I learned a few things today, Jag-you-ares eat caimans, caimans can bite gently if the need arises, and their bottom teeth insert into upper jaw holes.
Cool TSAF today. That first video...I don't know why, but it made me laugh....the goofy gomer in the safari vest and leather hat...grabbing poor little baby caimans...trying to be like that Aussie that got himself killed messing with big animals. Why? Why does he do that?!?
I like just looking at animals, I don't have to grab them to show off on the interweb.
Yeah, it might be that. Or maybe it's folks that feel neglected or seek attention they aren't getting, so they have to force it...which never works. It only brings you into contact with folks doing the same thing back at you. Is that a profundity? (Note to self...look into the psychological implications for an innate need to blab profundities.)
It's funny...I've been running down the page in Substack where people just stay stuff. It's like a nonstop streaming service of normal folks tossing off imagined profundities into the ether, waiting for...what? A like? An echo?
I've never been into social media. This thing is my total involvement in SM, with occasional posts to IG of China photos. So, I find the broadcasting of potential profundities into the ether to be fun and strange...not offputting...but strange in ways I can't describe. It's existential cries into the cosmos..."I'm here, I have something to say!"...and waiting for an echo.... I sometimes feel like I want to help, but don't know what to say.
And there's a couple guys...always guys...that are staring out from their avatar/logo pic and making some statement about the state of affairs in XYZ in a manner that they imagine is a sonic boom level earthquake...and it's really just a potato popping in the microwave. Then, they disappear for a few days, and then they're back.
There's a new woman, a doctor...Ruby Wang, a Chinese ethnicity schooled in the West doctor...talking real sense about health care in China and how the West's systems are so out of whack and how we could learn so much from what they're doing in the new China hospitals, but of course we can't/won't because of, you know. It's China. The Chinese are ready to go and integrate, but it's the American's being obstinate. One more lost opportunity when it could all be so much better. Dipsquat reporting on what "China is" is a huge part of the problem. People believe that squat.
Or people who hassle the wildlife and people who don't.
I have some sympathy with wildlife-hassling, at a moderate level, as it helps the public to understand that the animals aren't trying to kill them, so they don't have to try to kill the animals.
Agree. But, guys like Mr. Bushmaster Leather Hat Guy kinda make me squirm. Are they educating us about animals or are they just trying to attain virality...?
Who was the Mutual of Omaha guy...Marlon! Marlon Perkins. I loved that show. And then there was his protege...Jack something...who was kind of a nerd, but an engaging and helpful nerd. Now, we got the clowns that just seem like it's about them and the animals are the McGuffin. (Note to self...used "McGuffin" twice in one month...regulate usage....)
Jim Fowler I believe. "Jim wrestles down that jaguar while I watch from the safety of the Land Rover". And now a word from Mutual of Omaha. Remember Wild Kingdom well!
Good morning. 67 now, rising to the high 0s later. Partly cloudy.
In what I sincerely hope is a glitch, the Morning Dispatch is behind a “Premium members Only” paywall. Dispatch Premium membership is currently priced at $300/year, basically for political insiders not casual news junkies like me. All I can see is the headline, referring to RFK Jr and autism. If the mothership continues to deny me the main feature that I pay for, we might come to a parting of the ways.
The FP is reporting about Canada’s parliamentary election which took place yesterday. Several months ago, the Liberals of Justin Trudeau seemed destined to lose to the Conservatives. Then Donald Trump started talking about Canada as the “51st state”. The result is that the Liberals and their new leader, Mark Carney, came out on top. FP is claiming “Canadian Conservatives Botch the Electi9n of a LIfetime”.
You aren't able to see the JFK and autism article with your basic membership?? That's unacceptable. I'd be outta there. I perused what they allowed me to see and it wasn't much. As the mom of an autistic, I'm curious about what he is going to do to "find a cure" by September. The fallout from his comments was a little over the top imo. "Autism isn't a disease etc etc." It may not be a disease but it is a disorder. And it's pretty debilitating even for a high functioning person on the spectrum. I do wish they (I don't know who "they" are) would not have lumped Asperger's into the autism bucket.
Morning Dispatch behind premium members paywall. I was hoping it was just a glitch. I waited and tried later. It let me access the Morning Dispatch eventually.
I was able to read it...sigh! You have non-scientists reporting on what other scientists are concerned about. The article is clearly not "down the middle", but slanted against RFK Jr., who for the record, is not a scientist and should be ignored when he discusses science.
"𝑾𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒎 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒊𝒏𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒖𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍"; 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑳𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒂𝒔 "𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔". It raises no more concerns about ethics than does, say, a multiplication table. Yes, stealing someone else's dataset is as unethical as stealing someone else's tools. But that is about theft, not about linking datasets together. Assuming there is agreement for it to happen, it has nothing to do with ethics.
The line that caused an eyeroll 🙄 was hearing them drone on about how science is hypothesis driven: 🤦♂️NO! Science is funding driven, which is publishing driven, which is results driven. No one writes a grant unless they are confident they'll find the result they are seeking. And by golly, they do...with a little help from their friends, from torturing the data (an old Ronald Coase quip), etc. Think of the Harvard plagiarism scandal (a group of DEI "experts" copied from each other). They began with an outcome in mind, then found support for it, and published it. That is the norm.
Ideally, you begin with a blank slate, collect data, and explain it. But no one does that. All of us look for data that support ideas we already have. We sometimes modify our ideas as we get deeper and more involved with the data. But there is a cost to collecting data, so we don't do it willy-nilly. Although Harvard scholars in DEI apparently do it Milly-Vannili. 🙄
For me, I am curiosity driven: I look for data that I think answers an interesting question; I have prior theory that suggests I ought to find 'X", and that is what I'll look for. I prefer data where there are multiple (and competing) theories: that increases the odds of finding significance! 😏 Once I have significance, I then apply theory to explain why I found it. It's an iterative process. If I don't see anything happening, I set it aside, and write it off.
I am blessed, in that as I look at data my find seeks out patterns; when I informally see one I begin to explore it more deeply. I then formally collect some data, confirm this is not a dead end, continue some more, etc. Along the way I read what others have done in similar circumstances, looking for gaps in our knowledge. I then build formal data sets and test, looking for findings that support that result. It is rare that I find the opposite (I just did a few months ago), but even then, we try to explain it.
Okay, enough of this rant. But given how partisan is the topic on autism, you can see why I didn't post this at the mothership; people will automatically assume I am anti-vaccines (I'm up to date on my shots), or I am anti-science (I make a living doing this), or am MAGA (which has nothing to do with how to conduct science, as our friends in Harvard's DEI program have taught us).
That is an extremely helpful bit of writing. I like it because it reinforces what I already believed, which reinforces what you wrote, which is my belief, and I see my beliefs mirrored in what you wrote....I think I just saw infinity.
Seriously...That is great. Real guy writing about what he knows for sure because he does it, dismantling the noise from others that don't do it but have to make people believe they do, which gets heft because their stuff is in a "serious" publication. A good reason for not paying to much attention to serious publications. I read them, but it's just stuff to file away until I know more. Or not.
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about this a while back in the NY'er. I think it was the NY'er. She's pretty good.
I hop you will not take personally the observation that there is a difference between the "hard" sciences including medicine, and the 'soft" sciences which are more your speciality.
And the detail I found most telling in TMD's article is the following:
'“There have been 24 studies looking at the question of whether the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine causes autism, in seven countries, on three continents, involving thousands of children, and the results have always been the same, which is [the] MMR vaccine does not cause autism, but RFK refuses to believe it,” Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation, told TMD. '
No offense taken, but the issue is a little more nuanced than that. A key difference between the social sciences and "the hard sciences" is we're more honest about our use of proxy variables, where use use one thing to capture the effect of something else. As a result our models (in good journals) have more control variables.
I use hazard rate models in my some of my work, which are what medical scientists use in theirs. Same software packages, my data sets tend to be larger, though not always. They are, in general more sophisticated than traditional regression analysis. A big difference is a "birth" in our models is often an incorporation date, or some event, while a "death" might be bankruptcy, closing down, etc. Causality is a bigger challenge for us. The presence of a virus is generally easy to develop causality, though not always.
But one of the things a social scientist (Danny Kahneman) learned is that "hard science" types fall prey to intellectual biases as much as anyone else.
I'll give you an example. My wife Pam had over 214 "perfect matches" for donor marrow. They were ecstatic at that. But, donor match issues (known as Graft vs. Host Disease GVHD) occurred at the time in nearly 40% of all donations. It turns out "perfect" only meant scientists couldn't observe any additional differences between the donated and host marrow. Given GVHD often led to death, you'd think they'd try harder to match (and today they do better). But Pam's doctor gave her donor from a male donor, so he could track its growth through her body. She developed GVHD. Ten years prior, a Dutch study indicated a higher risk of GVHD for M2F and F2M donors. He was unaware of it. Now, some tiresome blathering type at the Mothership will tell you that study is wrong, although when you read it, you realize the study could not support there is a difference in M2F donors (which is clearly not the same as saying there is no difference).
My original concern was with the article calling out "potential ethical concern" over something scientists do all the time. That was bias in their reporting. A meta-analysis is basically a tool for summarizing findings across multiple data sets, and uses data gathered by others. Again, as long as you didn't steal the data, it is a perfectly acceptable practice.
First sentence....Heck yeah. Second sentence, agree.
I'll open myself up for abuse by saying I also would like to see fluoride taken out of our water. Yeah, yeah, I know all the dental stuff. I've got more money in my mouth than most people have in their homes. (hyperbole). I KNOW about fluoride and what it does. I'd just like it if we could have our dentists give us fluoride treatments, or better yet, get our own fluoride. There's enough stuff in our water already.
One reason that comes to mind is to make it distinguishable from other medications being given at the same time. We have had issues with the packaging for long acting insulin being too similar to that for short acting insulin.
Under stress, I can see it being easier to remember "I gave him the red liquid" than "I gave him the anti-vomiting liquid." That is not to say remembering function is not more important.
Then there is the issue of sending to the medicine cabinet family members who get impatient with long generic names. "Which one is Benadryl?" "Diphenhydramine. The pink one."
I get about 2/3-3/4's of their daily newsletter, and the most important/big stuff is in the first couple bullet points so who cares about the missing 1/4-1/3? I don't need them to tell me what to think about stuff.
I read a couple (free) pieces about the Canadian election. I don't know what it means that Carney won, other than the "liberals" are back in the saddle....which they seemed to continually mess up in all previous iterations. The opinion pieces on the matter are all the two handed variety, i.e., "on one hand it's this, but on the other it's that". I can do that by myself. I don't need to pay for it.
Much of the lack of clarity is due to the fact that most of us are now waiting to see which Mark Carney actually shows up after the fog of the election. If it's the "professional economist with experience in the business world" who will move the Liberals back into the center, then we might be OK. On the other hand (🙂), if it's the climate-concerned social advocate that his recent book would suggest, we might still be in a world of hurt. The problem is that Carney doesn't have any kind of a political track record. Last night was the first time he had been elected to anything. Recent experience might suggest that people who start off their political careers at the very top often don't do very well at it.
The most depressing thing about the result is that many of the same people will be returning to government positions - even after they did a spectacularly bad job of managing things for the past decade. Karma has yet to come for them.
That's insightful. And refreshing. In short, no one really knows, which is probably the most accurate description of governance. I sincerely hope the former (pro econ guy with biz experience) shows up.
Me too, although I would be a lot happier if he had surrounded himself with a brand new team. Instead, many of the new faces look very much like the old faces. On the plus side, he can't possibly be any worse than the last guy. 😃
Right. But, he will need a team, and trying to rebuild from zero would most likely be a disaster. It’s probably better having a team in place that can at least tread water, and make improvements from there. Trudeau really was just a dope. If his name wasn’t Trudeau, he’d have been taking orders at a Tim Horton’s drive through window.
The subscriber lock-out on content should be sufficiently embarrassing to fix most future occurrences.
It’s surprisingly easy to overlook details on a daily product. The best way to avoid it would be to use the types of checklists used in aviation, where each and every item *has to be* performed as a matter of routine. Few people have the discipline to perform such actions individually, though, and without a larger organization to enforce adherence with spot-checks, it’s hard to see the protocols performed every single time.
What bugs me is the way the deliverers of these error messages think it is OK to compel us to respond "OK" to something that is not OK, or to say "Got It" as if I owe them any kind of message of acknowledgment and compliance; they are not my bosses.
Now, if "Got It" were to be changed to "Go Away" that would be more reflective of my attitude toward unwanted popups, like the ones on my bank's website, interrupting my transactions to tell me I should get their app, or that I'm a gullible old person and need to constantly be told by them that scams exist.
Just be glad the programmers don’t have a dialog box saying “If you knew what a pain it is to get thousands of lines of cantankerous code to work well 99.9% of the time, you’d fall to your knees and thank the gods that any of this works at all.” with an acknowledgment for you to click so as to unfreeze your program that says: “Thank you, Lords of Coding. I’m on my knees right now!”
My understanding is that programmers are paid for the work they do, so they shouldn't need any affirmations from me.
Programmers do have bosses at some level who are responsible for overseeing customer-facing communications. These bosses should do the work they are being paid for by making sure someone crafts language that will not be perceived by customers/users as condescending, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate to the actual relationship. Then they should make sure that language is used, rather than allowing programmers to abuse the users, out of their ignorance of how to communicate properly with users. This is not really the programmers' fault, but it is the fault of their bosses, who should be called out for letting this kind of thing happen.
Sorry Kurt, you'll have to find another reason to hate the mothership. no worries, the next article they publish on PR China will probably give you that reason. 🙂
I don't hate them. They're irrelevant and don't affect me one way or the other.
Amuse might be closer to it, but they're too boring for amusement. Folks that have never done anything except opine on the matters of the day, and want to get paid for it, are a dime a dozen. Maybe more like 5¢ a dozen. Actually, worthless. There's millions of them everywhere. Per whatever they write about the PRC...I don't care. Folks blathering about things they have no understanding of is also everywhere. Noise doesn't bother me. I'll occasionally try to explain things to people, but the American "I got this" faux understanding of complex matters pretty much makes that impossible nowadays.
I exercise my prerogatives in the beauty of the capitalist system and don't pay them and now they're over there and I'm over here. What could be better?
We will disagree about the degree to which they have "no understanding". Depends on what you are focused on, and what your perspective is. Not to mention, the differences between PR China and the ROC on Taiwan are telling, as they both are Chinese cultures.
Any decent IT web coding department would have QA. But a change of this type is probably the setting of a single flag, maybe a button or checkbox on a website configuration page, that would easily be done and not scrutinized by QA.
Just to say that as I was preparing to comment on The Morning Dispatch, it seems that commenting is now restricted to Premium Members... If it is indeed the case, it is one thing to create a top tier of membership with new features, it is nothing else but commercial fraud to remove from the earlier membership the main feature which made it worthwhile to pay for access.
Bizarre. Elite news "analysis" as opposed to merely proletarian mouth breather news analysis. What does that say about journalism? If you pay more, we'll reveal the secrets we're not telling the mopes...(?)
Bonjour M Jouffrey. Two very notable things happened recently: The Canadian Liberals won an election they should have lost, thanks to Donald Trump. And I completely agree with you about something, specifically TMD.
Even reading on-line is restricted to Premium Members: whether a mistake or a wilful decision, it shows the usual contempt for their customers, who are not treated as kings, but as serfs.
This online comment thing...I'm still relatively new to it and this joint is the only place I comment regularly....actually, at all. So, I work on new material by writing whatever words jump into my febrile brain. Today, it was persnickety and cretins. And febrile.
Hold it.... There's some guy on Substack....WAIT, THIS IS SUBSTACK...named Bill that's lived in China and does business and we seem to agree on everything, which might be a first in the history of the internet. So, I comment on his stuff.
I agree. Ordinary content has shown as restricted in the past. It's either a recurring error for which no one in specific is responsible, or it's an experiment.
One mom said her child was sick, "There must be norovirus circulating in the group," even though her child hadn't been around the students because they have only one high schooler participating.
My instinct would have been to apologize for exposing others to the virus we unintentionally brought into the group from outside, not the other way around.
I learned a few things today, Jag-you-ares eat caimans, caimans can bite gently if the need arises, and their bottom teeth insert into upper jaw holes.
Cool TSAF today. That first video...I don't know why, but it made me laugh....the goofy gomer in the safari vest and leather hat...grabbing poor little baby caimans...trying to be like that Aussie that got himself killed messing with big animals. Why? Why does he do that?!?
I like just looking at animals, I don't have to grab them to show off on the interweb.
He did not seem very concerned about momma caiman coming to get him.
It’s almost as if the entire population could be divided into people who want their lives public and those who don’t.
Yeah, it might be that. Or maybe it's folks that feel neglected or seek attention they aren't getting, so they have to force it...which never works. It only brings you into contact with folks doing the same thing back at you. Is that a profundity? (Note to self...look into the psychological implications for an innate need to blab profundities.)
Let us know what you find out about the need to blab profundities. Please.
It's funny...I've been running down the page in Substack where people just stay stuff. It's like a nonstop streaming service of normal folks tossing off imagined profundities into the ether, waiting for...what? A like? An echo?
I've never been into social media. This thing is my total involvement in SM, with occasional posts to IG of China photos. So, I find the broadcasting of potential profundities into the ether to be fun and strange...not offputting...but strange in ways I can't describe. It's existential cries into the cosmos..."I'm here, I have something to say!"...and waiting for an echo.... I sometimes feel like I want to help, but don't know what to say.
I scroll through that page sometimes, too. Some pop profundity, some quotidian minutiae, and some cow pictures.
And there's a couple guys...always guys...that are staring out from their avatar/logo pic and making some statement about the state of affairs in XYZ in a manner that they imagine is a sonic boom level earthquake...and it's really just a potato popping in the microwave. Then, they disappear for a few days, and then they're back.
There's a new woman, a doctor...Ruby Wang, a Chinese ethnicity schooled in the West doctor...talking real sense about health care in China and how the West's systems are so out of whack and how we could learn so much from what they're doing in the new China hospitals, but of course we can't/won't because of, you know. It's China. The Chinese are ready to go and integrate, but it's the American's being obstinate. One more lost opportunity when it could all be so much better. Dipsquat reporting on what "China is" is a huge part of the problem. People believe that squat.
Lonely works, too. "Maybe if I show off doing something I love I will find other people who love the same things."
Yeah, it does. It sounds healthier than the other ways.
Or people who hassle the wildlife and people who don't.
I have some sympathy with wildlife-hassling, at a moderate level, as it helps the public to understand that the animals aren't trying to kill them, so they don't have to try to kill the animals.
Agree. But, guys like Mr. Bushmaster Leather Hat Guy kinda make me squirm. Are they educating us about animals or are they just trying to attain virality...?
Who was the Mutual of Omaha guy...Marlon! Marlon Perkins. I loved that show. And then there was his protege...Jack something...who was kind of a nerd, but an engaging and helpful nerd. Now, we got the clowns that just seem like it's about them and the animals are the McGuffin. (Note to self...used "McGuffin" twice in one month...regulate usage....)
Jim Fowler I believe. "Jim wrestles down that jaguar while I watch from the safety of the Land Rover". And now a word from Mutual of Omaha. Remember Wild Kingdom well!
Jim! Right… Jim Fowler. Marlon and Jim was a good show. Wild Kingdom!
Good morning. 67 now, rising to the high 0s later. Partly cloudy.
In what I sincerely hope is a glitch, the Morning Dispatch is behind a “Premium members Only” paywall. Dispatch Premium membership is currently priced at $300/year, basically for political insiders not casual news junkies like me. All I can see is the headline, referring to RFK Jr and autism. If the mothership continues to deny me the main feature that I pay for, we might come to a parting of the ways.
The FP is reporting about Canada’s parliamentary election which took place yesterday. Several months ago, the Liberals of Justin Trudeau seemed destined to lose to the Conservatives. Then Donald Trump started talking about Canada as the “51st state”. The result is that the Liberals and their new leader, Mark Carney, came out on top. FP is claiming “Canadian Conservatives Botch the Electi9n of a LIfetime”.
You aren't able to see the JFK and autism article with your basic membership?? That's unacceptable. I'd be outta there. I perused what they allowed me to see and it wasn't much. As the mom of an autistic, I'm curious about what he is going to do to "find a cure" by September. The fallout from his comments was a little over the top imo. "Autism isn't a disease etc etc." It may not be a disease but it is a disorder. And it's pretty debilitating even for a high functioning person on the spectrum. I do wish they (I don't know who "they" are) would not have lumped Asperger's into the autism bucket.
It was an error that was corrected this morning. I read the whole article.
Morning Dispatch behind premium members paywall. I was hoping it was just a glitch. I waited and tried later. It let me access the Morning Dispatch eventually.
I was able to read it...sigh! You have non-scientists reporting on what other scientists are concerned about. The article is clearly not "down the middle", but slanted against RFK Jr., who for the record, is not a scientist and should be ignored when he discusses science.
"𝑾𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒔𝒎 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒊𝒏𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒖𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍"; 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈. 𝑳𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒂𝒔 "𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒕𝒔". It raises no more concerns about ethics than does, say, a multiplication table. Yes, stealing someone else's dataset is as unethical as stealing someone else's tools. But that is about theft, not about linking datasets together. Assuming there is agreement for it to happen, it has nothing to do with ethics.
The line that caused an eyeroll 🙄 was hearing them drone on about how science is hypothesis driven: 🤦♂️NO! Science is funding driven, which is publishing driven, which is results driven. No one writes a grant unless they are confident they'll find the result they are seeking. And by golly, they do...with a little help from their friends, from torturing the data (an old Ronald Coase quip), etc. Think of the Harvard plagiarism scandal (a group of DEI "experts" copied from each other). They began with an outcome in mind, then found support for it, and published it. That is the norm.
Ideally, you begin with a blank slate, collect data, and explain it. But no one does that. All of us look for data that support ideas we already have. We sometimes modify our ideas as we get deeper and more involved with the data. But there is a cost to collecting data, so we don't do it willy-nilly. Although Harvard scholars in DEI apparently do it Milly-Vannili. 🙄
For me, I am curiosity driven: I look for data that I think answers an interesting question; I have prior theory that suggests I ought to find 'X", and that is what I'll look for. I prefer data where there are multiple (and competing) theories: that increases the odds of finding significance! 😏 Once I have significance, I then apply theory to explain why I found it. It's an iterative process. If I don't see anything happening, I set it aside, and write it off.
I am blessed, in that as I look at data my find seeks out patterns; when I informally see one I begin to explore it more deeply. I then formally collect some data, confirm this is not a dead end, continue some more, etc. Along the way I read what others have done in similar circumstances, looking for gaps in our knowledge. I then build formal data sets and test, looking for findings that support that result. It is rare that I find the opposite (I just did a few months ago), but even then, we try to explain it.
Okay, enough of this rant. But given how partisan is the topic on autism, you can see why I didn't post this at the mothership; people will automatically assume I am anti-vaccines (I'm up to date on my shots), or I am anti-science (I make a living doing this), or am MAGA (which has nothing to do with how to conduct science, as our friends in Harvard's DEI program have taught us).
That is an extremely helpful bit of writing. I like it because it reinforces what I already believed, which reinforces what you wrote, which is my belief, and I see my beliefs mirrored in what you wrote....I think I just saw infinity.
Seriously...That is great. Real guy writing about what he knows for sure because he does it, dismantling the noise from others that don't do it but have to make people believe they do, which gets heft because their stuff is in a "serious" publication. A good reason for not paying to much attention to serious publications. I read them, but it's just stuff to file away until I know more. Or not.
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about this a while back in the NY'er. I think it was the NY'er. She's pretty good.
When I read the comment about dataset linking I scratched my head. Thanks for the insight, Jay.
I hop you will not take personally the observation that there is a difference between the "hard" sciences including medicine, and the 'soft" sciences which are more your speciality.
And the detail I found most telling in TMD's article is the following:
'“There have been 24 studies looking at the question of whether the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine causes autism, in seven countries, on three continents, involving thousands of children, and the results have always been the same, which is [the] MMR vaccine does not cause autism, but RFK refuses to believe it,” Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation, told TMD. '
No offense taken, but the issue is a little more nuanced than that. A key difference between the social sciences and "the hard sciences" is we're more honest about our use of proxy variables, where use use one thing to capture the effect of something else. As a result our models (in good journals) have more control variables.
I use hazard rate models in my some of my work, which are what medical scientists use in theirs. Same software packages, my data sets tend to be larger, though not always. They are, in general more sophisticated than traditional regression analysis. A big difference is a "birth" in our models is often an incorporation date, or some event, while a "death" might be bankruptcy, closing down, etc. Causality is a bigger challenge for us. The presence of a virus is generally easy to develop causality, though not always.
But one of the things a social scientist (Danny Kahneman) learned is that "hard science" types fall prey to intellectual biases as much as anyone else.
I'll give you an example. My wife Pam had over 214 "perfect matches" for donor marrow. They were ecstatic at that. But, donor match issues (known as Graft vs. Host Disease GVHD) occurred at the time in nearly 40% of all donations. It turns out "perfect" only meant scientists couldn't observe any additional differences between the donated and host marrow. Given GVHD often led to death, you'd think they'd try harder to match (and today they do better). But Pam's doctor gave her donor from a male donor, so he could track its growth through her body. She developed GVHD. Ten years prior, a Dutch study indicated a higher risk of GVHD for M2F and F2M donors. He was unaware of it. Now, some tiresome blathering type at the Mothership will tell you that study is wrong, although when you read it, you realize the study could not support there is a difference in M2F donors (which is clearly not the same as saying there is no difference).
My original concern was with the article calling out "potential ethical concern" over something scientists do all the time. That was bias in their reporting. A meta-analysis is basically a tool for summarizing findings across multiple data sets, and uses data gathered by others. Again, as long as you didn't steal the data, it is a perfectly acceptable practice.
I'm against RFK Jr. on "no raving loons" principles. However, I support getting the disgusting dyes out of food.
WHY are they putting bright red or purple dye in medicine for children who are vomiting? Who ARE these idiots?
Have loons ever been featured on TSAF?
I feel as though they must have been, because they're often mentioned in Living Bird, which I use for ideas.
First sentence....Heck yeah. Second sentence, agree.
I'll open myself up for abuse by saying I also would like to see fluoride taken out of our water. Yeah, yeah, I know all the dental stuff. I've got more money in my mouth than most people have in their homes. (hyperbole). I KNOW about fluoride and what it does. I'd just like it if we could have our dentists give us fluoride treatments, or better yet, get our own fluoride. There's enough stuff in our water already.
OK...I'll settle for "no raving loons".
One reason that comes to mind is to make it distinguishable from other medications being given at the same time. We have had issues with the packaging for long acting insulin being too similar to that for short acting insulin.
Under stress, I can see it being easier to remember "I gave him the red liquid" than "I gave him the anti-vomiting liquid." That is not to say remembering function is not more important.
Then there is the issue of sending to the medicine cabinet family members who get impatient with long generic names. "Which one is Benadryl?" "Diphenhydramine. The pink one."
I guess that takes it from insane to just obnoxious.
I get about 2/3-3/4's of their daily newsletter, and the most important/big stuff is in the first couple bullet points so who cares about the missing 1/4-1/3? I don't need them to tell me what to think about stuff.
I read a couple (free) pieces about the Canadian election. I don't know what it means that Carney won, other than the "liberals" are back in the saddle....which they seemed to continually mess up in all previous iterations. The opinion pieces on the matter are all the two handed variety, i.e., "on one hand it's this, but on the other it's that". I can do that by myself. I don't need to pay for it.
Much of the lack of clarity is due to the fact that most of us are now waiting to see which Mark Carney actually shows up after the fog of the election. If it's the "professional economist with experience in the business world" who will move the Liberals back into the center, then we might be OK. On the other hand (🙂), if it's the climate-concerned social advocate that his recent book would suggest, we might still be in a world of hurt. The problem is that Carney doesn't have any kind of a political track record. Last night was the first time he had been elected to anything. Recent experience might suggest that people who start off their political careers at the very top often don't do very well at it.
The most depressing thing about the result is that many of the same people will be returning to government positions - even after they did a spectacularly bad job of managing things for the past decade. Karma has yet to come for them.
That's insightful. And refreshing. In short, no one really knows, which is probably the most accurate description of governance. I sincerely hope the former (pro econ guy with biz experience) shows up.
Me too, although I would be a lot happier if he had surrounded himself with a brand new team. Instead, many of the new faces look very much like the old faces. On the plus side, he can't possibly be any worse than the last guy. 😃
Right. But, he will need a team, and trying to rebuild from zero would most likely be a disaster. It’s probably better having a team in place that can at least tread water, and make improvements from there. Trudeau really was just a dope. If his name wasn’t Trudeau, he’d have been taking orders at a Tim Horton’s drive through window.
> Recent experience might suggest that people who start off their political careers at the very top often don't do very well at it. <
Pshaw!
The subscriber lock-out on content should be sufficiently embarrassing to fix most future occurrences.
It’s surprisingly easy to overlook details on a daily product. The best way to avoid it would be to use the types of checklists used in aviation, where each and every item *has to be* performed as a matter of routine. Few people have the discipline to perform such actions individually, though, and without a larger organization to enforce adherence with spot-checks, it’s hard to see the protocols performed every single time.
Substack is glitchy today. It was completely down, now it still doesn't want to allow my likes.
Yeah, I got a “bad gateway” notice when trying to reload this page, then the homepage over an hour ago.
What bugs me is the way the deliverers of these error messages think it is OK to compel us to respond "OK" to something that is not OK, or to say "Got It" as if I owe them any kind of message of acknowledgment and compliance; they are not my bosses.
Now, if "Got It" were to be changed to "Go Away" that would be more reflective of my attitude toward unwanted popups, like the ones on my bank's website, interrupting my transactions to tell me I should get their app, or that I'm a gullible old person and need to constantly be told by them that scams exist.
Just be glad the programmers don’t have a dialog box saying “If you knew what a pain it is to get thousands of lines of cantankerous code to work well 99.9% of the time, you’d fall to your knees and thank the gods that any of this works at all.” with an acknowledgment for you to click so as to unfreeze your program that says: “Thank you, Lords of Coding. I’m on my knees right now!”
My understanding is that programmers are paid for the work they do, so they shouldn't need any affirmations from me.
Programmers do have bosses at some level who are responsible for overseeing customer-facing communications. These bosses should do the work they are being paid for by making sure someone crafts language that will not be perceived by customers/users as condescending, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate to the actual relationship. Then they should make sure that language is used, rather than allowing programmers to abuse the users, out of their ignorance of how to communicate properly with users. This is not really the programmers' fault, but it is the fault of their bosses, who should be called out for letting this kind of thing happen.
Well, now it finally does. All we got before was (iirc) Something Went Wrong followed by a non-optional OK button to press. But it was not OK with me.
I had a 22 page checklist in my report protocol. I like checklists.
I have a regular TMD email. Most days I ignore those. But it shows that this was an error.
The glitch is fixed. Declan Garvey is all over the comments section with apologies.
And offers of refunds for those who signed up for premium to get to the newsletter.
Ooh, that's embarrassing but could be a motivational incident to NOT DO THIS AGAIN.
One can hope.
It is nice of Declan Himself to apologize. Even better would be making it not happen again.
Oh darn...I was getting comfortable with consigning them to the elitist ash heap.
Sorry Kurt, you'll have to find another reason to hate the mothership. no worries, the next article they publish on PR China will probably give you that reason. 🙂
I don't hate them. They're irrelevant and don't affect me one way or the other.
Amuse might be closer to it, but they're too boring for amusement. Folks that have never done anything except opine on the matters of the day, and want to get paid for it, are a dime a dozen. Maybe more like 5¢ a dozen. Actually, worthless. There's millions of them everywhere. Per whatever they write about the PRC...I don't care. Folks blathering about things they have no understanding of is also everywhere. Noise doesn't bother me. I'll occasionally try to explain things to people, but the American "I got this" faux understanding of complex matters pretty much makes that impossible nowadays.
I exercise my prerogatives in the beauty of the capitalist system and don't pay them and now they're over there and I'm over here. What could be better?
We will disagree about the degree to which they have "no understanding". Depends on what you are focused on, and what your perspective is. Not to mention, the differences between PR China and the ROC on Taiwan are telling, as they both are Chinese cultures.
I got the email newsletter but couldn't read it online.
I wonder if online organizations do formal QA/QC.
Any decent IT web coding department would have QA. But a change of this type is probably the setting of a single flag, maybe a button or checkbox on a website configuration page, that would easily be done and not scrutinized by QA.
No, but QA would hopefully include a pre-publish checklist, for documentation and prevention of major embarrassment.
I would be pleasantly surprised if online organizations knew what QA/QC is.
My former employer most definitely knows, they had a team to QA website changes.
Me, too. And that is sad. This is one of those things people who tell us about the world should know.
It is to laugh.
Dear CynthiaW,
Just to say that as I was preparing to comment on The Morning Dispatch, it seems that commenting is now restricted to Premium Members... If it is indeed the case, it is one thing to create a top tier of membership with new features, it is nothing else but commercial fraud to remove from the earlier membership the main feature which made it worthwhile to pay for access.
Same here. They have been hard-selling premium memberships.
Bizarre. Elite news "analysis" as opposed to merely proletarian mouth breather news analysis. What does that say about journalism? If you pay more, we'll reveal the secrets we're not telling the mopes...(?)
It makes me glad I cut those clowns loose.
Bonjour M Jouffrey. Two very notable things happened recently: The Canadian Liberals won an election they should have lost, thanks to Donald Trump. And I completely agree with you about something, specifically TMD.
I;m waiting for the report of pigs flying. 🙂
Relax. This happened once before and was fixed. I sent them an email as a heads-up.
Thanks! It seems to be fixed now.
Thank you.
Dear John M.,
Ah, it is not as if they could have learned a lesson, then... 😏
I noticed that, too, M. Jouffrey. I imagine they will eventually say a mistake was made by nobody in particular.
However, I see it as an act of Providence: I have real stuff, involving forestry, to do this morning.
“Mistakes were made”.
Dear CynthiaW,
Even reading on-line is restricted to Premium Members: whether a mistake or a wilful decision, it shows the usual contempt for their customers, who are not treated as kings, but as serfs.
The 'usual contempt'? If that's how you feel, then there is a cure.
It's the beauty of the capitalist enterprise that the cure is readily available. What's amazing is how few learn to take the medicine.
Dear John M.,
Indeed, they can:
1) learn to do their job competently,
2) learn to respect their customers.
Well, now I feel justified in my persnickety take that those guys are simple minded cretins.
I find that strong, but there's definitely a lack of attention to detail in subscriber service.
It’s possibly an error. I’ve found myself locked out on a couple of occasions.
This online comment thing...I'm still relatively new to it and this joint is the only place I comment regularly....actually, at all. So, I work on new material by writing whatever words jump into my febrile brain. Today, it was persnickety and cretins. And febrile.
Hold it.... There's some guy on Substack....WAIT, THIS IS SUBSTACK...named Bill that's lived in China and does business and we seem to agree on everything, which might be a first in the history of the internet. So, I comment on his stuff.
I don't drink weak coffee either.
And, remember. You're nicer than me.
I think I drink pretty weak coffee. At least, cheap coffee: Great Value brand in the extra-large tin.
I agree. Ordinary content has shown as restricted in the past. It's either a recurring error for which no one in specific is responsible, or it's an experiment.
If there is a recurring error (or related set of errors), that suggests that someone is supposed to be responsible for looking into it and fixing it.
One would think that.
“The females again cooperate to guard the offspring”, but “most of the young do not survive to adulthood.” Are the females on their phones?
That's funny.
I agree: it was funny.
Funny. Could you keep track of 25 youngsters threatened by predators 20 times their size?
That sounds like my experience student teaching Industrial Arts.
Lol, good imagery.
Good morning. It's 56 now with a high of 80 forecast. Some of the Envirothon kids are coming down with various crud. They need to recover by Friday!
Morning. Various crud must be contagious. “Gute Besserung!” as they say.
One mom said her child was sick, "There must be norovirus circulating in the group," even though her child hadn't been around the students because they have only one high schooler participating.
My instinct would have been to apologize for exposing others to the virus we unintentionally brought into the group from outside, not the other way around.