have more people searching in the dark for the implausible.

conservatism wants the safe and sure, and science is, and must be, anything but.

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

#193

Post by leftyted »

shadowgovt wrote: post #188
leftyted wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think that narrative is correct. We can't fix the problem if we don't discuss it. The whole "I believe in science" thing (which you seem to be pushing) is really quite silly. Funding is a political game and the people who are best at politic…

> he people who are best at politics tend to be the worst at research (and vice-versa). Interesting hypothesis. What is your evidence?

I would say that the antagonism between politics and truth-seeking goes back to Plato and Aristotle, and people who specialize in one tend to hold the other in contempt (or at least suspicion).

Science is about being right and politics is about a plurality of people working together. In the name of cooperation, politics prefers vague language that is decidedly un-formal whereas science gravitates toward mathematical precision. Both are necessary, but I'd say we're leaning too far into politics these days.

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

#194

Post by igorkraw »

pjc50 wrote: post #99
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…

Why did you have to go straight in on "race science"? The history there is that "inherent inferiority" has been used to justify everything from legal discrimination to actual genocide. "Race science" has killed more people than nuclear weapons and poisoned more lives than tetraethyl lead. It's the clearest example where a simple disclaimer like "I'm not racist but" is no more adequate than handling plutonium with kit…

Personal opinion: in general, if people talk about "dissent missing" and "we need more controversial opinions", that's often code for "we need more justification for bigotry". By adopting a perpetually "but we are just asking questions" facade they implicitly a) frame things as "value neutral" when it really isn't and b) place an absurdly high burden of proof before we can finally say "yes in fact racism is wrong"

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

#195

Post by amw »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #125
aaron695 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was, however, no conspiracy or "cabal". These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track. No one thought the weapons of mass destruction were fake and lied and said they were real. The conspiracy was "These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track." so did not allow competing theories. Exactly the same with the VW emissions issue. This is exactly how conspirac…

Really interesting observation, fascinating to see it described as "emergent behaviour". WMDs were known to be fake from the start though, they were just stealing Iraqi oil, and David Kelly lost his life trying to expose it - could you suggest a better example? Article is great to, came to post something along the lines of "no it wasn't a conspiracy", but the article summerises exactly what happened under the picture…

> They went "all in" on bad science.

They went "all in" on science, that happens with hindsight to maybe not have been an accurate model for reality. Nobody can know that a particular explanation is bad without actually doing the science first, no matter what post facto explanations we can come up with after we realize we've been chasing a unicorn.

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

#196

Post by ping_pong »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #37
ping_pong wrote: post #3

This is another example of group-think in scientific research. The same thing happened for decades where low fat diets were supposed to help for heart disease but that has only recently been reversed after decades of indoctrination. This happens all throughout scientific research, where science is supposed to be immune to this, but it's obviously not. So many things we take as gospel, only to be reversed decades late…

This isn't the same as the situation around low fat diet at all. That research is intentionally distorted by companies who want to avoid the reality of what is needed: moderation, modest calorie intake and low sugar diets. The situation in the scientific literature was always far more fluid and complicated than what was communicated to the public because industry paid to communicate only the research they wanted. htt…

No. The fact is decades of research confirmed this wrong science, or the scientific community just ate what was spoon fed to them. No one questioned it. I lived through decades of indoctrination that low fat diets helped and this was echoed by everyone including doctors and scientists. The same goes for things as wide spread as amyloids or even string theory. Decades are wasted because scientists are too afraid of getting their careers ruined.

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

#197

Post by dnautics »

temac wrote: post #127
dnautics wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about that conspiracy is that the WMD were real. Hussein had them, and and its true that he didn't give them up, and he refused access. Here's the but: they were found by the US, under seal exactly in the place of record according to the UN. It's pretty clear that Hussein wasn't actively developing it anymore. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334

Your source for the belief tha Iraq had WMD is an article explaining they had yellowcake? Even a youtuber made some and processed it (and this was completely legal)

Yes? That was, after all, concretely the claim made by the administration before the invasion (recall the joke by Dave Chappelle about yellow cake)

There's also plenty of evidence that Iraq had (known, small) stockpiles of chemical weapons, too (last I checked those were classed as WMD), which are widely accepted to be a likely cause of gulf war syndrome and a contributing factor to congenital disease in some parts of iraq.

Mind you: I'm not claiming that it's ethical to invade a country on shoddy pretenses.

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

#198

Post by amw »

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…

I agree that the title is pure clickbait, I disagree that the article completely divorces itself from the premise the title implies. This whole thing where science journalism drums up this huge controversy after the fact when enough science on a topic has been performed to think that maybe a particular explanation is a bad one is a symptom of organizations that have to drum up a saucy narrative to sell.

It is perfectly natural to fund science that seems like a good idea at the time, and not fund ideas that seem less plausible than the prevailing explanation, and while it does suck that it takes a while to overturn the idea that the idea is good, representing our 20/20 hindsight as some irredeemable inertia with conspiracist overtones is a big problem.

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

#199

Post by amw »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #171
Psyladine wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His talk 'Aliens Cause Global Warming' is about this phenomenon in all but name. Consensus science, marginalizing alternate theories and politicizing scientific inquiry. "your theories differ from mainstream" being a black mark rather than a point of inquiry.

Right, was the backlash against his global warming skepticism? I'm still confused.

The backlash against Crichton was well-founded. He used the grain of truth that it's sometimes hard to get new ideas in science funded to build a crazy denialist foundation on that made for exciting fiction, but terrible description of reality.

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

#200

Post by dnautics »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #122
dnautics wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about that conspiracy is that the WMD were real. Hussein had them, and and its true that he didn't give them up, and he refused access. Here's the but: they were found by the US, under seal exactly in the place of record according to the UN. It's pretty clear that Hussein wasn't actively developing it anymore. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334

Um, the article talks about the removal of an unrefined ingredient for a weapon, not exactly finished weapons.

Yes, the pre invasion claim made to the UN was that Iraq was in violation of its obligation to allow inspectors in to monitor its WMD program.

I'm not justifying the actions of the administration or even the legal basis for it, but per my understanding, the claims were not untrue, notwithstanding how it was sold to the us public (especially as filtered by the complicit media)

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