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Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

stanforddaily.com

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Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#91

Post by ken47 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #19
i8comments wrote: post #14

Still a good place to study, though.

I think it would be beneficial if every Stanford admit just went to their state schools. The purpose of these institutions isn't to educate, it's to confer status (in a tax efficient and positive-eugenic way)

These schools can offer harder, accelerated courses under the presumption that the floor of the student body’s ability is higher than average. In that sense, the education can be more rigorous and faster. Is that actually the case in practice? I’ve never gone to a mediocre university so I can’t compare.

But I can say that aside from intellect, attendees of top universities are not ethically superior to the average person.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#92

Post by laidoffamazon »

ken47 wrote: post #88
laidoffamazon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know if Smale is a good example to use, since he did this 75 years ago! Back then the CUNY schools had similarly impressive graduates due to quotas at the elite schools. And Michigan is also a public ivy, though I'll concede it's more achievable to get into Michigan compared to Princeton (far more egalitarian in this regard). I'll be honest, I'm sure there are some high achievers that missed out, but I haven't…

You mean like Steve Jobs who, by your definition, didn’t go to a top school, but is more highly regarded than 99.99% of graduates of top schools?

Reed is a pretty selective and well regarded school, unlike the schools I got into.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#93

Post by ekianjo »

bsder wrote: post #77
ekianjo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first, I have a functioning brain that makes it possible for me to imagine that incentives to cheat and the complete lack of replication process makes it easy to push the balance towards publishing fake results. Then, I am well aware that the peer process is not about replication at all and is mostly useless in its current shape. Then people actually tried it which confirmed everything I mentioned: > This certainly d…

> Current Science is mostly cargo cult. Such statements are mostly cargo cult. Experiments with known results are finicky. See: "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html Experiments with unknown results are ridiculously finicky. You would be stunned at the number of experiments that got lucky and hinge on things like "how strongly stoppered the bottle is" (this normally…

I am an engineer so I know very well that industrial replication is far from easy, but that's a whole different topic here. That's why when manufacturing at scale you implement numerous controls for each step to ensure you remain into "whats known" territory.

Now, when you publish a discovery in a paper, common sense demands that you are sure that you results are not random, and the only 100% reliable way to do that is by replicating your results. There's no way around that. The fact that most people who publish stuff and the system that allows it never ever do that undermines any credibility in said "science".

Hence this is cargo cult. This is typically something that mimics the look of Science by using the scientific method, but it has none of its properties, because the incentives to cheat are obvious and there is nothing in place to prevent them.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#94

Post by ken47 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36
i8comments wrote: post #14

Still a good place to study, though.

> good place to study I work with a lot of Stanford grads. They’re terrific folk. But the concentration of corruption, delusion and depravity in its graduates, professors and administration begin to make one question if they were great and collected and resisted Stanford’s transformative effect, which increasingly (albeit with low confidence) looks like it may be net negative, or if they were transformed positively b…

I’ve personally witnessed schools of Stanford’s stature accepting students on multiple occasions, who were unable to handle AP Calculus AB in high school, or at least without significant assistance. When I mention this to associates from Asia, they are genuinely astonished. Anyone who got into a top university in East Asia will generally have breezed through such subject matter in high school. How can the United States hope to compete with Asia in a century? IMHO it’s going to be very difficult. Hard skills of this nature will rule the world.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#95

Post by ken47 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #92
ken47 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Steve Jobs who, by your definition, didn’t go to a top school, but is more highly regarded than 99.99% of graduates of top schools?

Reed is a pretty selective and well regarded school, unlike the schools I got into.

It’s nowhere near the stature or notoriety of Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc. It feels like you’re moving the goalpost.

Anyway, maybe you should change the way you measure yourself.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#96

Post by i67vw3 »

labster wrote: post #73
pfannkuchen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder if this is a case of journalism in the blood, or having media connections others don’t have (probably both).

The answer to “is it nature or nurture?” is almost always “both.”

Good point, I too have came to the same conclusion after observing both parties around me.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#97

Post by kasey_junk »

ken47 wrote: post #94
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good place to study I work with a lot of Stanford grads. They’re terrific folk. But the concentration of corruption, delusion and depravity in its graduates, professors and administration begin to make one question if they were great and collected and resisted Stanford’s transformative effect, which increasingly (albeit with low confidence) looks like it may be net negative, or if they were transformed positively b…

I’ve personally witnessed schools of Stanford’s stature accepting students on multiple occasions, who were unable to handle AP Calculus AB in high school, or at least without significant assistance. When I mention this to associates from Asia, they are genuinely astonished. Anyone who got into a top university in East Asia will generally have breezed through such subject matter in high school. How can the United Stat…

Fwiw this refrain was something we heard in the 80s. You’d expect 40 years on to see some of that impact.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#98

Post by ken47 »

echelon wrote: post #8
nonrepeating wrote: post #5

As a young man, I would have given nearly anything to attend Stanford or MIT, but I knew I wasn’t quite up to their standards. Now I find their presidents are not up to mine.

I worked at a fintech that employed both MIT graduates and people that didn't go to college at all. With our hiring and interview process serving as a great filter, it was impossible to tell who fell into which population until they told you.

If the kind of work these people do at your company doesn’t pressure test the skills they exhibited to get into MIT, then that stands to reason.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#99

Post by theGnuMe »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #90
theGnuMe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe read the article?

It seems like my takeaway is identical to the article's takeaway, that getting in matters more than going. Unless you're thinking of something else. The whole "matters less multiple years into career" bit is a cope if it's just a measure of how inherently good you are if you can get in. There seems to be a clear separation between the people that get in and the people that don't!

Good students will do well wherever they go. The “getting in” qualification is a red herring. In this case it serves as the control.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#100

Post by ken47 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #97
ken47 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve personally witnessed schools of Stanford’s stature accepting students on multiple occasions, who were unable to handle AP Calculus AB in high school, or at least without significant assistance. When I mention this to associates from Asia, they are genuinely astonished. Anyone who got into a top university in East Asia will generally have breezed through such subject matter in high school. How can the United Stat…

Fwiw this refrain was something we heard in the 80s. You’d expect 40 years on to see some of that impact.

We do. Even just recently, US presidents have been cutting off China’s access to US tech out of fear.
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