But they didn't correct it...
Apologies shouldn't be accepted for actions that clearly show no remorse or concept of having done wrong.
Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
151–160 of 251 posts
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#152The labor of medical residents is something hospital systems exploit during normal times, but that exploitation has severely deepened during the pandemic. At the hospital my partner works at, respiratory therapists and nurses got a $10k bonus for working during COVID; the residents got nothing despite working insane hours in ICU, routinely working more than the legally mandated 90 hours per week. Just because doctors…
Is there a medical union?
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#153This sounds way too convenient - basically the modern day equivalent of the "dog did it".
So we're to believe that a rogue computer code screwed up?.. i.e.: nobody in charge mess'ed up?
Why again do those with the largest paychecks, given the largest slack?
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think people necessarily love narratives that blame engineers. Why would they? Some specific people in positions of responsibility that screw up badly see blaming engineers/tech as an easy way out of their responsibilities. Similar outcome different thing.
Yes, people love stories like the space pen vs the pencil. The supposedly educated engineer getting shown up by the clever average joe with common sense. There's always someone smarter than you, but see well actually they're not that smart because they're not street smart.
> Yes, people love stories like the space pen vs the pencil. The supposedly educated engineer getting shown up by the clever average joe with common sense. There's always someone smarter than you, but see well actually they're not that smart because they're not street smart.
And yet that classic example is also an example of people really not understanding the nuance of larger systems; in that specific case, there were concerns about graphite creating electrical issues in the ship's electrical systems.
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everything can be high priority. Stanford administrators several months ago would have been working on securing adequate supplies and staffing for the expected fall surge; that's a much more important problem, both to the system as a whole and to the residents, than who gets vaccinated today vs. next week.
I've got to be honest with you: this thing can totally be solved with a human pass. In fact, give me the list, your employment rolls, and I'll fix this for you for free in a couple of hours at max. Government workers are particularly vulnerable to this sort of failure mode: assuming everything is hard. This is not that hard. It's pretty easy. But big company workers are also usually susceptible to this. They don't ge…
If you gave Tesla or SpaceX the task of managing a vaccine rollout, they wouldn't see this as a problem to fix, because they wouldn't construct a public, detailed priority list cross-checked for equity across every subgroup. They'd just reach out to the N people that seem best at a quick glance, say "hey come get your vaccine", and repeat as new shipments come in until everyone's vaccinated. That bias towards doing things, rather than going to laborious efforts checking plans against everyone who might be affected, is exactly why they can do things so fast.
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#156The great thing about an algorithm is that when it gives you results that benefit you, you can accept them and then pass the buck on to it when people get outraged: "According to an email sent by a chief resident to other residents, Stanford's leaders explained that an algorithm was used to assign its first allotment of the vaccine. The algorithm was said to have prioritized those health care workers at highest risk…
Exactly. There can be a cottage industry using evolutionary algorithms in which the fitness to optimize is the benefit of the interested part. "This new algorithm indicates that the best way to improve the economy is to increase 3X the compensation of Senators".
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to the other answers, machine learning based on biased datasets results in biased models. For example, Word2Vec can be used to make analogies. Having it determine "Man is to woman as king is to ___." results in "queen", which is reasonable. On the other hand, determining "Man is to computer programmer as woman is to ___." results in "homemaker". The algorithm wasn't deliberately designed to have sexist bias in…
The analogy thing didn’t entirely hold up: the original demonstration was constrained not to return the same word in the prompt, so “man is to woman as doctor is to ____” had to return something that’s close to, but not the same as “doctor” in the embedding space. Hence, it returns nurse. Ironically, this makes the original point nearly as well: we need to evaluate the hell out of machine learning systems to make sur…
I wonder what it would return for "Woman is to doctor as man is to ___". I'd bet money on the result not being "nurse".
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to the other answers, machine learning based on biased datasets results in biased models. For example, Word2Vec can be used to make analogies. Having it determine "Man is to woman as king is to ___." results in "queen", which is reasonable. On the other hand, determining "Man is to computer programmer as woman is to ___." results in "homemaker". The algorithm wasn't deliberately designed to have sexist bias in…
How would you expect the computer programmer analogy be completed? I legitimately don’t know what a reasonable answer would be.
Two independent things might best be analogized as A:B as C:B. So also computer programmer.
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can name 3 other local hospital systems in my city that have vaccinated administrative & C-suite/VP level staff I don't understand why society is putting up with this. Right now if you're not in a daily COVID-facing role (i.e. an actual front line medical worker) or in a nursing home you should not be getting the shot. This makes my blood boil. There should have been laws passed regarding ordering of the distribu…
I agree that healthcare workers, firefighters and police should be the first ones to get the shots - and directly after them, politicians should, and that mandatory . Get the shot or lose your seat. There are large parts of the population who say they won't get vaccinated because they're afraid that politicians exploit them as "guinea pigs" (especially the PoC community has a really bad history, e.g. Tuskegee syphili…
I like your list. I really hope to see a program where 'front-line workers' (i.e. grocery store workers/etc as opposed to 'first responders') are given priority -and- financial assistance to receive the vaccine if they so choose to.
Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Machine learning is like money laundering for bias" https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/744595961217835008
There's no way they used machine learning here. My guess it was some simple rules like older doctors go first. I wouldn't even call it an algorithm. I think algorithm is a weasly way for the administrator to make it sound more complicated then it was.
My guess it was some simple rules like older doctors go first
No need to guess.
"It used an algorithm that assigned each person a crude risk score, taking into account factors such as age, job description and the number of coronavirus cases that had been detected in their hospital department. That resulted in personnel like environmental services workers, food service workers and older employees being shuttled to the front of the line.
Residents, who are early in their careers and tend to be young, rotate throughout the hospital to train with various teams of physicians, making them difficult to place in a designated unit."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/world/covid-stanford-heal...