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Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#51

Post by piva00 »

ramblerman wrote: post #32
piva00 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people feel more motivated to work and experience greater satisfaction from their work It kinda weirded me out to see work/productivity being listed in regards to benefits of sex. Yeah, it might help but this way of thinking sounds absolutely horrendous.

What way of thinking? OP listed some untypical benefits that come with sex - I think we are all aware of the typical benefits. He/she didn't say "these are the reasons you should have sex"

Shoehorning productivity as a benefit to things in life that should have nothing to do with productivity. It reeks of viewing activities in life as means to increase productive output, which is... Sad.

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#52

Post by redserk »

frognumber wrote: post #49
globular-toast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine telling someone you made a website and they're like "cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?"

You're reading the comment wrong. There's two mindsets: 1) An emotional one. "Words impact emotions" 2) A logical one. "Study has issues 1, 2, and 3" Both have places, but science must be in #2 to work at all. That is the point of science. One of the critical parts of this mindset is separating criticism of work, quality of work, and the individual. Indeed, the more significant the science, the more it needs criticis…

This is all assuming the paper was read to begin with.

Mindset 3) Skip the article, go straight to the comments

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#53

Post by engcoach »

jgrahamc wrote: post #8
finnjohnsen2 wrote: post #6

Please let's make a downvote free thread for throwing jokes a round on this topic. We need this freedom for such a topic trending on HN. There is so much low hanging fruit and we're all thinking of several I suspect. My initial thought was in the lane of 'drug is affecting one more head than intended', but it's missing some refinement I'll admit

No, let's not. We don't "need this freedom". And we're not "all thinking of several". Grow up.

You must be fun at parties

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#54

Post by globular-toast »

frognumber wrote: post #49
globular-toast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine telling someone you made a website and they're like "cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?"

You're reading the comment wrong. There's two mindsets: 1) An emotional one. "Words impact emotions" 2) A logical one. "Study has issues 1, 2, and 3" Both have places, but science must be in #2 to work at all. That is the point of science. One of the critical parts of this mindset is separating criticism of work, quality of work, and the individual. Indeed, the more significant the science, the more it needs criticis…

If the comment was along the lines of "I've read the paper and think it has some serious problems like x, y and z" then you'd be right.

But this is just someone who's read the title of a BBC article about the paper and basically saying "yeah but science is hard". We know it's hard. That's why we don't all have publications in peer-reviewed journals. This isn't specific to this study. You think published authors in the field don't know this?

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#55

Post by ethbr1 »

sjducb wrote: post #47
globular-toast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine telling someone you made a website and they're like "cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?"

The parent post makes a good point that it’s very hard to do this kind of research well. We should default to skepticism. There is a replication crisis on right now.

Default to curious, active skepticism.

That means looking at methods, discussing confounding factors and how they were and weren't handled correctly, and what alternatives could have been employed.

There's a similar form of dismissive, passive skepticism that says: science has problems, so it's not even worth looking harder.

Note: I'm assuming good faith on part of parent, so not pointing fingers. But it is a thing I've seen on HN, especially re: biology.

Tl;dr - don't tl;dr science.

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#56

Post by frognumber »

globular-toast wrote: post #54
frognumber wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading the comment wrong. There's two mindsets: 1) An emotional one. "Words impact emotions" 2) A logical one. "Study has issues 1, 2, and 3" Both have places, but science must be in #2 to work at all. That is the point of science. One of the critical parts of this mindset is separating criticism of work, quality of work, and the individual. Indeed, the more significant the science, the more it needs criticis…

If the comment was along the lines of "I've read the paper and think it has some serious problems like x, y and z" then you'd be right. But this is just someone who's read the title of a BBC article about the paper and basically saying "yeah but science is hard". We know it's hard. That's why we don't all have publications in peer-reviewed journals. This isn't specific to this study. You think published authors in th…

I don't think the audience for the comment was "published authors in the field" but "random people in a web forum" who make comments like yours ("Imagine telling someone you made a website and they're like 'cool, but did you even make sure it has the little green padlock?'")

In that context, it's often helpful to remind people that:

- Correlation is not causation

- It takes many replicated results to go from hypothesis to theory

(Which is quite different from "science is hard"). This is doubly-true with the current level of hype and grandstanding in science where primary and secondary sources are often clickbaity and misleading.

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#57

Post by frognumber »

ethbr1 wrote: post #55
sjducb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent post makes a good point that it’s very hard to do this kind of research well. We should default to skepticism. There is a replication crisis on right now.

Default to curious , active skepticism. That means looking at methods, discussing confounding factors and how they were and weren't handled correctly, and what alternatives could have been employed. There's a similar form of dismissive, passive skepticism that says: science has problems, so it's not even worth looking harder. Note: I'm assuming good faith on part of parent, so not pointing fingers. But it is a thing…

Good points.

I will comment though: Passive skepticism is important too. At this stage, the bigger problem is treating one study outcome as if it were fact. Dismissing established, well-replicated science is, of course, a problem as well, but at least from what I've seen, the much bigger problem is that you have one correlational study. Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying science is nonsense.

The good news is that it's also possible to solve. There is constant progress in science, of course, but if we ignore all science from the past 20 years, we're still left with pretty good science (at least for the level of policy-making and personal decision-making). Simply ignoring anything recent solves the hype problem. And for all the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, those are still minorities since recognizing established science is actually not especially hard.

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#58

Post by jonplackett »

jonplackett wrote: post #7
finnjohnsen2 wrote: post #6

Please let's make a downvote free thread for throwing jokes a round on this topic. We need this freedom for such a topic trending on HN. There is so much low hanging fruit and we're all thinking of several I suspect. My initial thought was in the lane of 'drug is affecting one more head than intended', but it's missing some refinement I'll admit

I nominate this specific comment thread for this purpose.

I’ll take that as a no…

Re: Men on Viagra may reduce their Alzheimer's risk – study

#60

Post by ethbr1 »

frognumber wrote: post #57
ethbr1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Default to curious , active skepticism. That means looking at methods, discussing confounding factors and how they were and weren't handled correctly, and what alternatives could have been employed. There's a similar form of dismissive, passive skepticism that says: science has problems, so it's not even worth looking harder. Note: I'm assuming good faith on part of parent, so not pointing fingers. But it is a thing…

Good points. I will comment though: Passive skepticism is important too. At this stage, the bigger problem is treating one study outcome as if it were fact. Dismissing established, well-replicated science is, of course, a problem as well, but at least from what I've seen, the much bigger problem is that you have one correlational study. Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying scie…

> [...] but if we ignore all science from the past 20 years, we're still left with pretty good science

But what if the people of 20 years ago had made that same choice? And the people 20 years before then? Etc.

It's not a tenable long-term position.

> Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying science is nonsense.

This has always been the case, though. A majority of people are dumb and/or lazy. Consequently, the quickest way to make a buck off them is the above.

But that trash science gets popularly communicated doesn't opine on the advancement of the academic practice.

> And for all the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, those are still minorities since recognizing established science is actually not especially hard.

This feels like something we degree pretty strongly on.

(1) I don't think it should ever be easy to tell bad science, (2) I certainly don't think established science should hold an especially privileged place (heliocentrism!), & (3) I do think that the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers deserve a place in any true scientific practices (there's a myriad of ways they generally demonstrate their ineptitude, but ideas should not be verboten).

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