Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The idea of science not being a "democracy" - of respecting sincerely held minority views - is a noble one seldom accomplished. We don't want to get into climate change here, as that's off-topic and fairly incendiary, but climate-change "skeptics" are not respected. The majority feel that the science is settled and that the matter is too critical to entertain dissenting views. So the skeptics are marginalized, denied tenure, picked on, scorned, etc. by their comrades. There are other fields with similar patterns too. We would do well to learn to tolerate and accommodate but it's hard to avoid going down the "tyranny of the majority" pathway.

Dan, you just brought in climate change to make a point that doesn't necessarily need that to make it.

We had a long off forum discussion about climate change and I checked every single claim you made about those scientists being "mistreated." What I found was that many were proven to be incorrect in their findings by later studies, but held onto their thesis long after they were obsolete. Others had funding from think tanks with anti-climate change agendas and produced science that supported the goals of the institutions paying their wages. Some others had claims that showed very interesting findings, but that didn't necessarily debunk prevailing climate change consensus, and yet they and others claimed that they did.

So maybe keep climate change out to his thread please. No need to go there.

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Russia maintains 13 antiplague centers, from the Far East to the Caucasus Mountains, five plague research institutes and multiple field stations. In March, the authorities moved new laboratory equipment into the antiplague center in Moscow to expand its ability to test for coronavirus.

The Microbe institute, originally dedicated wholly to bubonic plague but later expanded to tackle other infections such as cholera, yellow fever, anthrax and tularemia, models the spread of the coronavirus.

Starting in January, directors of antiplague centers in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Moscow-led trade alliance of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, held conference calls about the coronavirus. And a plague institute in Odessa, Ukraine, is among agencies responding to the coronavirus there, officials said.

“The very fact that Russia and the other former Soviet states are, exactly, former Soviet states means a common legacy,” in health care, said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. A legacy of focus on epidemics helped, he said. Soviet health care had haphazard success at treating individuals but “could respond like the military to epidemics,” he noted.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The idea of science not being a "democracy" - of respecting sincerely held minority views - is a noble one seldom accomplished. We don't want to get into climate change here, as that's off-topic and fairly incendiary, but climate-change "skeptics" are not respected. The majority feel that the science is settled and that the matter is too critical to entertain dissenting views. So the skeptics are marginalized, denied tenure, picked on, scorned, etc. by their comrades. There are other fields with similar patterns too. We would do well to learn to tolerate and accommodate but it's hard to avoid going down the "tyranny of the majority" pathway.

Dan, you just brought in climate change to make a point that doesn't necessarily need that to make it.

We had a long off forum discussion about climate change and I checked every single claim you made about those scientists being "mistreated." What I found was that many were proven to be incorrect in their findings by later studies, but held onto their thesis long after they were obsolete. Others had funding from think tanks with anti-climate change agendas and produced science that supported the goals of the institutions paying their wages. Some others had claims that showed very interesting findings, but that didn't necessarily debunk prevailing climate change consensus, and yet they and others claimed that they did.

So maybe keep climate change out to his thread please. No need to go there.

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Political divisions over Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s statewide stay-at-home restrictions were on full display Monday, as a judge issued a temporary injunction allowing a Republican legislator to disregard the order, a decision Pritzker quickly denounced while forcefully defending his actions to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The ruling by Clay County Circuit Court Judge Michael McHaney came in a lawsuit filed by Rep. Darren Bailey that challenged Pritzker’s authority to extend his stay-at-home order beyond the initial 30 days under the state’s Emergency Management Act.

While the ruling applied only to Bailey, it could open the door for other Illinois residents to seek similar relief from the stay-at-home order, with McHaney’s injunction as a justification.

In seeking the injunction, Bailey said he is “irreparably harmed each day he is subjected to” Pritzker’s executive order, and asked the judge to enjoin the governor or anyone under his authority from enforcing it against him.

McHaney’s ruling said Pritzker was prohibited “from in any way enforcing the March 20 executive order against Darren Bailey forcing him to isolate and quarantine in his home,” or any subsequent orders that would do the same.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Now for something a bit light hearted:

Twitter Offers Medical Degrees So You Can Express Ignorant Opinions With Authority [Satire]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/twitter-offers-medical-degrees-so-you-can-express-ignorant-opinions-with-authority-satire

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This list of animals with fraudulent diplomas includes nonhuman animals who have been submitted as applicants to suspected diploma mills. On occasion, they have been admitted and granted a degree, as reported in reliable sources. Animals are often used as a device to clearly demonstrate the lax standards of the awarding institutions. In one case, a cat's degree helped lead to a successful fraud prosecution against the institution that had issued it.

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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
Not to mention all the people who are going to swallow copper pennies (which are mostly steel)

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

I found my long-lost twin.

Probably it is not permitted to post American Spectator here...but...

https://spectator.org/world-war-iii-is-almost-over-and-china-is-winning/

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For the last few years China and the United States have been at war. A polite war, but a war for world leadership nonetheless. Until recently, the combat was economic. The U.S. imposed tariffs — an 18th-century technology — and the Chinese responded with COVID-19, a 21st-century technology that decimated our economy. They won.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 40 percent of the U.S. economy will be destroyed — as well as over 200,000 deaths worldwide and 50,000 in the U.S. to date and counting. The latest is that meat-packing plants are closing to avoid spreading the virus, which may lead to food shortages.

There is no question that China did this to us and our economy. Some people still want to believe that it was an accident or an innocent mistake. That is naïve, but more important, irrelevant. The adverse effect on our people and our economy is no less real even if we can’t prove that the Chinese did it on purpose.

It cannot be denied that the Chinese government set loose the COVID-19 coronavirus on the rest of the world and that the U.S. and our NATO allies have been especially hard hit. It appears at present that there will be no adverse consequences for them — with the possible exception of paying $30 million more to support their friends at the World Health Organization to replace the contribution that the U.S. suspended. What a pitiful response!


China has shown the U.S. and the rest of the world who is boss by demonstrating what it can do with a virus. U.S. strategic doctrine calls for the U.S. to retaliate with nuclear weapons if we are subject to an attack by biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction. That strategy — if one can dignify it by using that term — is both impractical and antiquated; it is mired in cold war thinking from the nuclear standoff of the 1960s. Who could possibly imagine that a U.S. nuclear strike on the Chinese people in retaliation for a pandemic their government chose not to prevent is realistic — or desirable? No, the Chinese government has figured out how to attack in a way that gives plausible deniability, and consequently there will be no retaliation.

The lesson from World War II is that the major country that is least damaged by the carnage emerges as the new world leader. In 1945, that was the United States; today it is China. Whether they did this to the rest of the world on purpose or it just happened because they didn’t bother to prevent transmission to the rest of the world is largely irrelevant to assessing the consequences for the new world order. The “Chinese century” has begun.

True, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) have proposed a bill to set loose on China our equivalent of their virus: hordes of American trial lawyers bringing lawsuits in U.S. courts. That won’t pass — and if it did, China wouldn’t accept the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts or pay. What could show more clearly how unprepared we are intellectually to respond to an attack of this type than that the only thing we can think of to do about it is to sue the pandemic’s creators.

This is one of the few major attacks in history that was so brilliantly done — intentionally or not — that no one will counterattack. The only thing that comes to mind is the British breaking the German codes in World War II so that they could redirect the radio targeting beams and German bombers would drop their bombs in empty fields rather than over London.

You have to hand it to them: China out-thought us. They are taking credit worldwide for cures and humanitarian aid for a virus that they set loose on the world.

President Trump says he “is not happy” with China. Whoop-de-doo. They must be shaking in their boots. China is supposed to buy $250 billion of our products, and Trump is pleading with them to live up to their bargain, perhaps because he sees that as crucial to his prospects for reelection.


Imagine that the roles were reversed and we had killed 50,000 Chinese citizens with nuclear or conventional kinetic weapons instead of a naturally occurring virus. What would the response have been?

We are fighting a 21st-century enemy with 20th-century weapons. No wonder that they are winning.

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The idea of science not being a "democracy" - of respecting sincerely held minority views - is a noble one seldom accomplished. We don't want to get into climate change here, as that's off-topic and fairly incendiary, but climate-change "skeptics" are not respected. The majority feel that the science is settled and that the matter is too critical to entertain dissenting views. So the skeptics are marginalized, denied tenure, picked on, scorned, etc. by their comrades. There are other fields with similar patterns too. We would do well to learn to tolerate and accommodate but it's hard to avoid going down the "tyranny of the majority" pathway.

Dan, you just brought in climate change to make a point that doesn't necessarily need that to make it.

We had a long off forum discussion about climate change and I checked every single claim you made about those scientists being "mistreated." What I found was that many were proven to be incorrect in their findings by later studies, but held onto their thesis long after they were obsolete. Others had funding from think tanks with anti-climate change agendas and produced science that supported the goals of the institutions paying their wages. Some others had claims that showed very interesting findings, but that didn't necessarily debunk prevailing climate change consensus, and yet they and others claimed that they did.

So maybe keep climate change out to his thread please. No need to go there.

Same conditions apply to cosmology.
Try debunking the documented fact that dissenters are ostracized, denied tenure and denied time on research grade telescopes.
The existence of Big Science shutting out dissent is far too well documented.

And YES, it applies to global warming come climate change since the whole global warming thing didn't work out too well for the doomsayers.

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Nobody in the West invented the "internal divisions" in China.

Of course, I don't really believe the CCP intentionally released the Wuhan Flu either. Let's just say they "insufficiently energetic" in their attempt to prevent its international spread.

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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

And why shouldn't China be a major player on the world stage? It has the largest population and for a couple of hundred years the West exploited their military advantage to plunder China and cause internal divisions to keep it weak. They are obviously determined to change that. I am no fan of Communist ideology or state repression of the people but I suspect that opening the economic doors will lead to a greater role of the people in their government. I am more concerned about the destruction/neutering of US institutions that are necessary to ensure the government follows the Constitution to the letter.

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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

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ORIGINAL: obvert

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The idea of science not being a "democracy" - of respecting sincerely held minority views - is a noble one seldom accomplished. We don't want to get into climate change here, as that's off-topic and fairly incendiary, but climate-change "skeptics" are not respected. The majority feel that the science is settled and that the matter is too critical to entertain dissenting views. So the skeptics are marginalized, denied tenure, picked on, scorned, etc. by their comrades. There are other fields with similar patterns too. We would do well to learn to tolerate and accommodate but it's hard to avoid going down the "tyranny of the majority" pathway.

Dan, you just brought in climate change to make a point that doesn't necessarily need that to make it.

We had a long off forum discussion about climate change and I checked every single claim you made about those scientists being "mistreated." What I found was that many were proven to be incorrect in their findings by later studies, but held onto their thesis long after they were obsolete. Others had funding from think tanks with anti-climate change agendas and produced science that supported the goals of the institutions paying their wages. Some others had claims that showed very interesting findings, but that didn't necessarily debunk prevailing climate change consensus, and yet they and others claimed that they did.

So maybe keep climate change out to his thread please. No need to go there.

Yes - Exxon Mobil created a company to research climate issues and guess what they found?
OTOH, some of the climate change projections are a bit too dire, the timeline too short - sort of like the COVID projections. There is room for discussion but until we get better at converting the scientific facts into models that are much more accurate, there will never be agreement. For every time there is an "I told you so" incident on one side, there is still an exception supporting the other side. Nobody gets a win in the debate.

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ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Nobody in the West invented the "internal divisions" in China.

Of course, I don't really believe the CCP intentionally released the Wuhan Flu either. Let's just say they "insufficiently energetic" in their attempt to prevent its international spread.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

In looking at John Ioannidis and the claims against him I ran into this guy, Carl Bergstrom. Has a new book coming out called Bullshit. I like him already.

This is a good long article on some of the problems science, modelling and reporting are coming up against in this pandemic.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/there-is-no-absolute-truth-an-infectious-disease-expert-on-covid-19-misinformation-and-bullshit

What’s happened with this pandemic that we’re not accustomed to in the epidemiology community is that it’s been really heavily politicized. Even when scientists are very well-intentioned and not trying to support any side of the narrative, when they do work and release a paper it gets picked up by actors with political agendas.

Whether it’s talking about seroprevalence or estimating the chance that this is even going to come to the United States at all each study gets picked up and placed into this little political box and sort of used as a cudgel to beat the other side with.

So even when the material isn’t being produced as bullshit, it’s being picked up and used in the service of that by overstating its claims, by cherry-picking the information that’s out there and so on. And I think that’s kind of the biggest problem that we’re facing.

One example [of intentional bullshit] might be this insistence for a while on graphing the number of cases on a per-capita basis, so that people could say the US response is so much better than the rest of the world because we have a slower rate of growth per capita. That was basically graphical malfeasance or bullshit. When a wildfire starts spreading, you’re interested in how it’s spreading now, not whether it’s spreading in a 100-acre wood or millions of square miles of national forest.

The first Imperial College model in March was predicting 1.1 million to 2.2 million American deaths if the pandemic were not controlled. That’s a really scary, dramatic story, and I still think that it’s not unrealistic. That got promoted by one side of the partisan divide.

Then Imperial came back and modeled a completely different scenario, where the disease was actually brought under control and suppressed in the US, and they released a subsequent model that said, ‘If we do this, something like 50,000 deaths will occur.’ That was picked up by the other side and used to try to discredit the Imperial College team entirely by saying, ‘A couple of weeks ago they said a million now they’re saying 50,000; they can’t get anything right.’ And the answer , of course, is that they were modeling two different scenarios.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

In looking at John Ioannidis and the claims against him I ran into this guy, Carl Bergstrom. Has a new book coming out called Bullshit. I like him already.

This is a good long article on some of the problems science, modelling and reporting are coming up against in this pandemic.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/there-is-no-absolute-truth-an-infectious-disease-expert-on-covid-19-misinformation-and-bullshit

What’s happened with this pandemic that we’re not accustomed to in the epidemiology community is that it’s been really heavily politicized. Even when scientists are very well-intentioned and not trying to support any side of the narrative, when they do work and release a paper it gets picked up by actors with political agendas.

Whether it’s talking about seroprevalence or estimating the chance that this is even going to come to the United States at all each study gets picked up and placed into this little political box and sort of used as a cudgel to beat the other side with.

So even when the material isn’t being produced as bullshit, it’s being picked up and used in the service of that by overstating its claims, by cherry-picking the information that’s out there and so on. And I think that’s kind of the biggest problem that we’re facing.

One example [of intentional bullshit] might be this insistence for a while on graphing the number of cases on a per-capita basis, so that people could say the US response is so much better than the rest of the world because we have a slower rate of growth per capita. That was basically graphical malfeasance or bullshit. When a wildfire starts spreading, you’re interested in how it’s spreading now, not whether it’s spreading in a 100-acre wood or millions of square miles of national forest.

The first Imperial College model in March was predicting 1.1 million to 2.2 million American deaths if the pandemic were not controlled. That’s a really scary, dramatic story, and I still think that it’s not unrealistic. That got promoted by one side of the partisan divide.

Then Imperial came back and modeled a completely different scenario, where the disease was actually brought under control and suppressed in the US, and they released a subsequent model that said, ‘If we do this, something like 50,000 deaths will occur.’ That was picked up by the other side and used to try to discredit the Imperial College team entirely by saying, ‘A couple of weeks ago they said a million now they’re saying 50,000; they can’t get anything right.’ And the answer , of course, is that they were modeling two different scenarios.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Here is another article with Bergstrom in it, but the focus is on the model itself:

https://qz.com/1840186/what-the-ihme-covid-19-model-can-and-cant-tell-the-us/

The IHME model was built to do one job. It’s hard to repurpose it for another

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The limitations of the Gaussian error function are especially clear in the IHME’s model of country-wide deaths in the US. The final model aggregates each state’s data. But some states, particularly New York, California, and Washington, had outbreaks earlier than other states. As a result, the cumulative total for US deaths disproportionately reflects these early states—especially New York, which is the epicenter of the country’s outbreak. Looking at the deaths per day curve for the entire US gives the impression that deaths in the country peaked on April 15.

Vos says that this aggregation function means that the US peak appears to be more stretched out—like a table top, rather than a mountain top. When asked about whether the US had truly hit a peak last week, Vos said he didn’t believe it had just yet, despite the fact that as of today (April 21), the US is supposed to be six days past its peak daily deaths. He agreed that New York and Washington may have peaked.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

PSA for Cap Mandrake

https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/chapel-hill-pug-tests-positive-for-virus-that-causes-covid-19-first-known-case-in-a-dog-in-the-us/19074499/