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

You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

thobbs.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 158 posts

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#41

Post by aptwebapps »

Udo wrote: post #13

No. Contrarian anecdotes are good. They may turn out to be without merit, but then again so may the article itself. Having a real discussion is a good thing. Also, I would like to propose a logarithmic scale for weighting such things. Say, if the article in question found something extraordinarily significant with 100 out of 100 samples resulting in A, then it's still not rational to weigh a contrarian viewpoint resu…

> ... a contrarian viewpoint resulting in B with 1/101

Well, see, that's part of the problem. The original sample of 100 was, hopefully, selected at random. Whereas the anecdote was selected by the person telling it because he or or she thought it was apropos. With a large enough population of potential commenters, the chances of someone doing so gets really high.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#42

Post by phren0logy »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #28

In a world were 47 of 53 landmark cancer research papers were found to not be replicable... where one scientist admitted (after the meta-researchers tried 50 times to replicate the result and failed) that they had run the experiment 6 times and got the result once and reported that because it made a better "story"... where the act of suppressing refutations of other's bogus research is "culturally commonplace"... Som…

This is a terrible perspective.

I would argue that if even those research papers could not be replicated, an anecdote is all but worthless.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#43

Post by lclarkmichalek »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #28

In a world were 47 of 53 landmark cancer research papers were found to not be replicable... where one scientist admitted (after the meta-researchers tried 50 times to replicate the result and failed) that they had run the experiment 6 times and got the result once and reported that because it made a better "story"... where the act of suppressing refutations of other's bogus research is "culturally commonplace"... Som…

Well the one nice thing about scientific research is that it's open (cue conspiracy theories), and that you can usually read the paper/draft. No one is asking you to "just believe" research; that would be stupid, and it's not how the scientific process works. The fact that you are dismissing all research outright is ridiculous, and willfully ignorant. Your sources are shabby, and you talk of "science" and "scientists" as some great collective, which is frankly impossible to do. The idea that "Something is rotten in the core of science" is a wild extrapolation; there are problems with certain fields' practices (and may always be), medicine is probably a good example. However, saying that you give research no weight is stupid, and you discredit yourself further when you say that "Science has been supplanted by money and politics"; you sound like a conspiracy theorist, and I cannot believe you actually know many academics who will back you up on that claim. For whatever the system's flaws, there is _no_ reason to say that all research cannot be trusted.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#44

Post by phren0logy »

bad_user wrote: post #37
retrogradeorbit wrote: post #28

In a world were 47 of 53 landmark cancer research papers were found to not be replicable... where one scientist admitted (after the meta-researchers tried 50 times to replicate the result and failed) that they had run the experiment 6 times and got the result once and reported that because it made a better "story"... where the act of suppressing refutations of other's bogus research is "culturally commonplace"... Som…

The problem with much of modern medicine is that much of it is based on flawed and biased statistical studies. Whether this is done because medical personnel don't have training in statistics, or because such studies generate funding, I don't know, but something is definitely rotten. Let's take anything involving nutrition. Some challenges are: (1) people lie, (2) such studies can't be double-blind so placebo kicks i…

When you cannot control all the variables, it's important to have a large enough sample that the randomness in each direction for the different variables essentially cancels itself out.

Also what does "the statistical significance of short-term studies is zero" mean? I don't think it means what you think it means.

I would argue that short-term studies (for nutrition anyway) have little clinical significance, despite their statistical significance. I'm in medicine, and I read papers all the time detecting a statistical difference between control and experimental groups, but the difference is so tiny that it's meaningless. This is the balance you have to strike with large sample sizes. With a large enough sample, small differences are likely to be statistically significant but the key is determining if the difference is worthwhile.

I blame bad science reporting for a lot of the anger you are feeling. Reporters don't seem to understand what they are reporting, and often the scientists themselves are (accidentally or on purpose) making it worse.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#45

Post by ars »

bad_user wrote: post #40
loup-vaillant wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take an example, since they seem to work best: vaccines. Vaccines protect you from the risk of contracting particular diseases, some of which are crippling, lethal, or incurable. Plus, most are extremely effective: once you take your shots, you are effectively immune. That's good. There is a downside however. Sometimes, vaccines have side effects. Most side effects are quite benign, but if you're unlucky enough…

A vaccine is a virus in latent form, forcing your B-cells to produce antibodies for it. So yeah, personally I never take a vaccine that hasn't been in circulation for some time. Also, considering that medicine is at the stage of alchemy and that doctors simply have no idea what long-term effects these vaccines have on our immune system, some questions do have to be asked. Like, isn't it possible that with the prevale…

> A vaccine is a virus in latent form

Not exactly, it's not a virus in latent form, it's either a killed virus, a piece of a virus, or a different virus that is weak, but provokes the same reaction as the more important one.

(Do you know what latent means? It means that it shows up later, which vaccines do not do.)

> So yeah, personally I never take a vaccine that hasn't been in circulation for some time.

Yah, me too, but let's not overreact with nonsense.

> Like, isn't it possible that with the prevalence of vaccines, our own capacity for generating antibodies gets affected?

No, it's not possible. That's completely ridiculous. Do you know anything about vaccines at all? Seriously, that really makes no sense whatsoever. A vaccine does not do anything at all to our capacity to generate antibodies. All it does is take the exact same virus you would get if you got sick, and expose you to it in advance, that's all. It gives you a head start in making antibodies, but does not affect the generation of them in any way.

> And remember here that an exaggerated response of the immune system may be even worse than a lazier response. Such an exaggerated response may even kill you (e.g. Influenza).

And a vaccine creates a muted response, quite the opposite. Compared to a simple cold a vaccine consists of a minuscule number of virus particles. The entire trouble with making a vaccine is trying to get enough of a response, most of the time the body ignores it.

> So either way, the long-term effects of over-reliance of vaccines may be quite bad.

And how do you figure that? I'm not following your logic at all. Unless your logic is that the vaccine somehow changes the bodies response, which it doesn't. So hopefully now that I've cleared that up you will no longer claim this.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#46

Post by its_so_on »

its_so_on wrote: post #12

Forget what you and your friends experience. If we manage to get a piece of research sponsored, you'd better believe it! Sorry, I'll go on the experiences of myself and people I trust over research/article spinning.

if my friends and I have problems with your product, it doesn't matter how reliable your research spins it as, I won't believe you. Forget research: make something my friends and I, or people I hear about, don't have problems with. That's all I pay attention to, and it works a lot better than the alternative. (paying attention to whatever you "prove" at a statistically significant level - nevermind how many commissioned studies you don't publish, thereby completely invalidating that statistical significance - and ignoring anecdotes simply doesn't work, for me or anyone else.)

This article is literally asking for the right to lie (under the guises of 'research') and asking us to mod down anyone who calls them out on it. It really takes some face to say "Ignore what you experience - and vote down the experiences of others - and trust our data instead."

Next you'll sell me the most reliable cloud on the planet. All the responses on the article say they've had nothing but problems and downtime. But, I should just ignore these, right?

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#47

Post by ars »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #28

In a world were 47 of 53 landmark cancer research papers were found to not be replicable... where one scientist admitted (after the meta-researchers tried 50 times to replicate the result and failed) that they had run the experiment 6 times and got the result once and reported that because it made a better "story"... where the act of suppressing refutations of other's bogus research is "culturally commonplace"... Som…

> Something is rotten in the core of science.

It's not science that is the problem. It's that biology considers a 95% confidence sufficient. Considering how many studies are done each year, this virtually guarantees incorrect results.

The reason they do that is that it's impossible to get better results, they just can not do enough trials. So they are stuck.

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#48

Post by LinXitoW »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #28

In a world were 47 of 53 landmark cancer research papers were found to not be replicable... where one scientist admitted (after the meta-researchers tried 50 times to replicate the result and failed) that they had run the experiment 6 times and got the result once and reported that because it made a better "story"... where the act of suppressing refutations of other's bogus research is "culturally commonplace"... Som…

If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for everything...or something like that. Science and especially statistics have never (and sadly never will be) perfect or free of human bias, but not believing anything outright leaves you open to manipulators that make you "feel" whats right, instead of having you think about whats right. We might think we're super rational, but it just ain't so. Unrelated example: Female students told before a standardized math test that its genetic that women are worse at math also did significantly worse than males and control females. They were (probably) all rational people, yet this seemingly unimportant event changed their rational performance.

If science and anecdotes are equally bull to you, how do you make up your mind about things? Magic?

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#49

Post by phren0logy »

bad_user wrote: post #40
loup-vaillant wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take an example, since they seem to work best: vaccines. Vaccines protect you from the risk of contracting particular diseases, some of which are crippling, lethal, or incurable. Plus, most are extremely effective: once you take your shots, you are effectively immune. That's good. There is a downside however. Sometimes, vaccines have side effects. Most side effects are quite benign, but if you're unlucky enough…

A vaccine is a virus in latent form, forcing your B-cells to produce antibodies for it. So yeah, personally I never take a vaccine that hasn't been in circulation for some time. Also, considering that medicine is at the stage of alchemy and that doctors simply have no idea what long-term effects these vaccines have on our immune system, some questions do have to be asked. Like, isn't it possible that with the prevale…

>Also, considering that medicine is at the stage of alchemy and that doctors simply have no idea what long-term effects these vaccines have on our immune system, some questions do have to be asked.

What the hell are you talking about? There is probably no single more life-saving intervention in medicine than vaccines. It is true that a small number of people have a bad reaction to them, but more people have a bad reaction to tetanus.

Those who do not vaccinate are risking re-emergence of preventable epidemics: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/whooping-cough...

Re: You Should Downvote Contrarian Anecdotes

#50

Post by bad_user »

ars wrote: post #45
bad_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vaccine is a virus in latent form, forcing your B-cells to produce antibodies for it. So yeah, personally I never take a vaccine that hasn't been in circulation for some time. Also, considering that medicine is at the stage of alchemy and that doctors simply have no idea what long-term effects these vaccines have on our immune system, some questions do have to be asked. Like, isn't it possible that with the prevale…

> A vaccine is a virus in latent form Not exactly, it's not a virus in latent form, it's either a killed virus, a piece of a virus, or a different virus that is weak, but provokes the same reaction as the more important one. (Do you know what latent means? It means that it shows up later, which vaccines do not do.) > So yeah, personally I never take a vaccine that hasn't been in circulation for some time. Yah, me too…

On "latent" ... English is not my primary language and this was just a bad translation.

     Do you know anything about vaccines at all?
I guess not, but I can't help to not get worried about the rise of autoimmune disorders and I haven't heard yet a plausible explanation for the phenomenon.

     Unless your logic is that the vaccine somehow changes
     the bodies response, which it doesn't.
And how in the world would you know that?
Post reply on HN