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Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

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Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#841

Post by cogman10 »

roenxi wrote: post #833
cogman10 wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Studies showed that it had a statistically significant effect on COVID. The problem is that with hindsight it is obvious any sufficiently powerful study will show it has a statistically significant effect so the existence of that effect isn't particularly interesting evidence. Preliminary studies with small n showed a statistically significant effect. Follow up studies with larger n showed no such effect. Meta stud…

If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy. That is a pretty extreme claim, to the point where 1 study (or review, in this case) isn't really an argument. It is much more likely that that they just aren't picking up the statistical signal that is obviously going to be there somewhere. There isn't a shortage of studies sh…

> If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy.

No, it doesn't.

The crux of your argument is that there is an invisible parasitic pandemic which is, frankly, absurd. Parasites by their nature are far less transmissible than an airborn virus is. They are primarily regionally locked and locked out of most developed countries. The US, for example, does not have a major internal parasite problem because public waters are treated against most parasites and filtered before general consumption.

As for the site, it's got a lot of pretty numbers that are like "Yeah look, 100% this ivermectin is great!" which is pretty fishy. You would not expect to see something like that. But, scroll to the bottom and all the sudden you see why that is, they purposefully find reasons to omit all studies that counter that claim.

Like, I'm sorry, I'm just not going to trust a website that is pushing for vitamin D supplements to treat covid. It's not a serious website and it has a very clear agenda.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#842

Post by genewitch »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #699
genewitch wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> you mean the sea ice, that had the highest extent in 20 years this year? Your link says it's "the seventh highest recorded since 2006 when this metric from IMS was first tracked consistently". Where are you getting "highest extent in 20 years"?

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Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#843

Post by defrost »

cogman10 wrote: post #841
roenxi wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy. That is a pretty extreme claim, to the point where 1 study (or review, in this case) isn't really an argument. It is much more likely that that they just aren't picking up the statistical signal that is obviously going to be there somewhere. There isn't a shortage of studies sh…

> If you believe that, it implies you believe someone infested with parasites expects the same COVID outcomes as someone who is mostly healthy. No, it doesn't. The crux of your argument is that there is an invisible parasitic pandemic which is, frankly, absurd. Parasites by their nature are far less transmissible than an airborn virus is. They are primarily regionally locked and locked out of most developed countries…

Yourself (cogman10) and roenxi might both be in furious agreement from my PoV.

There are no good studies showing a useful relationship between ivermectin and COVID outcomes in low parasite G20 countries ( UK, AU, US, etc ).

The early studies most quoted had high N, good procedures, and showed ivermectin having a very positive effect across the board wrt many diseases ( flu, COVID, etc. ). These studies were in countries and regions with high parasite prevelance and demonstrated pretty conclusively that people with no worms were healthier, had better functioning immune systems, and both resisted and recovered from infections noticably better than untreated populations with parasites.

The supplement pushing website is being disingenous and obfuscating the context of the studies quoted in order to flog crap to rubes.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#844

Post by smt88 »

wtcactus wrote: post #641
smt88 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science," they meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads you to." For example, people would ask public health officials what they thought about things, and the data wouldn't be sufficient to say with certainty. So they said they'd follow the science, meaning "we'll make a decision based on data." You can criticize a lot of unscientific decisions that people…

> People saying that didn't mean it as "obey the science," they meant, "follow the science to the conclusions it leads you to." People saying that absolutely meant "obey the science" to the point that a substantial number of them [4] wanted to incarcerate and deprive of their livelihood anyone that didn't obey their idea of science. - https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/violating-coronavirus-... - https://www.forbe…

You're making an enormous leap from "follow the science" to health policy and then again to legal consequences of violating local laws.

No one said, "'The Science' told us to arrest people for going to church!" The science did (and does) say that a huge amount of the spread of Covid was due to church attendance (and gyms, concerts, and clubs) at the time, particularly because of rapid singing/breathing and close quarters in those settings.

What people decide to do with that isn't scientific. It's local policy.

When you have a system where people are legally entitled to free health care (as they are in emergencies in the US), then the government should have a right to tell them to cut out unnecessary activities in an extreme crisis that had depleted local medical resources. It's just as easy to hold religious services on Zoom.

I would have preferred that when people were caught violating these laws, they were allowed to continue, but only if they signed a document forfeiting their right to emergency medical care.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#845

Post by genewitch »

tomrod wrote: post #701
genewitch wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wonde…

You're not sufficiently parsing causality versus predictivity. The global warming hypothesis matches the projections. So it's a food enough model. The causal attribution does take time, but recall we can estimate the global greenhouse emissions with reasonable accuracy and can compare to benchmarks in history. Push all we want against the sun, it continues to shine regardless of our efforts.

global warming hypothesis! Have you seen the temperature graph for earth's history? Judd et al., Science 385, 1316 (2024)

It's actually remarkably cold on earth, colder than it's been in over 450mm years. but if you look at the graph, it's not a diagonal or straight line, it goes up and down over millions of years.

so, with these two facts: Will it get warmer or colder?

Knowing that, why do i have to listen to this claptrap?

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#846

Post by genewitch »

jmward01 wrote: post #693
genewitch wrote: post #629

Earlier 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…

This is cherry-picking. There is a raft of solid science from a large number of independent researchers looking at many different indicators that corroborate well with each other. The evidence is overwhelming, global warming is happening. Picking one thing that says we haven't always gotten it 100% right doesn't mean it isn't happening.

all the models that they use as evidence use the temperature sensor data so i am not sure what you're trying to convince me of. Also: Judd et al., Science 385, 1316 (2024)

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#847

Post by UltraSane »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #772
UltraSane wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but no one is denying that Trump won the 2024 election in the same way Trump and Republicans have denied that Biden won in 2020 and claiming such is very disingenuous. And saying person Y winning the election is good or bad is a matter of opinion, not fact.

You are misunderstanding their point. They are not saying that anybody is denying the election results. A "bare fact", as they put it, is a statement exclusively of fact. Adding the qualifier to the fact makes it no longer a "bare fact". To use their example, "Snoop won the election," is a bare fact and, "Snoop won the election and that's bad," is not a bare fact. What they are saying is that some people cannot accep…

I quote OP "Donald Trump was elected president. Can you accept that as a bare fact? Probably not if you've fought with people about it."

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#848

Post by foldr »

anonfordays wrote: post #839
foldr wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that you should take issue with the paper rather than with the journalist who reported what it says.

There is no issue with the paper. The paper does not support the claim.

The paper literally says that "...the species effectively has four sexes..." I don't know if that's true or not, but Helmuth was just reporting a claim made in a peer-reviewed journal article.

Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#849

Post by genewitch »

ok_computer wrote: post #694
genewitch wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I admit data collection is imperfect, especially looking back 200 years. But to attack a fairly sound hypothesis that is multi factorially demonstrated in physical geological behavior, I wholeheartedly disagree with. Just because US weather stations in the 70’s were more rural than urban does not in itself gives credence to the idea that climate change/warming/ greenhouse gases is a nonissue or somehow a totally misu…

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Re: Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science

#850

Post by iwontberude »

jamessb wrote: post #484
iwontberude wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so contrived and yet needs so many leaps of abstraction that I don’t think it makes its point well at all. “Bro my controller totally didn’t work that time! We would’ve won the match otherwise I promise.” Do you really think it was the controller that lost the match?

It is a well-known proverb that is centuries old [1]: it's essentially a canonical way of refering to the concept of something small having big consequences. Proverbs are often contrived (e.g., "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones" - who lives in a glass house?). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

I hate everything about this, thank you for sharing the context
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