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Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's disturbing is people taking health advice from celebrities instead of medical experts.
What about taking health advice from the NEWS MEDIA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's disturbing is people taking health advice from celebrities instead of medical experts.
What about taking health advice from the NEWS MEDIA.
Taking advice directly from the reporter is as ridiculous as taking advice from celebrities.
Taking advice from the health officials/professionals the reporter is quoting... well as long as you trust the reporter to be quoting them accurately that's about as reasonable as taking advice directly from the health officials/professionals. Advice can roughly speaking be evaluated as [probability it was quoted correctly] * [probability you should be taking advice from that health official/professional]... (that's only rough, because you also have to account for reporters doing things like selectively quoting bad advice... but it's a reasonably first estimate)
This is worth reading all the way through for anyone with an interest in science and innovative projects.
At the risk of drawing a conclusion too strong from the article, I would add that that Fast Grants' referee panel of 'earyl-career individuals from top universities' with [responses] given out within '48 hours' warrants thoughtful contemplation on its own.
Hiring great people, then giving them both autonomy and authority to make effective decisions seems to be a missing ingredient in high-uncertainty activities (and no wonder, how is someone supposed to take risks when failure is harshly penalized). It is also a telling demonstration that questions and challenges requiring domain expertise need not be subject to endless advisory reviews or require sophisticated statistical modelling/complicated decision processes.
Regarding the statistical modelling/decision processes, I by no means am suggesting such modelling is always unnecessary, just that it seems it can often be used to justify inaction, or simply to cover one's arse. I am reminded of the Challenger incident [1] where engineers at Morton Thiokol were deeply suspect of launching, but were unable to decisively prove that a launch was inadvisable for want of adequate evidence. The rich irony of the situation was that several engineers were suspect of the launch AND had domain expertise shared a "gut instinct" about something each had superior tacit knowledge about. Granted, going with one's "gut" generalizes poorly outside of a domain of expertise. However, twenty scientists saying 'yay' or 'nay' to an activity is compelling evidence if all are dispassionate, third parties with no vested interest.
I suspect such skilled, domain-aware groups with the necessary capacity to make important decisions would generalize well to high-uncertainty, risky activities.
> Making human clinical trials cheaper and quicker is probably one of the biggest opportunities for improving U.S. healthcare both during and beyond pandemics. The failure to accelerate vaccine development through challenge testing is a black mark on our ethical and regulatory system. the Moderna vaccine mRNA was developed two days after COVID-19 was identified, yet it took over a year to get through human testing. A…
How about we quit treating people like children and make all drugs legal? The FDA stamp will just be a stamp of quality to help guide people to a known quality product. No enforcement of drug laws at the barrel of an authorities gun. But if people want to do some experimental off brand use that their doctor recommends then they can. If people do their own research and want to self prescribe they can. Getting the mono…
At the same time, I think we would need to concurrently ban drug advertisements as other countries have. To me, that seems like a better balance between treating individuals as adults with autonomy and minimizing harm on the macro scale.
Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions. To me this was the most damning indictment of all. Once founders leave a compnay (or an institution), as BalajiS says, they become a shell of their former selves,with the individuals mostly in for self-preservation rather than set out fulfill the purpose of the institution.
Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions. To me this was the most damning indictment of all. Once founders leave a compnay (or an institution), as BalajiS says, they become a shell of their former selves,with the individuals mostly in for self-preservation rather than set out fulfill the purpose of the institution.
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Your comment is misleading. DeNiro continued: “In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However, this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening “Vaxxed.” I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the oppor…
“Tribeca, as most film festivals, are about dialogue and discussion. Over the years we have presented many films from opposing sides of an issue. We are a forum, not a judge,” a spokeswoman said in a statement on behalf of the festival earlier this week. GOOD. If you're correct your viewpoint will stand up to dialogue.
They're not really a discussion forum. They're mostly about just showing things. They have some panels, but mostly any discussions kicked off by films are arranged by the attendees for themselves.
There are truly unjuried festivals, but they're much less high profile because the quality will be very uneven. That's not what Tribeca is about at all. So I don't know why she would say that.
Fast Grants, but to fight climate change?
> Most importantly, Fast Grants didn’t change the vaccine timeline, and vaccines were clearly the most important component of the response. They are being really intellectually honest here. One thing you couldn't apply for for Fast Grants was a media effort to convince people to take the vaccine. And speaking of the power of individuals, Robert De Niro ( https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et...…
There's a difference between people who don't think vaccines are good as a whole...and people who question a rushed vaccine developed with no FDA oversight or testing by companies who have absolutely no liability if things go wrong for a disease that has 99.99% survival rate for most people. And then there are questions about it even WORKING fully and one still has to wear a mask and you can still be contagious and i…
Yes, there's a difference between people who question vaccines as a whole and... a fabricated reality/false narrative.
The survival rate is not 99.99%, and the outcomes for "survivors" are all too often debilitating. The demand on our healthcare infrastructure is potentially crippling, as we've seen.
There has been FDA oversight... indeed the vast majority of the time from development to release of the vaccines in the US has been getting clearance from the FDA (you may recall the J&J vaccine was even paused by the FDA).
...and the liability shield is due to the never-ending unjustified legal claims that companies are invariably subjected to when they operate in this space.
There's a difference between critical thinking bells and having your bell rung. ;-)