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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable to dispute it. "Political decision" as a euphemism for allowing non-experts to decide how to minimize deaths? The same non-experts who couldn't even get the Monty Hall problem right, let alone the complexity of medical probability and statistics of [false | true] [positives | negatives] in Bayesian scenarios? Good luck with that.
There's the problem with naive utilitarianism. The experts want to minimize deaths across the population. I want to minimize the risk to my otherwise healthy children (hypothetically. I don't have children and I am vaccinated). These legitimate desires can and do conflict. Who has precedence is entirely political, not scientific. And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall problem wrong.
> And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall problem wrong.
Then they're not experts on prob and stats in medicine, and you shouldn't choose them to guide policy making when prob and stats in medicine are relevant. The alternative is to choose those who aren't experts in prob and stats in medicine, which results in policy bred from ignorance of the relevant math and science.
Choosing people who are ignorant of the relevant math and science over those who are knowledgeable is certainly one way to make policy, and it seems that is what folks want, so I guess we'll see how well that it works out.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
> tpm is claiming that any institution which interacts with the government in any way is political in nature I am arguing that any institution is political by its very existence. Even if the true nature of the institutions is hidden by the current regime, as it is often the case in the West. The funniest thing, of course, is that we are arguing under an article containing a political attack in the political magazine…
Can you define "institution" and "political" for me, then? I would argue that there is nothing political about a local bakery, for example. Just a dude making some cakes. He may occasionally be forced to interact with the government, but his bakery as an institution has nothing at all to do with government organizations or political theory. By its nature, a bakery is apolitical.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution is as good as any. I would not consider a small (one person or family) bakery an institution. A large one (measured by number of employees etc) would be an institution, and defining the threshold is not important here.
Political - relating to the government or public affairs of a country
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's the bellwether for climate change? Rising temperatures, rising CO2 concentrations? There's strong evidence there actually isn't warming going on. The "warming trend" may be due to the temperature sensor locations. Originally the sensors were put in remote, rural, unpopulated and unused locations (ideally!). As communities grew... you understand that the sensors now are no longer rural, remote, unpopulated area…
Ok, arctic sea ice. Ice exists at temperature below 0C or 32F at 1atm AND at system energy levels below the enthalpy of melting for liquid water, or latent heat for this first order phase change. Thermodynamics uses temperature and pressure to explain system energy of molecules for liquid vapor solid phase systems. Latent heat is the esoteric part of this phenomenon because it requires a scientific education to under…
you mean the sea ice, that had the highest extent in 20 years this year? Or a different sea ice, perhaps the one they always trot out around January? you know, when it's summer in the southern hemisphere?
The sea ice data isn't 1:1 with the seasons, so "data scientists" and "climate scientists" pick the cutoff date that makes the best headline. Even this year they were saying the ice was lower than average, but they cutoff 3+ weeks early, the ice was above average a few weeks later.
https://usicecenter.gov/PressRelease/ArcticMaximum2024
Besides all this, i am unsure if you're supportive or not of what i said.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was in my 20s, I believed you. Now that I'm in my 30s, I think we need a nanny police state making sure everyone is rational.
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Her "parting rant" didn't appear in SciAm, a point even the article makes clear, but which you obscure here.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would describe what you said here as a procedure for how to gather and apply the science/knowledge you are going to use for your treatment. So trusting the science, just more details on how to go about doing that. > Medicine is extremely complex and medical errors are the 4th leading cause of death in the US. Do you have the source for this? I have never seen it on the list of leading causes of death. For example:…
Preventable medical errors are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. This was well documented in the Institute of Medicine report "To Err Is Human" in 2000. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9728/to-err-is-hum... Since then there have been positive system changes in terms of things like quantitative care quality measures and use of checklists. But it's still a huge problem. Whether it's the 4t…
Still reading digging in. In particular one reference in the second link[1]
Still not clear to me how they are generating the numbers for putting it at 3rd or 4th. I might have to read the paper rather than listen the author interview in my link above.
That said 98,000 dead from medical error in 2000, from the first link, would put it at 9th in the list that I linked:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db492-tables.pdf#4
from 2020. So even with that lower estimate it would put it in the top ten.
The definition of a death caused by medical error from [1] seem too board from the likely simplified explanation at least:
"Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,"
That "or does not achieve its intended outcome" seems like it would count cases I would not want in a statistic like this. For example surgery to remove cancer to save the patients life did not achieve the intended outcome of saving the patients life so it is counted as death via medical error.
Probably have to look at the full paper to see how they applied the standard, but the pdf is not free on the site I linked. I might come back later and look for a free copy or another source.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Filter bubbles are real. If you spend your time watching (low quality) videos with a bent (anti-feminist/transgender, e.g.) you begin to believe that is the majority discourse. Its similar to homophobia - a small (tiny) portion of the population expresses "nominal" preference towards homosexuality, however, there is an outsized fear among those who feel threatened by the concept...
Well your argument holds all the same should you replace "anti-" with "pro-" etc.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
> biological denialism What is this? I would have thought that the idea that some people who are outwardly one sex have brain wiring for the other sex is quite plausible. Development is very messy.
The significant increase in non-binary gender identity and rapid onset gender dysphoria suggests there's a cultural factor at work. A 2021 systematic review found mixed results for transgender brain structures mirroring their self-identified sex, with most neuroanatomical measures mapping to their birth sex. Though I agree with you that development is messy. We should be much more concerned about exposing children to…
Where is your worldview on ROGD coming from?
It's been a rather contentious topic, and sciam has even written about some of the issues: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-undermin... ( https://archive.ph/N1nAR )
"The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis" -> https://www.caaps.co/rogd-statement
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's the bellwether for climate change? Rising temperatures, rising CO2 concentrations? There's strong evidence there actually isn't warming going on. The "warming trend" may be due to the temperature sensor locations. Originally the sensors were put in remote, rural, unpopulated and unused locations (ideally!). As communities grew... you understand that the sensors now are no longer rural, remote, unpopulated area…
I looked at the paper you referenced. Interestingly, it does not say that the warming trend is not happening, rather they argue that the evidence is insufficient to say for sure if the warming is caused by human-driven causes or natural ones (e.g. volcanic activity or solar changes). They mention the heat island effect as one of the issues that may complicate the attribution of the contribution of different factors t…
okay, and whats your point? The point is "97%" or "99%" of "climate scientists agree" that "anthropogenic causes" are the reason for climate change. But this study questions the foundations (and i mentioned i am only linking one, that i downloaded a few weeks ago to save, there are of course other papers that each chip away at the political and media narrative about the whole field). Please refer to the GP:
> I wonder how much of this same kind of manipulation/distortion is going on when we are told to "trust the science" with regard to climate change?
"climate science" is all models, this paper (among others) implies that the data fed in to the models may be influencing the output of the models in a way that isn't conducive to actually understanding the "climate". How can i make this assertion? I read the IPCC reports. both the pre-release and the official releases. I don't recommend it, unless you feel like being Cassandra.
Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Singularity' is just a placeholder for 'we have no idea what's going on here'.
Huh? AFAIK singularity is a dense object of zero size.
Infinitely dense, which is a math term for "some other realm of existence that makes no sense in our physical world".