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Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

npr.org

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Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#101

Post by tannedNerd »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #63
jrumbut wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an understandable error only if residents and their safety isn't at the front of your mind. Perhaps if a resident had been closely involved they would have been able to tell the developers that they don't have anything in the location field. It's not like Stanford didn't know a limited supply vaccine was coming several months ago, there was time to figure this stuff out. And it would have been, if it had been a…

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.

The article says they realized the error Tuesday and did nothing about it till the residents staged a protest. It very much seems like they were hopping it would blow over.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#102

Post by emcq »

craz8 wrote: post #99

Since this algorithm is obviously flawed this way, is it likely to be flawed with respect to the timing of the second dose? Every report I’ve seen from experiment subjects (who may have received the placebo) indicates that the second dose sucked for 2-3 days, and was much worse than the first. If you give all your, for example, ICU staff the second dose at the same time, and then they can’t work for 2 days, how do yo…

This is easy to resolve by staggering doses which I know at least other hospitals are doing.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#103

Post by rhino369 »

XorNot wrote: post #88
rhino369 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure this formula is WRONG. It's just not great for morale. Residents are generally under 34 and in good heath. In the USA, only ~2400 people 34 have died from COVID--and that is mostly people with comorbidites. In comparison about ~250,000 people over 55 have died. You'd obviously have do account for life-years lost, risk of exposure [1], etc. I wouldn't be shocked if giving the vaccine to a 25 year old…

I mean a surface level analysis would say that you've missed a critical datum if you're saying patient-facing staff should be left at risk of being incapacitated from their duties for up to a month.

That should definitely be a factor considered, especially in any area where a doctor shortage could occur. But a month sounds like a long time for <35 years olds in good health.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#105

Post by tedunangst »

sfvisser wrote: post #98
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, blaming the algorithm is an indirect way of blaming software engineers. From Facebook to the VW emissions scandal to Stanford’s vaccine allocation, people love narratives that blame engineers. I suspect this trend will only get worse as the general public realizes that engineers are now a highly compensated professional, similar to how lawyers are the butt of so many jokes.

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.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#106

Post by pbourke »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #34
fairity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people are misunderstanding the likely root cause. > An algorithm was used to assign its first allotment of the vaccine. The algorithm prioritized health care workers at highest risk for COVID infections, along with factors like age and the location or unit where they work in the hospital. Residents did not have an assigned location, and along with their typically young age, they were dropped low on the…

I don't think I was assuming anything in particular about the intents. it's a rather important thing not to check on actual data, including residents in the sample, isn't it? they just never bothered to test the algorithm, didn't even review the results it spit out, before delivering the results as a plan? (it is quite possible indeed they didn't, I'm not saying that is a coverup for some other motive, I'm saying tha…

It sounds like the administration wanted a scapegoat on which to hang any blame around vaccine allocation. Surely whichever allocation they came up with would have axes along which it could be criticized.

Enter some poor analyst working with a pile of messy data and “The Algorithm”.

If machine learning can be “money laundering for bias”, then “algorithms” can be money laundering for responsibility.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#107

Post by trianglem »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #15

> "[A]lgorithms are made by people and the results ... were reviewed multiple times by people," You got that right. The way they talk about "an algorithm did it" makes it seem as as if they think that somehow explains it, like there was only one algorithm possible handed down from god or something. We'll be seeing more and more of this of course. "We can't be blamed, it was an algorithm! We can't be blamed for trusti…

With you right until the end where formulas are made by people. In many NN setups, the “formula” is pretty much a self trained black box so in those cases people can only be blamed for the input data that went into training the system.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#108

Post by mattkrause »

MereInterest wrote: post #94
LeanderK wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a native speaker and I don't think I understand the quote. What should "money laundering for bias mean"?

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 sure that they’re doing what we think they are and that they’re not keying off something else instead, especially something biased. To date, the field has been...not great about this.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#109

Post by jcims »

sfvisser wrote: post #98
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, blaming the algorithm is an indirect way of blaming software engineers. From Facebook to the VW emissions scandal to Stanford’s vaccine allocation, people love narratives that blame engineers. I suspect this trend will only get worse as the general public realizes that engineers are now a highly compensated professional, similar to how lawyers are the butt of so many jokes.

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.

Not engineers broadly or specifically, but I do think many people find a bit of schadenfreude when an overly confident expert is found to be wrong.

Re: Stanford apologizes after vaccine allocation leaves out medical residents

#110

Post by leg100 »

edoceo wrote: post #45
throwaway9870 wrote: post #40

I can't really get upset until I understand who got it instead of the resident.

C-Suite and WFH admins - the low risk, safe group. The system forgot front-line infantry (again)

Source? The article irritatingly doesn't say.
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