[HN Gopher] Researchers looking for mRNA were ridiculed by colle...
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Researchers looking for mRNA were ridiculed by colleagues
Author : fortran77
Score : 405 points
Date : 2021-02-19 18:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macleans.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macleans.ca)
| jonplackett wrote:
| This reminds me of a quote:
|
| "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you
| will have to ram it down their throats." -Howard H. Aiken
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I've been ridiculed for stating verifiable facts, even by
| teachers. There's something about people when you challenge
| something they believe to be true or untrue, they'll
| immediately resort to ridiculing the person stating it.
|
| I always try to avoid doing this myself and ask how they came
| to their conclusion. If the answer is "do your own research"
| however, as is very popular with the 'skeptic' community, I
| discard it immediately.
| deedree wrote:
| I think it's called Cognitive Dissonance
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
| zarkov99 wrote:
| This happens all the time. Many axioms people take for
| granted have been arrived at by simple osmosis coupled with a
| desire to conform. Truly independent thought can lead you to
| conclusions that are simply unacceptable in polite company.
| This can make you rich but it can also cancel you.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Like getting downvoted on HN for proposing TSLA or Bitcoin
| as good investments over the past 10 years.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| A very effective person I know would gaslight people in
| meetings to think his ideas were actually theirs.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| That is not what gaslighting means.
| delecti wrote:
| That's not the form that gaslighting usually takes, but it
| does seem pretty similar to what's usually involved. And
| based on the definition on wikipedia:
|
| > Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in
| which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a
| targeted individual or group, making them question their
| own memory, perception, or judgment
|
| Other than the goal being "seeds of doubt", manipulating
| someone into thinking something untrue is really not far
| from gaslighting.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| From the same article:
|
| > The goal of gaslighting is to gradually undermine the
| victim's confidence in their own ability to distinguish
| truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from
| delusion, thereby rendering the individual or group
| pathologically dependent on the gaslighter for their
| thinking and feelings.
|
| Is the described behaviour manipulative? Sure. But
| compared to everything I know of gaslighting and the
| intents behind it I don't see much similarity, not with
| more context than a single sentence at least. Did the
| manager do it to help people's careers? Did he try to
| lure them into a satanic cult? There's a wide range of
| unknowns.
| delecti wrote:
| That's what I said though. The goal may be different, but
| the process is the same. And while it's not what it
| originally meant, using gaslighting to mean "manipulating
| someone into thinking something untrue" is probably
| pretty common.
| darkerside wrote:
| Intention does matter to be fair. It's murder versus
| manslaughter.
| corty wrote:
| I would also add that in gaslighting, the victim is
| unwilling and unknowing. In the described manipulation,
| the victim is willing to be manipulated and often even
| knows that it is being manipulated. So while gaslighting
| needs quite some effort to convince the victim of
| something, this injection of an idea is helped by the
| victims' will to own the idea and deceive others and
| themselves to that end.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| You must have missed the update
| corty wrote:
| That is a common technique taught in rhetoric and management
| courses. People are quite fond of their own ideas and
| implicitly devalue the ideas of others. Therefore, if you
| don't care about owning an idea but care about getting it
| done, just talk the leader or the whole group into thinking
| it was theirs. It is actually quite easy, because most people
| are sufficiently vain to accept this without resistance.
| davidgerard wrote:
| It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry
| about taking the credit.
| bsenftner wrote:
| And then the selfless employee is not promoted.
| jokoon wrote:
| I don't understand this quote, could you explain it?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Sometimes the reason you invent something original is because
| you _noticed_ something that no one else has noticed before.
| In that case, your idea could be "stolen" by someone
| noticing what you noticed, and publishing it first.
|
| But sometimes (and the quote suggests that this happens way
| more frequently) the reason is that other people noticed that
| before you, and for some reason they all concluded "this is
| _not_ going to work ", and went looking elsewhere. You were
| "merely" the first person who _continued searching_ in the
| same direction, and succeeded to finally find something
| useful.
|
| In the latter case, when you announce your invention, the
| people who previously looked in the same direction and gave
| up, are likely to reiterate their reasons for giving up.
| Sometimes they genuinely believe that what you did is
| impossible, i.e. that your results are wrong, and you only
| made some mistake or fraud that makes it _seem_ to work. (In
| their defense, people make mistakes and frauds all the time,
| so it makes sense to assume that you _most likely_ are
| another one.) Sometimes it 's that they backed "this is not
| possible" with their professional prestige, so accepting your
| invention would mean lessening _their_ prestige. (This is a
| wrong reason to oppose you, but people who will oppose you
| for this reason will often be very powerful.)
|
| Plus there is the usual resistance of people against trying
| to do new things, when the old things seem to work okay, and
| the new things seem like a lot of work or learning.
| [deleted]
| auggierose wrote:
| That explanation is way too complicated. People start
| taking stuff serious when
|
| a) they see the immediate benefit b) it fits into their
| belief system c) it is socially validated
|
| Original stuff usually violates all three points.
| jonplackett wrote:
| My take on it is that he means really new / radical ideas are
| very uncomfortable for most people. They will reject them and
| you'll have to work really hard to show them why it will be
| worth the pain and good for them in the end. So don't worry
| about someone pinching that idea - the hard work is not the
| idea, it's the convincing.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| People worry a lot about having their ideas stolen. In
| reality, most new ideas get enormous push back. Not only are
| they not stolen, but people will call you a loon for voicing
| them.
|
| See Semmelweis, Galileo, et al.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Ah, there's Galileo, again. A lot of that stuff is mostly
| myth. If you actually read about what happened instead of
| the bigoted Enlightment-era pamphlet pulp that's been
| absorbed by our textbook writers (horrifying to ask how
| much of that stuff is actually credible), you'll find that,
| first, he was a promoter of heliocentrism, a view that did
| not originate with him but one which he embraced following
| Copernicus and which goes back to at least Aristarchus.
| Second, at the time, heliocentrism was not better supported
| than geocentrism or one for which there was extraordinary
| incentive or pressure to adopt or address, nor was it some
| idea people (typically supposed to be Church prelates) were
| somehow afraid of, though FWIW, Copernicus was afraid of
| academic opinion, not the reaction of the Church (he
| himself was a member of the clergy and had corresponded
| with one or two popes, bishops, etc, about his work). The
| so-called Galileo affair spanned decades during which
| Galileo insulted and harassed political and Church
| authorities which, frankly, give the impression of being
| rather slow to anger. One contention that Galileo (who died
| a Catholic, btw) had concerned the language in the Bible
| that spoke of the rising or setting Sun. If heliocentrism
| is correct, then why is the Bible speaking of the rising
| and setting Sun? I don't know about you, but that strikes
| me as a pretty stupid question. To this day, we speak of
| the rising and setting of the Sun. It's descriptive
| language, not a scientific description, and the Bible is no
| scientific textbook. Maybe monomania is to blame for
| thinking that it is.
|
| W.r.t. Semmelweis, I don't know how this played out, so
| you'll have to fill me in. I would make an initial
| distinction, though. The first is that once a theory
| achieves widespread acceptance, it's not surprising that
| honest people will be slow to absorb something that they
| can't account for. It takes time to process evidence. Think
| how absurd it would be to just throw away something that's
| made sense up until now. You have to reconcile new
| observations and do the work of accounting for everything
| accounted for by the previous theory plus the new thing.
| Throwing it away just like that leaves you with nothing to
| work with. The second distinction is that a lot of people
| build their egos out of knowing something and the feeling
| of dominance they get from it. "I'm hot shit and superior
| to you because I know X." Then you get these little cliques
| and cults of affirmation which adds another barrier because
| now you face the Lomanesque risk of no longer being
| liked.The coward cannot bear that possibility so he
| "defends" his tribe to protect himself. Of course, he isn't
| really acting for his own good or the good of others, just
| his own comfort.
|
| But in general, yes, academic fads and prejudices do exist.
| Try being a conservative at a major university today,
| especially in a humanities department.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Ah, there 's Galileo, again. A lot of that stuff is
| mostly myth._
|
| He was subjected to house arrest for advocating for a
| "new" idea. We now accept heliocentrism as the correct
| answer. It's not terribly important to me if it was, in
| fact, _his_ idea...etc. etc. He 's the best known example
| of "scientist says something we now currently accept as
| scientific fact -- and there is hell to pay for him
| during his lifetime."
|
| _W.r.t. Semmelweis, I don 't know how this played out,_
|
| He was a physician in charge of two clinics who had
| studies backing up his "crazy" idea that physicians
| should properly sterilize their hands before delivering
| babies if they wanted to reduce mortality rates. He was
| essentially driven crazy, thrown in an insane asylum and
| beaten to death by the guards in short order.
|
| I view it in simpler terms as "He was effectively
| murdered." because although he had studies, he had no
| explanation for how and why, so it was rejected out of
| hand.
|
| This was maybe two decades or so before we accepted germ
| theory and modern sterilization techniques for surgeries
| and so on.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
| sitkack wrote:
| As an aside, that Aiken quote is brought up by people
| trying to get you to tell you your ideas. Or that ideas
| themselves don't have much value because if they were "new"
| ones, you would have to shove them down their throats.
|
| I am not Galileo when I argue that our linear pricing model
| is an active blocker to product adoption and that we need
| to move to sublinear one asap in a bullshit corp meeting.
|
| I wish I was. Lots of good ideas get lifted all the time,
| in the context of the Aiken quote, _new_ is outside of the
| overton window, it flips problems on their heads. Some of
| the _new_ ideas actually do have to get shoved, because
| also in this definition of new, it isn 't really about
| quality. It is about newness.
|
| We should solve the metaproblem of people not accepting the
| Scientific Method. It ultimately comes down to proof,
| verifiability, falsifiability and the techniques we choose
| to get there. Ridicule and rejection of concepts because
| they are new, I think are wholly human social traits.
|
| How do we get answers to questions we can't even think of
| asking? And how do we expand the ways in which we ask
| questions?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I've had some of my ideas "stolen." I was doing volunteer
| work and happy to share my ideas but on the expectation
| that it would help me make business connections, network,
| establish a reputation as someone who is smart and knows
| things.
|
| The individual "stealing" them did their best to make
| sure no one knew where he was getting his ideas, which
| robbed me of the benefits of sharing those ideas as
| volunteer.
|
| He also badly botched them all.
|
| This is in line with the meme that "Ideas are worthless.
| Execution is everything." Me saying "You should do X!"
| utterly failed to result in X actually happening by
| someone not who was not me. That pithy one-liner failed
| to convey sufficient information to result in the
| production of the X I was envisioning when I said it.
|
| The example I typically give is the word "chair." If I
| say "chair," what kind of chair do I mean? Am I thinking
| of a wooden kitchen chair while you are thinking of an
| overstuffed living room wing chair?
|
| I had a similar thing happen at my corporate job where a
| new manager met very privately with me, implemented my
| proposal without giving me credit and bastardized it so
| badly that I wouldn't have wanted my name associated with
| her terrible, terrible program that completely missed the
| point of what I had proposed.
|
| Years ago, I started a project to try to develop language
| for talking about ideas themselves and to make the kinds
| of distinctions you are talking about. We use the same
| word -- "idea" -- to talk about radical new theories and
| to talk about more prosaic details of how to get things
| done, business-wise: "It was my idea to paint it blue,
| not green."
|
| I think we really need better ways to make such
| distinctions.
|
| _As an aside....etc etc_
|
| As an aside, I generally bring up Semmelweis and the like
| because I'm one of those unfortunate souls the world has
| decided is a loon. I don't have any answers for you
| because my methods for discovery and proof of concept
| fall outside of accepted scientific methods.
|
| Silly me: I wasn't trying to make a scientific discovery
| backed up by evidence. I was just trying to not die and
| to be less tortured by my defective body.
|
| People can basically take my word for that or not. Most
| people choose "not."
|
| I don't have a ready solution for that.
| chiph wrote:
| Also Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was attacked for
| suggesting that doctors wash and change clothes between
| doing postmortem exams and new births.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675443/
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| It probably means that false ideas spread quickly but you
| have to work hard to make people accept original ideas.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| The first part is not included. That's just our current
| context adding some extra sauce :D
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It is a common and appealing idea that good ideas always start
| with ridicule and resistance. It is an appealing fantasy
| especially for the great many people who like to imagine they
| are very clever but are not. However, it is important to keep
| in mind that for every crazy idea that ends up working, there
| were 999 crazy ideas that were just that, crazy.
|
| Some amount of resistance to crazy ideas is appropriate. If the
| idea works the resistance will be overcome eventually. If we
| accepted every crazy idea enthusiastically a lot of effort
| would be wasted.
| ranit wrote:
| > the resistance will be overcome eventually
|
| Like 50-60 years in this case :-(
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Sometimes. Not all major breakthroughs involve rocking the
| boat. Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem springs to mind.
| As far as I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I agree what you are trying to say but Wiles's proof of
| Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but it finished product.
| It took Wiles years to finish the proof. If he told someone
| about the idea behind the proof in the initial phase without
| anything concrete and was not able to finish the proof, do
| you think the idea would be perceived?
| [deleted]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not an idea but
| it finished product
|
| I don't think that distinction is the relevant one. The
| point is that it extended existing thought, rather than
| overturning it.
|
| > If he told someone about the idea behind the proof in the
| initial phase without anything concrete and was not able to
| finish the proof, do you think the idea would be perceived?
|
| I'm not sure what you're asking here. There's a reason
| mathematics journals are only interested in finished
| theorems rather than idle speculation, but I don't see how
| that's relevant.
| [deleted]
| auggierose wrote:
| If you don't think Wiles was rocking the boat, then I am not
| sure what qualifies in your opinion.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I already answered this. Wiles' proof didn't overturn
| anything, it only extended what was known. Again, as far as
| I know, it was celebrated by everyone in the field. No
| career was ended by the discovery.
|
| Examples of a developments that rocked the boat would be
| the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, and irrational
| numbers. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number#Ancient
| _Gree...
| [deleted]
| ajarmst wrote:
| Oh, for the ... This is a a fascinating story, and well-above
| average for science reporting. Why does the lede have to be about
| the mean scientists who bullied them? Why does that narrative
| need to be forced onto it? I am so very very tired of our current
| inability to tell a story without making sure we carefully and
| simplistically frame it with easily identifiable villains and
| victims.
| thgaway17 wrote:
| I just want to thank the person who posted the Biontech /
| Friedman / RNA herpes vaccine story here on HN in October '19.
| Got in on BNTX @ 15.
| orlovs wrote:
| I find this article kinda funny from nowdays perspective. There
| so many things, more controversial or less controversial. where
| other side being ridiculed big time, when they dont agree on
| "scientic" dogmas. Starting from begining of universe, tackling
| global warming/green stuff, lets not even talk about covid19
| related issues, from origins or how to surpress it.
|
| Lets face it, since we are living in one united info space, there
| are less and less thougth diverity how to do things in same field
| GuB-42 wrote:
| There is a lot of thought diversity, it is easier than ever to
| find crackpot theories.
|
| The difference is that as science advances, it is becoming
| harder and harder to simply understand what's going on.
|
| Research on the beginning of the universe involve taking into
| account huge amount of observation data. Come up with a theory
| and you are going to get questions like "how do you take into
| account this spectrum density of that oddball galaxy no one but
| specialists heard about?". And if you don't come up with a
| satisfactory answer, then your theory is simply wrong,
| especially if the official theory explains this.
|
| Global warming? People on TV make is sound easy, far from it.
| We suspected it long ago but definite evidence is relatively
| recent. It involves complex statistical models and again,
| because it is real science, tons of observation. How to tackle
| it is even harder because you add a political/economic
| dimension to it. Scientists can say "if we do that, this will
| happen", and they are not even sure, but if the "solution"
| involves, say, killing half of the human population, this is
| clearly unacceptable (and you are going to piss off the
| Avengers).
|
| Covid19 research is actually a bit looser than usual because of
| the emergency, but again, hard stuff. But it is interesting to
| see that scientists tried whacky stuff, and these mostly
| failed.
| aritmo wrote:
| Is there a list of those colleagues that did the ridiculing?
| Leparamour wrote:
| >Is there a list of those colleagues that did the ridiculing?
|
| It doesn't matter anymore. Those names will now have switched
| over to the winning side, probably claiming they were agreeing
| in secret all along.
| garyrob wrote:
| The fact that an idea is rejected is not, on its own, evidence
| that it's any good.
|
| However, great ideas are often not "obviously" good, because if
| they were, someone would have done them already. And if they're
| not obviously good, they'll tend to be rejected when they're
| first discussed. This is even true when the idea is explained to
| experts in the relevant field field, because the experts think
| they know how things are done, and a really great idea is usually
| sufficiently different from their and habitual modes of thinking
| that it will seem inconsistent with what they have long "known"
| to be true.
|
| If you have an idea and it's rejected, it probably should be. But
| if you have, in fact, thought it through in more depth than
| anyone else, and actually know more about its part of a field
| than the most experts in that field do, then it might be right.
|
| You have to take full responsibility for deciding that; during
| the critical time of an idea's gestation, no one can take that
| responsibility for you. Eventually, if and when the idea is made
| real, it will be verified in the real world.
| vedtopkar wrote:
| I'm doing my PhD on topics related to mRNA and took a seminar
| class with Meselson in college. Really crazy how quickly our
| field has gone from obscure to mainstream this last year.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Love the 90 years old have the interest to lead cello. It is this
| interest in spite of obstacle that get us to here.
|
| However still one has to know technology itself is neutral. Now
| we can produce a drug that can disappear after its effect, that
| can patch the system without the main source code involved ...
|
| Is it dangerous? Who stop some outside western governance to make
| and try getting their piggy stronger ... then accidentally
| eevilspock wrote:
| Time to break out the Thomas Kuhn again.
| williesleg wrote:
| Global warming gals?
| peter_retief wrote:
| I sometimes wonder who are these administrators who seem to
| consistently block scientific discovery? Having worked as a
| research assistant some years back I was dismayed at how
| political scientific research was. Nothing happened without the
| nod of a few well connected academics.
| mvh wrote:
| My dad (U Arizona professor of public health) interviewed Matthew
| Meselson at length, mostly about topics _other_ than the mRNA
| discovery. Anyone interested can find the interview here:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/sci_history/status/11478796146704...
| dekhn wrote:
| throughout my 20+ year career in biology I was repeatedly
| reminded of what I call "the protein bias" where DNA and RNA are
| treated as boring molecules that just exist to support proteins.
| I was an RNA researcher for a while and it's an absolutely
| fascinating molecule and over the years people have built up more
| and more evidence that RNA influences biology in deep ways that
| aren't fully appreciated.
|
| It's funny about the magnesium in the article- getting the Mg
| concentration right when working with delicate nucleic acids is
| absolutely key to good results.
| aspaceman wrote:
| I took a course on DNA computing and it blew my mind.
|
| Representing Turing machines as mixtures of chemical in a test
| tube, and having an RNA strands behavior encode a program is
| precisely where I see biological computing headed. It was
| really wild how forward thinking the research seemed, but how
| primitive the results they could get was due to the limitations
| of biology.
| tim333 wrote:
| I just did some science at college and thought DNA and protein
| cool and RNA the dull go between but now find it interesting
| that RNA may have been the original life on earth and predated
| all the other stuff. Wikipedia:
|
| >...the evidence for an RNA world is strong enough that the
| hypothesis has gained wide acceptance. The concurrent formation
| of all four RNA building blocks further strengthened the
| hypothesis.
|
| >Like DNA, RNA can store and replicate genetic information;
| like protein enzymes, RNA enzymes (ribozymes) can catalyze
| (start or accelerate) chemical reactions that are critical for
| life. One of the most critical components of cells, the
| ribosome, is composed primarily of RNA...
| lrossi wrote:
| Personally, I think it's best if scientists lean towards the
| conservative/skepticism side, to filter out scams or bad
| science. But there should be a balance between that and
| allowing new ideas to surface. Do you think it's taken too far?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I think the opposite - hold the highest standards for the
| quality of the data and it's interpretation, but we need to
| allow the wildest of hypotheses to be tested without
| judgement. Conservatism at the hypothesis step is the biggest
| reason science today sucks if you ask me. I'll say the job of
| being conservative belongs to engineers, and is one of the
| main differentiators between science and engineering.
|
| The most amazing discoveries even in the recent times often
| come from scientists testing some of the wildest hypothesis -
| a rotation student in Andrew Fire's lab thinking he's
| injecting RNA into the gonad of a worm when he was stupidly
| injecting them into its mouth, or when a young Yamanaka had
| no clue basically and did a random experiment in his new lab
| adding a bunch of genes to cells to see if they do something.
|
| I've sat through sessions seeing scientists laughed at for
| their wild hypotheses, by what I can only call as old, over-
| congratulated high school valedictorians who are only
| actually good at playing politics and writing grants, with a
| self professed love of science and discovering things that's
| as genuine as a Republican saying he is all for facts.
|
| Let the crazies risk their lives on the wildest hypotheses.
| Fund them as long as they are systematic and methodical in
| their efforts to prove them. That's how you make science take
| the leaps it needs to be truly transformative for
| civilization. That's how I intend to do science and I learned
| clearly that I don't belong in academia. I have no intention
| of even swinging the science bat if I'm not at least trying
| to shoot for the moon!
| senderista wrote:
| How much effort do you think we should put into testing
| homeopathy?
| Kliment wrote:
| Given the extremely wide evidence basis from existing
| data (there's millions of worldwide users) I'd argue no
| more than has been, and that the current data is
| sufficient to show its lack of effectiveness without any
| additional effort. But had the obviously-silly hypothesis
| (adding a tiny bit of something bad can have a good
| effect) been rejected from the start in a different
| context we'd never have gotten vaccines (which originate
| from a similar hypothesis in a different context).
|
| The problem with homeopathy is not that it's a crazy
| idea. It's that it's been extensively shown not to work
| and is still being pushed as a good idea.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > It's that it's been extensively shown not to work
|
| This is going off-topic, but I really think it depends on
| your definition of "not to work".
|
| If people essentially throw in low-cost placebos to cure
| themselves of headaches and other minor ailments, while
| believing that this is exactly what they need, I consider
| this a net-positive for society compared to giving them
| actual medication that costs more with potential side-
| effects/harms.
|
| Obviously, the fun ends when quacks prescribe homeopathy
| for serious stuff that needs actual treatment (in
| Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such a
| quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer -
| obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). But for
| minor things that aren't too big of an issue even if left
| untreated, letting people use homeopathy if they're into
| that - why not.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But it is known, that placebos work.
|
| It is also known, that placebos work better, if people
| believe; they are medicine.
|
| Thats why Homeopathy "works"
|
| "in Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such
| a quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer -
| obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). "
|
| But this, I see actually different. People of clear mind,
| should have any right to choose their treatment of
| choice. So informing them on the best options, yes!
| Telling them of the mechanism of fraudsters who prey on
| peoples hopes, yes! But in the end maybe not forbidding
| them if they choose - for whatever reason - less standard
| methods.
|
| Maybe the placebo works in their case. Maybe the
| alternative treatment with the roots of plant X had by
| chance an actual unknown effective drug in it. Who knows.
| But I know that telling people to follow standards is not
| allways the best way.
|
| Btw. because if a recent case I know there are
| homeophatic cancer clinics in germany. So it seems to be
| legal?
|
| I know of other alternative cancer treatment by the very
| weird "Dr. Hamer" who cannot be practised in germany if
| the patient actually has cancer. And I think this is not
| helping to disprove scams. (because I know people who are
| into it)
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > People of clear mind, should have any right to choose
| their treatment of choice. So informing them on the best
| options, yes! Telling them of the mechanism of fraudsters
| who prey on peoples hopes, yes! But in the end maybe not
| forbidding them if they choose - for whatever reason -
| less standard methods.
|
| In theory, I agree with you. People should be clearly
| told "there is evidence that X works, and there is no
| evidence that Y works, however you are free to try Y at
| your own risk". And then they would make their choice.
|
| But I am afraid that it wouldn't work so well in
| practice. First, there is the problem of _who_ is this
| authoritative voice that tells people "X works, Y does
| not". Is it government? (Will it not become subject of
| political fighting? Like, depending on who wins the
| election, evolution either exists or does not exist,
| masks either help or do not help against COVID, etc.) Or
| is it some professional organization of experts? Then the
| fraudsters will make their own alternative organizations,
| that for a layman will look exactly the same. -- At the
| end, the layman has no idea whom to trust.
|
| Second, the fraudster talking to you can be more
| persuasive than a website you read, simply because they
| can adapt their argument to your knowledge. Even if the
| website says "X works, Y does not", the fraudster can
| explain like "by 'Y does not work' they actually refer to
| Y1, but what I am selling is Y2 which is _not_ the same
| thing ", and there will be no one there to say "actually,
| Y refers to _both_ Y1 and Y2 " or "Y2 is just Y1 under a
| new name". For a layman it is difficult to evaluate when
| two things are or are not the same.
|
| So at the end, either fraud is legal, or illegal. "Legal,
| but you have been warned, so use your best judgment" does
| not work for people with average intelligence and average
| expertise.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "First, there is the problem of who is this authoritative
| voice that tells people "X works, Y does not""
|
| Isn't that a problem with your solution?
|
| "So at the end, either fraud is legal, or illegal"
|
| (In my scenario common doctors tell people of the
| treatments.)
|
| Also, people offering alternative treatment are often
| very convinced that they are offering indeed the superior
| solution and the others are commiting fraud.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| None, for the most part. If data exists that already
| disproves your hypothesis then there's not much to work
| on here is there?
| refurb wrote:
| It sounds like you're judging wild ideas. I though you
| didn't want that?
| f6v wrote:
| It's rather simple. The wild idea shouldn't be judged
| until it had been refuted with data.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is not that simple. We already have a replication
| crisis; some data out there is wrong, possibly the one
| that refute some wild idea.
|
| In the ideal world, everything would be replicated and
| retested at least a few times. Practically, we do not
| have the resources, and sometimes other interests come
| into play. For example, those of some industry to fund
| studies that refute some wild idea that threatens their
| business. How many studies on safety of sugar are paid by
| Coca Cola?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| We do have a replication crisis. But what you're saying
| is that because we have a replication crisis all prior
| data about basically everything is moot. As far as I know
| the replication crisis is most predominant in psycology
| and social sciences. In biology the replication crisis a
| bit more interesting, and while it needs addressing, it's
| fair to say that homeopathy seems to have been reasonably
| thoroughly debunked. However, in the spirit of exactly
| what I said above, never say never. If someone proposes a
| new type of experiment that can explore the homeopathy
| hypothesis further, that should definitely be at least
| slightly encouraged. The question is, what experiment DO
| YOU want to do? Double blind control trial? More basic
| than that, at the molecular level!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| > . But what you're saying is that because we have a
| replication crisis all prior data about basically
| everything is moot.
|
| That was not my intention. My intention was to say that a
| single study might not be good enough as a refutation.
| BTW one of the largest proponents of re-checking studies
| that were once considered reliable is a medical doctor,
| John Ioannidis. It is not just soft science that suffers
| from the problem.
|
| Given that we are really short on money (and, with regard
| to ideas, always will be - it is cheaper to produce ideas
| than to test them even cursorily, much less thoroughly),
| every proposed mechanism will have large downsides. I do
| not have a proposal.
| refurb wrote:
| Homeopathy hasn't been proven to not work in cancer. I
| mean, there is no double blinded randomized trial of say
| healing crystals. Should we still fund such a trial? I
| mean, there is no data to refute it.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The large problem is the limited funding. If there is only
| funding for 10% of applications and a large portion of the
| success hinges on previous success and your experience on
| this topic, then you automatically breed conservatism.
| bsenftner wrote:
| This problem of limited funding is due to the unnatural
| influence of Capitalism and unnatural existence of too
| many billionaires absorbing the majority of what would be
| disposable income and tax revenues that would otherwise
| fund any nation's infrastructure, including federal
| science initiates. We're learning now the entire Texas
| power grid failure dates back to G.W. Bush's state
| government dismantling Texas power upon the council of
| Enron's financial advisers. The majority of our problems
| in society is due to overt greed and it's influence on
| key infrastructure - power, education, law, law
| enforcement, food safety... it goes on and on. This is
| the reason we have regulations, because without them the
| greedy would have us eating Plutonium Pops for breakfast,
| and washing it down with Petro-plastic Orange Drink.
| sitkack wrote:
| The same exact process you painted has a direct analog in
| tech businesses right now.
|
| I think the problem is the hierarchy.
|
| A development organization is an amplifier that brings a
| new capability into existence. Currently, organizations
| have to get big to amplify what their qualities. But to get
| big to achieve its goals it needs to be hierarchical, and
| because the hierarchy and the practitioners are the same
| folks, the org structure becomes the product.
|
| The goal of the organization is to maintain its structure.
| Innovation happens when you have less structure. How do we
| scale, and maximize the organizational power while enabling
| create autonomy?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| At the same time, labs and researchers and equipment cost
| real money. There are opportunity costs. There some good
| reasons to not spend money on wild conjectures.
| f6v wrote:
| Yet the venture funds are absolutely fine with spending
| money on wildest moonshots that have one in a million
| chance of becoming the next Facebook
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Sure let's spend it on what, MOD-ENCODE version two?
| That's super useful and curing cancer and tuberculosis
| left and right eh!
| StavrosK wrote:
| Eh, you can allocate a percentage of resources on wild
| conjectures, since many of our biggest discoveries have
| been made that way. No need to shut them down and
| ridicule them.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one of
| the somewhat more plausible ones? And how much money
| should go into one before you move on?
| StavrosK wrote:
| > So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one
| of the somewhat more plausible ones?
|
| 20% of the former, 80% of the latter.
|
| > And how much money should go into one before you move
| on?
|
| 3% of the available funds each year.
|
| Hope this helps!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >3% of the available funds each year
|
| So after years without results you'll continue propping
| up the one long shot you picked?
|
| My larger point is that you're treating this like there
| are just a couple wild conjectures that need just a bit
| of money. There are vast amounts of alternative ideas,
| and often the necessary experiments will not be cheap.
| While ridiculing them isn't right, the idea that
| obviously we should fund them is ridiculous.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > the idea that obviously we should fund them is
| ridiculous.
|
| Ridiculous like feeding people mold to see if they get
| sick less, or injecting people with the pus of other
| people to inoculate them?
|
| The discovery of antibiotics alone has paid for all the
| moonshots you can fund, even if none of them work out.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The discovery of antibiotics happened by accident while
| performing a completely different study, following that
| example we shouldn't fund these projects at all.
|
| And you severely underestimate the number of moonshots
| there are. Imagine trying to find penicillin by the
| method you describe. There are thousands of species of
| mold, many of which are harmful to humans. The genus
| penicillium alone has over 300 species. Such a study
| would take decades while costing a fortune before
| reaching any results.
| sitkack wrote:
| Look at it stochastically, that particular set of events,
| yeah random chance, super rare. But with similar
| behaviors, could we make similar discoveries? Hell ya!
|
| And they all feed back on each other. Then some other
| idea might enable us to discover penicillin by some
| entirely other serendipitous route. There isn't a single
| path to the future.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| _So after years without results you 'll continue propping
| up the one long shot you picked?_
|
| You need basic research to move science and technology
| forward. And you need to accept that the majority of the
| research will have no direct result for a long time or
| ever.
|
| The history of flight spans back 2000 years.
|
| Semi conductors date back to the late 1800s. And don't
| forget that to even get to the beginnings of
| understanding semi conductors, a bunch of basic stuff
| needed to be figured out first.
|
| Darwin took 2 decades collecting evidence and writing On
| the Origin Of Species.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >The history of flight spans back 2000 years
|
| And at some point we stopped trying to make fake birds
| wings to flap our way to flight, as our understanding
| grew to the point where we knew it was incredibly
| unlikely to work.
|
| Yes, basic research is necessary and developments
| sometimes take a long time. That doesn't mean you should
| keep following a route that repeatedly leads to a dead
| end. And every hypothesis isn't equally deserving of
| funding.
| rramadass wrote:
| Exactly Right! I think this mindset is fundamental to
| advancing Science. One of the reasons i feel that "doing"
| Science has fallen out of favour with the public is because
| the "Researchers" are not being daring and brave enough to
| "dream up" far fetched hypotheses and in general not
| pushing the envelope. Most are just regular "salaried
| employees" with no great dreams/ambitions.
| sitkack wrote:
| /s I know, most of the people I know came for the money
| but stayed for the science.
|
| Those "salaried employees" started life as curious
| people, yeah some of them might be looking at the world
| with a blurrier lens. But they were constructed, the
| system made those people. While they make the problem
| worse, they are symptom not a cause.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| UBI can free scientists from grants, but democratization of
| hypotheses will become populistization.
|
| Also, engineering leads science at time: this works but we
| don't know why.
| mjfl wrote:
| > UBI can free scientists from grants
|
| No it would not. The money necessary to find a lab is
| orders of magnitude higher than any reasonable UBI.
| keldaris wrote:
| I'm a theoretical physicist. UBI would absolutely free me
| and most of my colleagues from grant writing (and IT
| freelancing, which frankly has better ROI at this point).
| I do basically all of my research on a mildly high end
| home computer and bits of paper.
| mjfl wrote:
| The theoretical physicists I know get their funding from
| teaching and don't need grants.
| keldaris wrote:
| That varies by country and sometimes even by university.
| In some universities there are far fewer teaching
| positions than staff scientist jobs, particularly when
| you count research institutes, while in others a typical
| teaching load without additional funding hovers somewhere
| around the poverty line.
|
| In my case it's both, so instead of teaching I take half-
| time IT consulting gigs here and there, which pay enough
| for me to be able to do science even if I had no funding
| at all. I still get some grants, mostly because you're
| looked at funny if you don't, but I'm done losing sleep
| over them, plus if I finally decide to give up academia
| I'll have an easy transition.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Some do, but not all scientists need expensive labs. Some
| equipment is getting cheaper too.
| shakow wrote:
| Bio lab equipment is getting cheaper as in $100K's
| instead of $1M's, not as in "can be bought with UBI".
| f6v wrote:
| With the amount of computations you needs to do this
| days, no UBI is going to cover that.
| ajdegol wrote:
| How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent the
| kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put
| out? I'm sure there are holes in that argument too; but
| c'mon, this is hacker news. If we don't try to overcome
| the hard challenges then what's the point of this
| community? ;)
| shakow wrote:
| > How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent
| the kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put
| out?
|
| What is really expensive and complicated for now is "wet"
| data collections: it is a finicky process stuffed to the
| brim with very expensive machinery, consumables, lab
| space and manual workers. Computing power is not really a
| limitation nowadays, you can comparably get a whole lot
| of bangs for your bucks.
|
| Concerning the sharing part, equipment pooling is
| definitely already happening, at least at the local
| scale. And what is getting more and more developed is the
| "platform" concept, where some labs/teams slowly
| transition from doing research to producing data
| according to a standardized protocol (genome sequencing,
| genotyping, ChIP-seq, etc.) for other teams doing the
| research.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Years ago, genome sequencing was getting exponentially
| cheaper, and supposedly would be desktop-priced soon. Did
| that not happen?
|
| I noticed companies moving into the space, like 23andme,
| and wondered if they might work in combination to keep
| consumer prices high...
| refurb wrote:
| If someone wanted to test the ability to shrink tumors
| through prayer that shouldn't be judged?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| If it can truly be tested, then it should be tested! But
| how do you truly test it? Even if God isn't real, acts
| like prayer give you emotional support and that can have
| a very real effect! So if you merely want to test whether
| an act like prayer is effective, then that's simple and
| probably already done and also probably shows some
| effect. However if you want to prove that prayer in a
| particular method to a particular God is effective,
| that's tricky. If someone can design an elegant enough
| study then it should be tested!
| f6v wrote:
| If they could build a mathematical model and
| simulations...Why not? Seems like a low-effort
| experiment.
| refurb wrote:
| You'd need to run a double blinded randomizes controlled
| trial with enough patients to test the effect.
|
| And it would be wildly unethical to use prayer which by
| any reasonable understanding of cancer biology would not
| work.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Why does it have to replace therapy? One arm can be
| prayer + therapy and another can just be therapy
| refurb wrote:
| Ok, that would address the unethical part, but still,
| does that sound like a good use of limit research
| dollars?
|
| This is one of those instances where judgement is a good
| thing. Don't run such a silly trial. Spend the money on
| something that actually has a chance to work.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Scientists should be skeptics of their own conservatism. Much
| "conservatism" is in the name of defending egos.
|
| "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
| opponents and making them see the light, but rather because
| its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up
| that is familiar with it." - Max Plank
|
| It'd be nice to not wait a generation.
| lrossi wrote:
| Right, there are plenty of such examples from physics. I
| was wondering if biology is the same. But it actually
| sounds worse.
|
| I think computer science is doing much better nowadays. The
| "NoSQL" movement for example was particularly impressive,
| it's something that wouldn't fly in most other sciences.
| Sharlin wrote:
| NoSQL is much more about software engineering than
| computer science, and software engineering is
| ridiculously susceptible to fads in a way no mature
| engineering discipline should be. And almost never are
| those fads actually new ideas, because trends work
| _cyclically_ rather than linearly. Most SWEs are just too
| ignorant of the history of their own trade to realize
| that.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| We're onto NewSQL now.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Except that NoSQL has been around for decades. It just
| went by a different name in the 1960s.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Pick IIRC
| dboreham wrote:
| ISAM
| glitcher wrote:
| I think computer science benefits from the relatively low
| cost and widespread availability of hardware and software
| tools. You don't necessarily need huge financial backing
| to explore a new idea in many areas. Of course there are
| exceptions (super computing, quantum computing, etc), but
| the barrier to entry for curious beginners seems much
| lower than other scientific fields.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The scientist fighting against the establishment is always
| a popular twist on a discovery. That's why popular science
| articles often emphasise this aspect. The reality is much
| more complex and the above happens very rarely. Regarding
| physics for example, give me the last theory that went
| against the establishment and took a generation to be
| accepted. I really can't think of any in the last 80 years.
| Maybe EPR, or Bells inequality, but that took so long,
| because experiments could only be done quite recently. I
| would also argue it is not really a case of research
| against the establishment.
|
| Also let's remember that the researchers mentioned by
| others above, were all running successful labs despite
| their ideas not being widely accepted. The reason why these
| theories take so long to be accepted is more a case of
| "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" than
| "we don't like the theory".
| medstrom wrote:
| >Regarding physics for example, give me the last theory
| that went against the establishment and took a generation
| to be accepted.
|
| Everett branches ("many worlds")?
| cycomanic wrote:
| That's not science in the strict sense, but
| interpretation (so more philosophy).
|
| AFAIK, so far nobody has come up with a way to devise a
| test that could falsify any of the interpretations of
| quantum theory, which really is required to be a valid
| scientific theory.
|
| Moreover, there has never been much dogma around
| interpretations of quantum theory. A highly recommended
| read is Ghost in the Atom by Paul Davies, which consists
| of interviews with many physicists about their quantum
| interpretations. It shows that people have had a wide
| variety of interpretations for a long time. The many
| world interpretation has become more popular, but it was
| already around in the 80s and certainly not being
| ridiculed.
| deepnotderp wrote:
| Indeed. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions lays
| this out well
| XorNot wrote:
| Great, got literally anything which is making a testable
| prediction to advance physics? No? Then come back when you
| do.
|
| Physics isn't advancing because everything is degenerate to
| the standard model - any bold new idea still fails to
| predict an accessible experimental regime which would rule
| out alternatives.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Physics is a special case. Either we are unimaginative or
| we have truly started reaching the limits of what can and
| cannot be found. I think it's a mix of both but also I'm
| not a physicist so don't listen to me too much.
|
| You might accuse me of calling Physicists of being
| unimaginative but I truly believe that to be the case.
| The most fascinating topic in this regard is the
| alcubierre drive; before that concept became famous when
| I asked any Physicist if we are truly stuck in our solar
| system for eternity due to light speed limit they said
| yes, it's actually mathematically absurd to even think of
| any other possibility. Then this topic comes, and as
| impossible as it sounds it's at least not absurd
| mathematically (absurd physically still, sure but I feel
| theres a difference). So it's wierd that more Physicists
| are not grabbing at crazy tails like this and truly push
| what their imagination can conjure up.
| marvin wrote:
| I disagree almost 100% with this. The most novel scientific
| ideas are so wild they're almost in crackpot territory. Novel
| ideas in general are ideas no one has ever explored before.
| And while _most_ science is incremental, most science is
| also...not very useful or interesting. I 'm sure that
| scientific funding could be cut 50% without any noticeable
| negative impact, assuming the right 50% were cut. (That is of
| course the difficult question, so I'm not literally
| advocating this).
|
| Conservativism is a very bad trait to have in scientific
| roles. It's not as bad as being dumb, not being curious or
| not intensely seeking the truth, but on a system level it
| will steer the ship in the wrong direction.
|
| Paul Graham recently wrote some essays that explored these
| ideas in a much clearer and more precise way. To me they were
| just nagging in the back of my mind for a long time.
| Recommended reading if you've got a few minutes.
| http://paulgraham.com/think.html
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes, it's taken too far. Multiple times in RNA biology people
| have made legitimate discoveries and were required to
| implement heroic methods to make their case. The first two I
| think of are Tom Cech whose grad student demonstrated that
| RNA can be an enzyme with extremely reliable evidence but
| they had to put in a few years of work to actually get the
| community to agree. Similarly, Harry Noller had very strong
| evidence the heart of the ribosome was an RNA machine and it
| took 40 years and a crystal structure before the community
| finally accepted it. A similar case happened with DNA with
| the Avery experiment which was as good a proof as you'll ever
| get in biology, but it wasn't until Hershey Chase that the
| general community overcame the skepticism that DNA could be
| the molecule of heredity.
| pid_0 wrote:
| conservative and skeptical are not the same thing
|
| Science should be absolutely progressive in that ALL
| questions are asked and ALL hypotheses are tested, with a
| significant amount of skepticism and critical analysis.
| lrossi wrote:
| Right, maybe "conservative" was not the best choice of word
| as it has many meanings. I was thinking about "cautious",
| not "traditionalist". Sorry for the confusion, I'm not a
| native speaker.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| From the article:
|
| >Other researchers "rolled their eyes in horror" when he
| presented his theory, Jacob recalled in his memoir, The
| Statue Within. "With a little encouragement, my audience
| would have jeered and left," he wrote.
|
| Skepticism and contempt are distinct and disparate feelings.
| heriol wrote:
| I think there's a wide gulf between healthy skepticism and
| mockery or dismissal. It should be totally acceptable (if not
| laudable) to investigate unpopular or long-tail ideas. Sure,
| a lot of them will not amount to anything, but you also have
| a chance of discovering something totally unexpected.
| ukj wrote:
| What's the "right balance" between Type I and Type II errors
| when assessing the quality/potential of new research?
| gnramires wrote:
| The dichotomy of 'skepticism' vs 'open-mindedness' doesn't
| capture all that is important about scientific inquiry
| (specifically, both of those are important of course).
|
| One approach to Science I think is really illustrative is
| Wheeler's[1] 'radical conservatism': you should accept, and
| seek, radical ideas, under a skeptical, formal, foundation.
|
| So for example, if someone proposes a "free-energy" device
| with some outlandish explanation, that _a priori_ isn 't
| radical conservatism, because while the proposal is radical,
| it clashes with the conservative basis of local energy
| conservation of all modern physics (or maybe with the 2nd law
| of thermodynamics).
|
| However, for example in General Relativity, the question of
| energy conservation at extremely large scales is not well
| settled. So that's something you could explore, without
| letting the fear of ridicule stop you (for breaking energy
| conservation), as long as you retain solid foundations[2].
| Not only that, but this kind of outlandish idea is often how
| science moves forward, not by making the most obvious
| hypotheses about established theories (which we already
| largely know the answer for!) -- but it's difficult to
| naively distinguish from crackpottery.
|
| By solid foundations, I mean you can even revise your
| physical principles, as long as they explain available
| evidence and you're able to formalize them to a good degree.
| Also by 'radical' it is meant that we shouldn't judge ideas
| by whether they are outlandish or not (Feynman writes
| extensively about this in his talks) -- Nature doesn't seem
| to be particularly concerned with seeming outlandish[3]. So
| to get rid of this bias, you can flip the coin and go _after_
| outlandish ideas (ideally simply unbiased, but it 's a
| strategy).
|
| See Kip Thorne's memoir, which I haven't read to completion
| but I'm sure is good:
|
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1901/1901.06623.pdf
|
| [1] (the great friend from Feynman and with enormous
| contributions)
|
| [2] In GR there is some very non-intutive large scale
| behavior: you can move without reaction mass in vacuum, which
| naively would seem radical, and violating conservation of
| momentum. However, it's allowed, and proven!:
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/886/swimming-
| in-...
|
| [3] In reality, what defines what's "bizarre", "outlandish",
| "unintuitive" for us, are (1) Our previous experiences in the
| world, (2) Our coded instincts and neural architecture.
| There's no guarantee those will be valid when extrapolated to
| a different domain: objects at very small scales, very large
| scales, very high energies, etc.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I have to ask what the hell is wrong with them - even if
| considering proteins as an end all you would at least consider
| DNA and RNA peripherally useful to look into to figure out the
| process of their creation and constraints.
|
| To go with a clumsy metaphor living wheels and axle style of
| locomotion cannot be plausibly grown and moved by known organic
| structures - it would have to use it. Knowing more what can be
| produced would help figure out what cannot and commonalities.
| The reaction doesn't make any sense even for protein folding
| obsessived.
| LetThereBeLight wrote:
| That is interesting, I have had the exact opposite experience.
| People saying that genes and their regulatory circuits are all
| that matter and that proteins are boring byproducts of that. I
| guess it is a matter of what sub-community you find yourself
| in.
| domnomnom wrote:
| Proteins are practical.
| refurb wrote:
| This makes for a good story but shouldn't be surprising. You
| don't have to go far to find people willing to ridicule a new
| idea in science. Most of the time it's "why are you focusing on
| that area of research? It's a dead end".
|
| It makes for a good story for the non-scientist, but as a
| scientist this is how it works. Until you can prove your theory
| it's just a theory and it's the job of other scientists to poke
| holes in it.
| rpiguyshy wrote:
| this is the aspect of science that is not talked about in the
| media and among "science, fuck yeah" "big bang theory" bros.
| science is full of dogma, politics and downright dirtiness.
| people who do research are often showmen more than scientists,
| because the system selects for people who can sleazily promote
| their own research to win grants, or people who just hop onto
| whatever bandwagon is popular. and the worst part is that people
| who are blowing on the kindling of the next big breakthrough are
| not only discarded by the scientific establishment, they are
| ridiculed viciously. anyone who says we should "listen to
| science" needs to open a history book. dogma, dogma, dogma. its
| the most insidious parasite in the modern western world and has
| happily escaped completely the confines of its old religious
| home.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The good news is that the retail direct investor revolution is
| changing this: people who are working in any technology field
| realized that they have a huge edge over general business
| analysts/hedge funds, and can often pick stocks better than
| just putting all money to IBM / Chevron / Goldman.
|
| Combined with SPACS, ARK Invest, tech angel investors, sci-hub,
| Wikipedia, researchers with great ideas don't need to go to
| boring old conservative investors anymore.
|
| Of course this may not help basic research, but the biotech
| infrastructure is getting much better.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| ^This comment right here. This is what it was like to live
| through 1999.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I had to upvote you, even if you make fun of me, it's so
| funny :)
|
| Maybe you're right. But the stocks are very far from
| overvalued as long as the bond bubble doesn't pop (which
| depends on the FED policy).
|
| https://endlessmetrics.substack.com/p/s-and-p-500-m2-money-
| s...
|
| Also I remember listening to Ark's interview with Moderna's
| CEO last April when nobody knew about that company.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Haha. Fair enough. Thanks for being a good sport.
|
| Your perspective could very well prove right, and mine
| wrong. Who's to say. Sometimes this time really is
| different. And us old guys will be the last to realize
| it.
| fantod wrote:
| > because the system selects for people who can sleazily
| promote their own research to win grants
|
| It's quite common in most fields for success to go to those who
| are able to sell themselves well.
| brigandish wrote:
| You'd think people might've cottoned on by now that selling
| "yourself" (or, more likely, your product) is a skill, that
| it can be learnt, and it _should_ be learnt.
|
| If there's sleaze involved or dirty tricks that's not right,
| but if you've a good idea or product and you can't persuade
| someone to back you then I'm not sure why the complaint
| should be against those who can, especially with allegedly
| inferior ones.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| The people using the dishonest tactics will tend to win
| out, same reason almost everyone in sports uses steroids.
| Being dishonest is just far, far too advantageous, which is
| why the "selling yourself" game is disgusting to many.
| smabie wrote:
| I highly doubt "almost everyone in sports" use steroids.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| At the top level in all competitive sports almost
| everyone in on banned PEDs, they are simply too
| advantageous. Even the women take testosterone.
| kowlo wrote:
| perhaps a little naive
| pluto9 wrote:
| Do you doubt that even one does? Because if one does, it
| gives them such a ludicrous advantage that the others
| can't even be competitive if they don't.
| smabie wrote:
| modafinil and amphetamines give programmers a ludicrous
| advantage, and yet, "almost all" programmers aren't doing
| them.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I don't agree. I've tried those and many other options
| and never found anything that provided a consistent
| advantage. The best physical advantage probably comes
| from good sleep and exercise.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| The evaluation of programmers isn't nearly as objective
| as the evaluation of athletes, and I'm not convinced
| modafinil and amphetamines have a statistically
| significant advantage (how much does programming ability
| even matter for getting ahead anywhere?), let alone a
| ludicrous one. On the other hand, the advantage from
| steroids is ludicrous on multiple factors including
| stamina, recovery, strength etc. The advantage from
| cheating and lying in the science game is also very high
| in my experience, although difficult to measure.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| LOL. It's extraordinarily easy to criticize when you aren't
| holding anything up as a suggestion or point of comparison --
| but it's also extraordinarily pointless. Sometimes our best
| alternative is still pretty far from perfect. That's just how
| life works, and if you let this type of situation cloud your
| decision making you're in for a rough time in more aspects of
| life than this one.
| erhk wrote:
| "that's just how life works" is a worthless appeal and I
| won't entertain any argument made with it
| cycomanic wrote:
| I think it is actually the other way around. These stories are
| often emphasised more in the media than they exist (the human
| element). It's also a popular meme to say sucess in science now
| has more to do with showmanship.
|
| Somehow there is the expectation that someone can sit in their
| office write down some theory and the world automatically
| realises the brilliance. That's not how it works, you have to
| go out into the world present your work, explain it and defend
| it. You might call it showmanship, but it is an absolutely
| necessary part of science and always was.
|
| There are many problems in science today, the resistance to
| just adopt new theories and the requirements to communicate
| your research are not part of them.
| djaque wrote:
| [deleted]
| erhk wrote:
| How many grants have you applied for before?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Its worse than that. At least Religions deals with abstract
| ideas, and useful abstractions, like forgiveness, ritual and so
| on. The current twitter mobs are all about throwing stones,
| with zero self reflection.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Democracy is the worst form of government besides all the
| others.
|
| Science is the worst form of knowledge gathering besides all
| the others.
|
| Kelvin is a good example of a dogmatic blowhard in science. We
| may have named a unit after him, but all these years later
| people still remember how much folks like him pushed miasma
| theory rather than the idea that all the shit in the Thames
| gave you dysentary.
|
| The folks in power weren't going to suddenly replace all of the
| streets of London with proper sewers. And teach everyone to
| stop shitting in the street. That's just too _uncomfortable_ to
| think about. So at first nothing happens. But science allows
| for the result to be written down, someone else goes "ah fuck
| shit gives you dysentary" and now blowhards like Kelvin are
| dead and there's enough weakness exposed in the power
| structure, your ideas get put into practice. Cause it's a good
| idea, it's obvious, and a lot of the people who used to have a
| stake are dead.
|
| It's highly far from perfect. But there are very few mechanisms
| that are able to affect change after folks are long dead and
| buried.
| kowlo wrote:
| cronyism is rampant in academia
| molticrystal wrote:
| Many great examples, for psychology the Freudian Cabal vs Jung
| and other formulations, the bullying Bohr did to Heisenberg in
| the interpretation of quantum mechanics[0], and you'll read
| many accounts from Haidt and Pinker about the social sciences.
|
| The consensus that materializes due to the various pressures at
| the time might not always be the best for advancement, and at
| worst it may take decades to overcome.
|
| [0] https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/quantumdrama.htm
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| It feels to me that in some fields after WWII the movement
| towards logical/numeric theories vs ad hoc
| behavioral/historical ones lead to actual regressions.
|
| Example from the 1940's through the 1970's it was believed
| that facial expressions were _learned_ behavior. The guys
| that proved that facial expressions are innate endured a lot
| of blowback and ridicule.
| peteretep wrote:
| This is an excellent example of a "weak man" argument.
| calylex wrote:
| > "science, fuck yeah" "big bang theory" bros
|
| So being excited about science makes you a bro? Is the word bro
| really needed or are you purposefully injecting that here to
| lower the perceived status of men as irrational retards at
| leasts the ones who aren't like you, the sophisticated bunch,
| where you'd probably never use a misogynistic term.
|
| > blowing on the kindling of the next big breakthrough
|
| You'd be a fucking idiot to think that is uniformly the case in
| science. Like any other human field every field will have its
| dose of douchebags who stand for nothing but self-promoting
| hypocrisy.
|
| > the modern western world
|
| Who the fuck are you to keep calling what I presume US/Europe,
| the modern western world. Stop your obsession to create groups
| of others just to make a point about dogma in science.
| FrozenVoid wrote:
| > So being excited about science makes you a bro?
|
| blindly treating science as dogmatic religion, science
| supporters tend to use arguments like:
|
| the science is settled its proven by science listen to
| science
|
| if you look at it, they're just using authority of
| established doctrines and theories to present themselves as
| defending some unassailable truth with their opponents being
| primitive troglodytes who should "believe in
| science"(treating science as belief system/ideology)
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| "Science" in this case is the best knowledge we have. Just
| because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not the best
| thing we have.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Any time I read the terms "western/western world", I just
| replace it with white people, and it works the exact same.
| It's interesting to me that we've come up with such a
| euphemism, because the raw definition of those terms make no
| sense whatsoever.
|
| Perhaps it is because I'm a Trinidadian living in Canada, so
| I've experienced both sides of the coin wrt. this
| terminology.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _anyone who says we should "listen to science" needs to open
| a history book. dogma, dogma, dogma_
|
| You're describing humans.
|
| What makes science novel is its mechanism for challenging and
| disproving blowhards without tipping into anarchy. That makes
| dogmatic incumbents' positions less stable while, remarkably,
| maintaining the integrity of the system as a whole.
|
| Science doesn't (or shouldn't) claim to negate our worst
| instincts. Simply to uniquely check them through its method.
| healinpor wrote:
| This is subtly one of my favorite comments in the history of
| Hacker News, and I've read a lot of good ones. We're at this
| weird historical moment where we are enjoying the many
| rewards of Enlightenment philosophy, but we've forgotten
| almost all of the stuff they wrote about the weaknesses of
| human nature. Everyone and their brother is throwing mud at
| the notions of reason and logic thanks to postmodernism,
| pointing out their hypocrisies and failures, ignoring the
| fact that _that 's the default_. Of course human beings are
| contradictory and full of self-interested behavior and
| reasoning. They knew that in ancient Greece better than we
| do! The point is that we have demonstrated we can improve on
| the baseline condition, not that men have suddenly become
| angels. It's a false standard and enormously damaging.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| What makes science great is the scientific method. Far too
| many people seem to forget it.
|
| Coming up with a hypothesis and then finding some evidence
| isn't science any more than alchemy is a form of science.
| Neither is cherry picking data and then retroactively
| creating a hypothesis (There was a big scandal surrounding
| this a few years ago). Even if you are right you need strong
| evidence of reproducibility for scientific claims to have any
| credibility. You need extremely strong reproducibility if you
| expect to make claims that may have implications for the
| health and safety of others.
| yudlejoza wrote:
| You're describing 'science the method'. GP is describing
| 'science the community'.
|
| Scientific method (mostly) works and bears fruit at longer
| timescales (40, 60, 100 years, or longer). In the meantime,
| over short to medium term, a handful of outcast scientists
| have to face ridicule, be sidelined, be shunned, be mocked,
| by pretty much the whole scientific community, a massive
| circle-jerk that exists for the purpose of citing each-other,
| giving each other awards, sucking up to, networking, and
| clinking champagne glasses with the handful of agencies
| doling out the pitiful amount of funding, most of which goes
| to waste. More often than not those outcasts can't go any
| longer and their work either disappears, or is usurped in the
| form of "You did this? ... I did this."
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I'm not sure I would consider the _implementation_ of the
| methods in today 's fields of science to be "without tipping
| into anarchy", but credit is certainly due to the _platonic
| ideal_ of the scientific methods themselves.
|
| Science is a very carefully defined field that includes
| little or no controls on the behavior of its members, as long
| as the behaviors that _are_ controlled appear to be adhered
| to. We 've ended up with Retraction Watch, collusion between
| journal editors and paper publishers, and endemic #metoo
| issues throughout the field. I would never voluntarily enter
| a science field that depends on publishing papers for
| advancement today, because by definition these concerns are
| excluded from our current answers to 'what is required to
| science?'.
|
| As to the scientific methods they often practice in service
| of those fields, yes, and it's admirable how well those have
| persisted. We also have a massive reproducibility crisis
| across all human psych and social fields, so while the
| theoretical methods do earn credit for not being "anarchy",
| their implementations clearly aren't being held to the
| standards that we're praising here today.
| Sinidir wrote:
| Perfectly put.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| And yet here we are with 73 million doses distributed (in the
| US alone) of the most rapidly-developed vaccine in history,
| thanks to the fact that the scientific process was able to
| overcome the ugliness inherent in human society --- because
| humans have figured out a way to let our need to answer
| fundamental questions become more powerful than any of the
| silly things you mention.
| Leparamour wrote:
| The same mechanism is still at work. The researchers who
| developed these modern mRNA vaccines will now become the
| defenders of the new status quo . All their reputation hinges
| on the vaccines being DECLARED safe for human use.
|
| Are they safe long-term? Who knows, it's a huge business now.
| So it's not in the best interest of the aforementioned
| scientists to look too hard for it might tarnish their
| current reputation, influence and abilities to receive
| funding or make profits.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I get the impression anthropology is particularly bad.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| > Researchers looking for mRNA were ridiculed by colleagues
|
| Sounds like textbook _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_?
| rostifar wrote:
| Interestingly, the early days of deep learning also followed
| this pattern. Some context [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/hoo6m8/d_m...
| deepnotderp wrote:
| Yup. I honestly believe The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
| should be required reading
| z5h wrote:
| "The mRNA slips into our cells, carrying instructions to make
| antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2".
|
| No. The mRNA has instructions to reproduce part of the structure
| of the virus. Our immune system creates antibodies to the foreign
| and inert bits of virus.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| I don't have much confidence in the scientific accuracy of a
| "long read" article that begins with the mind numbing trope of
| a storybook personal anecdote. 80% of this article is free of
| useful or relevant information. The parts that anyone would
| ever remember could be summed up in 3 paragraphs. I really hate
| this trend in journalism but I suppose it exists for a reason,
| as people won't read things that aren't "entertaining".
| zamalek wrote:
| > part of the structure of the virus.
|
| Specifically the spike protein that's been talked about
| everywhere. There is no actual COVID-19 virus involved.
|
| It would be like cloning only your fingers, and using those
| finger clones to train fingerprint scanners. Later on, when the
| real human comes along, those scanners would recognize you.
| Those finger clones wouldn't be able to do anything else
| meaningful and would eventually decay away.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| When I was a physicist, people adept of "alternative" things
| (telepathy, telekinesis, ...) were all saying that we are closed
| minded and that we do not let anything outside of what we know to
| be brought to light.
|
| As I mentioned in a comment in the past, I had the chance to be a
| regular on the radio (90's) and said several times that I
| officially announced that I will switch the topic of my PhD
| thesis the moment when someone shows me a physical event that I
| cannot explain.
|
| Oh boy, I saw my fair share of lunatics and fanatics, I spend
| nights in haunted houses, with children whose parents claim they
| have telekinesis capabilities etc.
|
| Unfortunately, I did not switch, ended up with a standard PhD
| instead of the Nobel-yielding one about telekinesis or
| homeopathy.
|
| To the people who were saying that we do not want to look at
| anything outside our comfort zone, I told an old joke:
|
| "John was constantly praying to his god to let him win at the
| lottery. Day after day, he was praying and praying.
|
| Then one day he saw a bright light and a loud voice said
|
| JOHN, GIVE ME AN OPPRTUNITY, BUY A TICKET!!"
|
| This is more or less this: show something unusual, please!
| tramav wrote:
| Are you sure that you are not the person in your joke: "The
| physicist John was constantly announcing on radio to let people
| show him a physical event that he cannot explain. He was a
| regular on radio and asked several times. Then one day he read
| this sentence on the internet: JOHN, PUT SOME WORK INTO YOUR
| RESEARCH, HE WHO SEEKS FINDS."?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The line "Oh boy, I saw my fair share of lunatics and
| fanatics, I spend nights in haunted houses, with children
| whose parents claim they have telekinesis capabilities etc."
| suggests that much seeking was done.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Yes, thank you for quoting. Way too much seeking, actually.
|
| It was fun, though. You get to meet some very unusual
| people.
| yters wrote:
| Did you ever find some genuine inexplicable phenomena?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| No, despite being very open minded. I was a hard core
| physicist, but it would have been really cool to find
| something unusual (I did not have much hope, though).
|
| Most people were in the category "I really saw it" and
| expected to just search "for that".
|
| Some told that they or their relatives had special
| abilities. When I wanted to witness them they never
| happened, usually due to my "aura".
|
| I spent a few nights in haunted houses. These were cool,
| the cracking at night was quite frightening. But
| ultimately it was not even B-grade horror (no slamming
| doors or anything). I saw rats once and this is what
| terrified me.
|
| I met once an energothepeutist (he was "magnetizing"
| people's heads to cure them). It was on the radio, he
| came with a lady whom he cured. When he touched her neck,
| she collapsed. I asked him to touch my neck and make me
| collapse, he said it was dangerous, I told him that I
| officially agree to anything and take all the risks, he
| touched my neck ... (there is no music when you are on
| air, but the listeners do hear one, it was quite tense)
| ... I felt his fingers on my neck and yelled "aaaahhh!".
| He jumped 2 meters away. Of course I did not feel
| anything.
|
| I particularly dislike the fraud kind (like the one
| above) who are putting people at risk (the ones that are
| sick and instead of medicine choose home - similar to the
| homeopaths). I was making special efforts to show how
| useless they are.
|
| I had a lot of empathy for people who thought they saw
| something and wanted to understand whether this was true
| or not, I once met an old lady who thought that her dead
| husband was talking to her and I helped her to realize
| that these were various sounds in her appartement. She
| was really nice.
|
| Unfortunately, many people will not believe anything even
| if it jumps to their face. This is BTW the same message I
| was being given by the ones that were showing me effects
| I could not objectively see or record.
|
| One thing I did not agree to are "philippin healers" -
| they tell that they will extract your sick organs without
| you feeling anything. I did not want to do that because I
| feared that they would have some cutting devices under
| their nails (or something similar) and that this could
| get seriously dangerous.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Although I only completed my undergrad in physics, we may
| have had similar trajectories. I have seen _one_
| inexplicable thing but it was rather nebulous. If that is
| all the supernatural has to offer, it was pants.
| wetpaws wrote:
| "progress in science is happening one funeral at a time"
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's so hard for people to let go of an idea. I remember
| reading about how a lot of Einstein's later ideas came from him
| trying to disprove Quantum theory, and that it takes ~50 years
| for a big idea to be accepted. ie, as you say, it's never
| accepted.
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