Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#251

Post by naasking » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #221

naasking wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'm following your point. If you weigh the bad actors and financial incentives of climate change proponents against the bad actors and financial incentives on the fossil fuel side, do you think the scale tips in favour of more honesty for the fossil fuel side or climate change side? There's no doubt groupthink happens in academia on many issues, but the need to displace fossil fuels really is very important.…

No. There is no honesty anywhere, that is my point. > the need to displace fossil fuels really is very important. Why? I don't necessarily disagree. But reality isn't a problem managed through a single variable. The things you list are not singularly caused by fossil fuels. In fact, a very solid argument could be put forth about just how much uglier things might be without fossil fuels. Here's the basic math someone…

> In fact, I think we can, in historical terms, state that energy requirements increase over time, they do not decrease.

They do, and all energy needs can be met with solar, wind and grid energy storage. Or nuclear if you don't want to invest in energy storage for whatever reason.

> The next element of the story is how we are going to replace the massive number of byproducts of fossil fuels that modern life pretty much depends on. We know that making complex hydrocarbons any other way is in a range between highly inefficient (which would increase the aforementioned energy requirement) and impossible.

Burning fossil fuels are the biggest immediate problem. Other fossil fuel products may or may not be a problem. But you don't ignore the heart attack because you just noticed a rash that may be flesh eating bacteria. Triage is key.

> You see, all the other oil byproducts are still needed.

"All" is overselling. Some are arguably useful, but for example, most product packaging is likely superfluous and a product of our current economic incentives. For instance, why do we have disposable containers for each unit of cleaning product we buy rather than reusing containers that you get refilled at the store? These choices are driven by market incentives that prioritize convenience over sustainability.

Some products may never get rid of their plastic packaging, perhaps something like sterilized vacuum packed needles that hospitals use. Those would be the exceptions but not the rule.

> We just have to be careful that we don't reduce reality to single variable problems, because that isn't reality, it's a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that. Climate change is one of those.

Climate change isn't a single variable problem, and I don't think anyone serious is pushing it as such. If you look into the IPCC report on climate change, you'll see all sorts of factors being accounted for including cloud cover, contrails, methane, water vapour, CO2 and more.

We only have so much influence over some of these factors, but the biggest and most obvious factor for which we have alternatives, is CO2 emissions. Do you deny that?

> Once you start thinking at scale --planetary scale-- "natural" and "sustainable" quickly end-up with razed forests, depleted marine life, polluted water sources and a sky blackened with thick pollution.

You and I clearly have different understanding of what "sustainable" means.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#252

Post by caddemon » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

IX-103 wrote: post #237

diognesofsinope wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only this, academia is a really cushy job. When I was an economics RA literally half of the econ professors didn't work Fridays and barely worked summers. It was incredible you get paid 150k with that kind of schedule.

Interesting. In my experience professors might not be on campus teaching one or two days a week or in summer, but that's only because they are working their ass off from home, writing grant proposals, reviewing papers, doing basically anything to get funding, and trying to find time to manage their own research. I used to think it was a great gig too, since most professors had one or more small businesses on the side…

I'd guess that's pretty field dependent. What you're saying matches my experience with biology profs - technically once they get tenure they could chill out, but then they wouldn't have any funding for research anymore, so they wouldn't be able to do much of anything in their field.

In CS I saw more of a mix though. It's feasible to fund a small research group without busting your ass, and it also seemed to me that putting time into coursework, writing books, etc. was culturally a more acceptable use of time in that department than it was in biology.

I knew a few CS PIs that actually purposely scaled back their research once they got tenure because they were more excited about teaching and some of the educational initiatives the school was working on. That's not the norm of course, but I literally can't imagine that ever happening in a bio department lol.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#253

Post by tshaddox » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

sjwalter wrote: post #203

What I want to know is how does this issue impact the notion that we all seem to buy into that we should "follow the science". Scientists themselves have a hard time "following the science". Add to it the observation that when an issue is getting lots of attention outside of academia, then there are usually some really strong incentives (profit, prestige) associated with doing the science and applying it (e.g., epide…

What is the alternative to following the science? Following people who are not scientists and who are explicitly making things up? This sounds a lot like "most plane crashes are due to pilot error, so maybe we should give non-pilots control of the planes."

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#254

Post by mnw21cam » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

injidup wrote: post #112

dqpb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be sued for asking questions?

I have an amusing letter from the lawyers working for powerinsole threatening legal action for asking questions and that I should remove all my comments from social media. It was also demanded that I pay approx 350 euro that the letter cost to write. My response was to invest in the cost of the device, tear it down on video and post the analysis to facebook. That was more than 6 months ago. I have not heard from the…

Sounds like something BigClive would be interested in.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#255

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #22

When you want to do a proper work, your grants and papers get rejected because they are not innovatove enough or don't go far enough. So it is not a surprise that people that lied in their applications about what they can realistically do also lie when it comes to reporting results. Unfortunately there is no way out. I stopped counting how many reviewers of my grants disagreed on what was proposed, one saying that it…

I keep getting more convinced that Science needs to be rebooted.

How do we start over in some sane way?

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#256

Post by eloff » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

pm_me_your_quan wrote: post #243

eloff wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer review is shit. It's elitist, it's actively anti innovation and enforces the status quo. Peer review should happen out in the open and not just be limited to academics.

academics are largely the only people who will be able to understand the work, but sure. The fact that it's not out in the open is somewhat complicated. You're perhaps right that it would lead to better outcomes, but it's also important that researchers feel free to speak openly.

I understand the concern about being free to speak candidly, but I think it's trumped by the need for transparency to ensure that if improper gatekeeping or other unethical behavior is happening, their reputation is also on the line. Basically if you can't say it to your peers in public, don't say it at all.

This also fixes the problem of incompetent peer review, because it will be called out as such and the reviewer's reputation will suffer.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#257

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

kxkdkkf wrote: post #230

AlexMoffat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what possible reason are you asking that question of anyone?

Well, maybe you own a waxing salon that does Brazilian waxes and you're Muslim and don't believe you should see or be in contact with male genitalia besides that of your husband. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Yaniv > In 2018, Yaniv filed discrimination complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against multiple waxing salons alleging that they refused to provide genital waxing to her because…

> Well, maybe you own a waxing salon that does Brazilian waxes and you're Muslim and don't believe you should see or be in contact with male genitalia besides that of your husband.

Then you’d probably want to ask “What kind of genitalia do you currently possess”. Sex assigned at birth is not a reliable indicator of that, for reasons very similar to why current gender identity isn't.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#258

Post by inasio » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

injidup wrote: post #35

birdyrooster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you don't even feel comfortable sharing the identity of any of the parties, we really have no chance to identify bad actors from good as a community.

https://shop.powerinsole.com/en/blogs/news/doppelblindstudie... I actually bought one of the devices and took it apart on video. There is nothing inside except 4 magnets and a plastic printed card. No active circuits and no power source and no components such as resistors or capacitors and certainly there is no microchip inside. edit below are links to pictures of the device and accompanying text as originally on fac…

I love how the error bars on the plots go only on one direction, and conveniently the opposing ones between the two curves, definitely not scammy...

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#259

Post by version_five » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #103

I'm actually kind of flabbergasted that people -no matter who they are- are automatically given the benefit of the doubt, without question. I'll bet that a lot of folks just assume that anything they do will be taken at face value, without question or inspection. I also suspect that many "brought and paid for studies" are done this way. For my own work, I generally assume that most of these studies are pretty much wo…

I work in ML research and I used to do experimental physics. I'd agree that specific results in papers can be hard or impossible to reproduce, but that never really bothers me because at least in my work, the specific experimental result is rarely material to why I'm interested in the paper. It's more of a demo, and like a demo, you know its orchestrated to look good. What I'm interested in is what is the mechanism behind the advance and do I think its applicable or relevant to what I'm doing. If the paper is really just a random observation of something that worked better, without a causal explanation, it's not very interesting, but I don't see those often.

Maybe health research is very different, and people are latchjng on to surprising results they find in papers, but I doubt it's a big problem in academia, much more likely in the media. If I was a doctor and saw an out of the blue study claiming a surprising result, I'd discount it accordingly. If I saw a causal explanation with evidence, I'd give it closer scrutiny and follow up if it seemed relevant to me. That is how research works in my experience.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#260

Post by dingidong » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

exact_string wrote: post #193

injidup wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tweet sent https://twitter.com/sltyhkr/status/1417213194540625925

I don't understand what the problem is: The data in the double-blind study clearly shows no statistically significant effects (just look at N and the standard deviation bars) and the company doesn't claim that there would be such effects. The company only says there is a "positive trend" which there indeed is.

Doesn't matter if the SD bars make it obvious. No layman can read such a chart. The text 110% makes it sound like the study PROVES without any doubt that the product had an effect.

"the lactate measurement shows a difference" "The lower lactate value with Powerinsole means longer performance and a later onset of muscle fatigue." and finally "Even with the first application of the power insole, a lower skin conductance is evident compared to the placebo. This means that the power insole can help reduce stress levels."

Nowhere are they talking about statistical significance.