Suggestions for how Trump could do better

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WiseOne
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by WiseOne » Mon Jul 27, 2020 10:28 am

Simonjester wrote: -dissolve the federal department of education and top down education funding. school choice/vouchers for all....
-prosecution of the deepstate criminals.. exposing them is great, firing them is nice. but if there is no punishment for their crime they corrupt government, then just wait while working a job on CNN, k street, or at Monsanto, then flow right back into the swamp as if they never left ::) , richer and more powerful...
Simonjester wrote:
Libertarian666 wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 9:19 am
All good ideas but not something that Trump could do single-handed, which is pretty much the situation.

As for prosecuting the deep state criminals, unfortunately it seems impossible to get an AG who will actually go after them, probably because such an AG would never be confirmed by a Senate containing some of those criminals, on both sides of the aisle.
sadly this seems to be true.... :'(
A national targeted lockdown following the Swedish model, in which the focus is on protecting vulnerable populations while leaving the economy relatively intact. Should have happened back in March.

That would have provided a framework for states & cities who are then welcome to add more restrictions if they want. While at the same time making it clear that those extra restrictions might pay too high a price for not a lot of added protection.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Mon Jul 27, 2020 11:54 am

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 10:28 am
A national targeted lockdown following the Swedish model, in which the focus is on protecting vulnerable populations while leaving the economy relatively intact. Should have happened back in March.
This is surprising, I thought the world consensus was that Sweden's experiment has turned out to be a bust, as much as many of us hoped it would be a success.

At least if you use the criteria of # of cases, # of deaths, and damage to the economy/unemployment; and if the comparison group is the other Scandinavian countries. In comparison to the Nordic countries, Sweden has under-performed in death toll by a factor of 10x. In the case of Norway 20x. Even Trump called them a disaster in a recent press conference.

WiseOne, why do you apparently conclude otherwise?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by WiseOne » Mon Jul 27, 2020 12:42 pm

Because those comparisons are totally specious. Sweden's caseload is lower than many European countries that went the decimate-the-economy route, and there are important differences between Sweden and, say, Norway or Finland that are being ignored. "Scandinavian" is not the only way to characterize a given country. And they never came close to overwhelming their hospital system.

If you're applying the same logic, would you then praise Denmark's actions since they did so much better than Sweden? Among other things, they have recommended AGAINST the use of masks for civilians.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by WiseOne » Mon Jul 27, 2020 12:47 pm

Here are some #s per capita for death rates (per million) for a handful of countries:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... habitants/

Sweden is middle of the road for European countries (I wouldn't consider stats from countries outside Europe and the US to be reliable). Where are you getting the factor of 10 from? And if Sweden is a disaster, what do you call Belgium and the UK?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Libertarian666 » Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:10 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 10:28 am
A national targeted lockdown following the Swedish model, in which the focus is on protecting vulnerable populations while leaving the economy relatively intact. Should have happened back in March.

That would have provided a framework for states & cities who are then welcome to add more restrictions if they want. While at the same time making it clear that those extra restrictions might pay too high a price for not a lot of added protection.
Yes, but that is water under the bridge. What should he be doing differently now?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:35 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 12:47 pm
Here are some #s per capita for death rates (per million) for a handful of countries:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... habitants/

Sweden is middle of the road for European countries (I wouldn't consider stats from countries outside Europe and the US to be reliable). Where are you getting the factor of 10 from? And if Sweden is a disaster, what do you call Belgium and the UK?
Hi WiseOne,
I didn't say Sweden is a disaster, I reported that I heard Trump do so in one of his recent press conferences. But then he's bashed Sweden before so maybe he has a grudge with them or something.
Perhaps it came across that I am arguing against your point, which is not my intention. When you pointed to Sweden as a model that we in the US should have followed back in March, I wanted to understand why you think so. That's all.
And the table you referenced is interesting, but even that table places Sweden materially worse off than the US at least in terms of deaths per million and puts it right in the pack of the worst countries. This only reinforces my questions. By way of background I have friends who constantly point to Sweden as the "people getting it right" and in looking at the numbers I just don't understand why.

Again, not trying to argue with you.
In fact, to make a confession, I secretly want Sweden to be the success model but I just can't back up my case, so still searching.

FYI, I use this world tracker website put together by a high school student! I think he uses source data mostly from the CDC, WHO and the Johns Hopkins tracker: https://ncov2019.live/data
Based on today, it shows deaths as follows:
FInland 329
Denmark 613
Norway 255
Sweden 5697

So just using Norway whose population is about half of Sweden's, the difference would be about 10x (again, correcting for the size difference). The Swedish increase in deaths over Finland would be about 8.5x and Denmark 4.6x

Glenn
Last edited by glennds on Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:52 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 12:42 pm

If you're applying the same logic, would you then praise Denmark's actions since they did so much better than Sweden? Among other things, they have recommended AGAINST the use of masks for civilians.
On July 9th, Denmark reversed course and began recommending the use of masks, at least in certain situations (i.e. high risk situations, vulnerable people). But they are not recommending them for everyone. To your point though, I haven't studied it enough to know all the differences between what Sweden has done and what Denmark has done heretofore except that I know Denmark did some level of lockdown. So no, I can't back up praise for Denmark.
If I were to praise countries based on what I know, the list would include Vietnam, Taiwan, and New Zealand. There was a photo circulating this weekend of a packed rugby stadium in New Zealand where they have had 22 deaths and no new cases most recent days. The photo illustrates how nice it is for their society to be able to enjoy large events and everyday life safely. New Zealand's approach has been characterized as "hard and early". It's too late for us to go hard and early here in the US, if there was any appetite for doing so in the first place.

Who knows where it will all go. Right now it feels like death by a thousand cuts. Maybe a poor analogy, but I think about Paul Volcker driving us into a painful recession in order to break the back of inflation and prevent what might otherwise have been a prolonged decade or more of economic malaise. I wonder if we have a public health equivalent, but no Paul Volcker and no stomach for the deep short term sacrifice my analogy implies.
I don't claim to have the answers.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Xan » Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:09 pm

Are countries like New Zealand just delaying the inevitable? And perhaps not by very much? I guess we'll see soon enough.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by jalanlong » Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:28 pm

Xan wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:09 pm
Are countries like New Zealand just delaying the inevitable? And perhaps not by very much? I guess we'll see soon enough.
That is really the thing which I do not understand and have never really understood about any of this. Admittedly medicine and science are not my strengths.

I do not understand the entire concept of shutting down and then opening up "too soon." The virus does not have an expiration date on it. If you shut down for a month or two months and then people start to go out and about, why are you shocked that cases are then rising? People call it a second wave but it really is just a first wave that you went into hiding from. Even flattening the curve is questionable to me...all you can really do is elongate it over a long period of time by sheltering and letting people get the virus in drips and drabs. What is the crucial part of this I am missing that everyone else seems to understand?

Does it just boil down to the fact that by not sheltering then we are then essentially choosing to let X% of people get sick and die and Americans just cannot stand for that to happen? The whole "even 1 death is 1 death too many" or "you cannot put a price on a human life" sort of thing?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Tortoise » Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:35 pm

You’re not misunderstanding anything, jalanlong. You get it.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by WiseOne » Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:49 pm

Ah, I think I see the disconnect here.

To me, there are two major outcomes to be considered:

1) Coronavirus - outcomes to be avoided are hospitalization and death. The group at high risk for this are a very small segment of the population. The working population has a very LOW risk of such outcomes.

2) Trashed economy - negative outcomes here are so widely ignored that you can be forgiven for forgetting about them, but that doesn't mean they aren't real or significant. Short list: 1) Loss of life savings, business, career, social position & independence that will require years to recover from, and some people may never recover. There is a known amount of psychiatric morbidity including suicide risk & drug addiction from this. 2) Loss of health insurance, which has a known morbidity and mortality cost. 3) Delay and/or permanent damage to work ethic and career development for adolescents & young adults who have effectively been forced out of the education system. This is hard to quantify and will have to be examined in the retrospectoscope. 4) Trashed cities/communities due to loss of income and thus lack of maintenance of basic infrastructure, schools etc.

The outcomes you want to optimize are not #1 alone, they are the SUM of #1 and #2. To my mind, Sweden did the best job of balancing these two to get an optimal outcome. Germany and Switzerland went in this direction also. Most other countries including the US committed the thought error of assuming that there is zero morbidity & mortality from a trashed economy. This is especially egregious in the US because of the health insurance situation here.

I don't know if Trump actually understood this in his reptilian brain, but I believe he instinctively realized that trashing the economy could well be worse than the direct effects of the virus. I think he should just have instituted the targeted approach as national policy, and explained the reasoning at the time. Instead, the states were free to drum up all the panic they could, with the help of their friends in the mainstream press. We now have an impossible mess of political footballs, the prospect of long-term lockdowns and constantly shifting targets, instead of a national vision to help guide (and temper) our response. So yes I fault Trump for not rising to that challenge, realizing that few (if any) presidents in the recent past would have done any better.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by jalanlong » Mon Jul 27, 2020 4:21 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:49 pm
Ah, I think I see the disconnect here.

To me, there are two major outcomes to be considered:

1) Coronavirus - outcomes to be avoided are hospitalization and death. The group at high risk for this are a very small segment of the population. The working population has a very LOW risk of such outcomes.

2) Trashed economy - negative outcomes here are so widely ignored that you can be forgiven for forgetting about them, but that doesn't mean they aren't real or significant. Short list: 1) Loss of life savings, business, career, social position & independence that will require years to recover from, and some people may never recover. There is a known amount of psychiatric morbidity including suicide risk & drug addiction from this. 2) Loss of health insurance, which has a known morbidity and mortality cost. 3) Delay and/or permanent damage to work ethic and career development for adolescents & young adults who have effectively been forced out of the education system. This is hard to quantify and will have to be examined in the retrospectoscope. 4) Trashed cities/communities due to loss of income and thus lack of maintenance of basic infrastructure, schools etc.

The outcomes you want to optimize are not #1 alone, they are the SUM of #1 and #2. To my mind, Sweden did the best job of balancing these two to get an optimal outcome. Germany and Switzerland went in this direction also. Most other countries including the US committed the thought error of assuming that there is zero morbidity & mortality from a trashed economy. This is especially egregious in the US because of the health insurance situation here.

I don't know if Trump actually understood this in his reptilian brain, but I believe he instinctively realized that trashing the economy could well be worse than the direct effects of the virus. I think he should just have instituted the targeted approach as national policy, and explained the reasoning at the time. Instead, the states were free to drum up all the panic they could, with the help of their friends in the mainstream press. We now have an impossible mess of political footballs, the prospect of long-term lockdowns and constantly shifting targets, instead of a national vision to help guide (and temper) our response. So yes I fault Trump for not rising to that challenge, realizing that few (if any) presidents in the recent past would have done any better.
With Italy and China shutting down before us, would any politician in America have been able to withstand the onslaught of criticism about killing grandma and having blood on their hands by keeping concerts and bars open? Or would the coverage not be tilted that way if Trump were not in office and had not said in Jan and Feb that the virus is no big deal and will be gone soon?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by jalanlong » Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:17 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:35 pm
You’re not misunderstanding anything, jalanlong. You get it.
I admittedly do not have a lot of friends (I am ok with that!) and I certainly do not know any that are in favor of more or longer shutdowns. But for those large amounts of people I see reflected in polls (and social media) who feel we reopened "too early" and that we should shut down and start over again, what is their mindset as to why that would work? Do they really think that if Texas had just stayed closed an extra 2-3 weeks then the whole spike in cases could have been avoided?

I am not talking about the really crazy people who want us to shut down until a vaccine is found. I am talking about the people who want longer closings, more stringent closings and slower reopenings. What is their logic behind it?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by I Shrugged » Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:03 pm

What Trump could do better is act like my high school chemistry teacher. He had a commanding presence and didn't take any crap. But he did it with a good demeanor. And he didn't tweet dumb stuff.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Cortopassi » Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:08 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:49 pm
To me, there are two major outcomes to be considered:

1) Coronavirus - outcomes to be avoided are hospitalization and death. The group at high risk for this are a very small segment of the population. The working population has a very LOW risk of such outcomes.

2) Trashed economy - negative outcomes here are so widely ignored that you can be forgiven for forgetting about them, but that doesn't mean they aren't real or significant. Short list: 1) Loss of life savings, business, career, social position & independence that will require years to recover from, and some people may never recover. There is a known amount of psychiatric morbidity including suicide risk & drug addiction from this. 2) Loss of health insurance, which has a known morbidity and mortality cost. 3) Delay and/or permanent damage to work ethic and career development for adolescents & young adults who have effectively been forced out of the education system. This is hard to quantify and will have to be examined in the retrospectoscope. 4) Trashed cities/communities due to loss of income and thus lack of maintenance of basic infrastructure, schools etc.

The outcomes you want to optimize are not #1 alone, they are the SUM of #1 and #2. To my mind, Sweden did the best job of balancing these two to get an optimal outcome. Germany and Switzerland went in this direction also. Most other countries including the US committed the thought error of assuming that there is zero morbidity & mortality from a trashed economy. This is especially egregious in the US because of the health insurance situation here.

I don't know if Trump actually understood this in his reptilian brain, but I believe he instinctively realized that trashing the economy could well be worse than the direct effects of the virus. I think he should just have instituted the targeted approach as national policy, and explained the reasoning at the time. Instead, the states were free to drum up all the panic they could, with the help of their friends in the mainstream press. We now have an impossible mess of political footballs, the prospect of long-term lockdowns and constantly shifting targets, instead of a national vision to help guide (and temper) our response. So yes I fault Trump for not rising to that challenge, realizing that few (if any) presidents in the recent past would have done any better.
It just makes so much sense, doesn't it? I hope it is not too much longer till the majority realizes this. I imagine a few weeks into online learning more and more people are going to wonder what the fuck are we doing and just figure out how to deal with this not like scared children but rational adults who can live with some risk.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:18 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:49 pm
Ah, I think I see the disconnect here......

Thank you, I have a better understanding of the basis for your earlier comments. I do not yet agree, but nor do I disagree. However I will watch Sweden a little more closely going forward. Unfortunately many of the indicators in #2 are not easily measurable.

I wonder if one day we will have the ability to create a final tally on the pandemic with multiple data points showing cases, deaths, economic impact (GDP) and maybe a few others measurable criteria. From such a chart perhaps we can see which strategy delivered the best outcomes with the least economic cost. Much like we do with portfolio analysis looking for the best combination of performance and risk.

A complicating factor is that different countries have such different cultures and it could be very possible that the "best" combination would never have been feasible in the US because cultural attitude would not permit it. The same issue goes toward the question of what Trump can or cannot do going forward, if for no other reason than public compliance.

In my home state the Governor issued an order closing movie theaters and fitness clubs (gyms). One fitness club chain owner defied the order, sued the State, lost, then complied. A bunch of his members proposed re-opening the clubs and taking up arms to fight off any police attempts to close them down in the name of defense against tyranny.
I think this is a uniquely American attitude. Not unique to be willing to take up arms over a cause, but unique that a fitness club could qualify as the cause.

If the science of public health management requires public compliance and cooperation, then I wonder if our libertarian, individualistic society is going to have trouble accepting any level of inconvenience or sacrifice.

In reality, I think any Trump decisions regarding the pandemic are made solely through the lens of his personal political interests. It does not appear that his political interests will in any way align with what might be indicated by science.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Mark Leavy » Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:31 pm

glennds wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:18 pm
In reality, I think any Trump decisions regarding the pandemic are made solely through the lens of his personal political interests. It does not appear that his political interests will in any way align with what might be indicated by science.
As a lifelong scientist, I am always surprised when people refer to "science" as if it were some guiding light.
My experience is that very little of what goes by the name of science today is actually repeatable, provable and well tested.
Most of it is conjecture by morons.

The majority of my career has been in hard science. Math, physics, optics, chemistry, electronics. I would say that 50% of the peer reviewed technical papers that I read were pure bullshit. Either not understanding statistics, or pure failures of logic or adulterating the experiments. I don't attribute it to malice, just inexperience. Recent college graduates. Yet these are all published papers.

Over the last 20 years or so, I have also been reading medical papers. I was shocked that the amount of sheer ignorance was even higher than in physics papers. Granted, I'm not as up on biology as the other sciences, but I don't have to be to spot errors in math, statistics and logic. I would put the validity of medical research papers at around 10% or less.

It truly bogles the mind.

Please, please, don't cite "science" as your final arbiter. If you can't reproduce the results yourself - via math or experiment or mental exercise... take it with a grain of salt. It might be right, but science is no priesthood.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by jalanlong » Mon Jul 27, 2020 8:06 pm

Cortopassi wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:08 pm
WiseOne wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:49 pm
To me, there are two major outcomes to be considered:

1) Coronavirus - outcomes to be avoided are hospitalization and death. The group at high risk for this are a very small segment of the population. The working population has a very LOW risk of such outcomes.

2) Trashed economy - negative outcomes here are so widely ignored that you can be forgiven for forgetting about them, but that doesn't mean they aren't real or significant. Short list: 1) Loss of life savings, business, career, social position & independence that will require years to recover from, and some people may never recover. There is a known amount of psychiatric morbidity including suicide risk & drug addiction from this. 2) Loss of health insurance, which has a known morbidity and mortality cost. 3) Delay and/or permanent damage to work ethic and career development for adolescents & young adults who have effectively been forced out of the education system. This is hard to quantify and will have to be examined in the retrospectoscope. 4) Trashed cities/communities due to loss of income and thus lack of maintenance of basic infrastructure, schools etc.

The outcomes you want to optimize are not #1 alone, they are the SUM of #1 and #2. To my mind, Sweden did the best job of balancing these two to get an optimal outcome. Germany and Switzerland went in this direction also. Most other countries including the US committed the thought error of assuming that there is zero morbidity & mortality from a trashed economy. This is especially egregious in the US because of the health insurance situation here.

I don't know if Trump actually understood this in his reptilian brain, but I believe he instinctively realized that trashing the economy could well be worse than the direct effects of the virus. I think he should just have instituted the targeted approach as national policy, and explained the reasoning at the time. Instead, the states were free to drum up all the panic they could, with the help of their friends in the mainstream press. We now have an impossible mess of political footballs, the prospect of long-term lockdowns and constantly shifting targets, instead of a national vision to help guide (and temper) our response. So yes I fault Trump for not rising to that challenge, realizing that few (if any) presidents in the recent past would have done any better.
It just makes so much sense, doesn't it? I hope it is not too much longer till the majority realizes this. I imagine a few weeks into online learning more and more people are going to wonder what the fuck are we doing and just figure out how to deal with this not like scared children but rational adults who can live with some risk.
I have almost lost hope of that by now. If it hasn’t sunk in after 6 months then I don’t think it will until the news cycle moves on.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Tortoise » Mon Jul 27, 2020 8:24 pm

jalanlong wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:17 pm
I admittedly do not have a lot of friends (I am ok with that!) and I certainly do not know any that are in favor of more or longer shutdowns. But for those large amounts of people I see reflected in polls (and social media) who feel we reopened "too early" and that we should shut down and start over again, what is their mindset as to why that would work? Do they really think that if Texas had just stayed closed an extra 2-3 weeks then the whole spike in cases could have been avoided?

I am not talking about the really crazy people who want us to shut down until a vaccine is found. I am talking about the people who want longer closings, more stringent closings and slower reopenings. What is their logic behind it?
The impression I get from such people based on various online comments I've seen is that they have a vague notion that we should be able to keep the rate of new Covid-19 case counts constant or even reduce it if "non-essential" businesses reopen slowly enough. To give an analogy, their notion is that if we "sneak up" on the virus slowly enough and don't make too much noise, it will ignore us and leave us alone.

Where that notion comes from is hard to say, because it certainly doesn't come from science or common sense. That's not how viral reproduction works. My best guess is that their notion is simply a hope, a wish, that is constantly reinforced by what they see and hear on the mainstream media. Logic and evidence can't change someone's mind if their mind is anchored primarily in emotion.

It's an alternate reality -- a collective mania. It's the real virus, not SARS-CoV-2. And, like a physical virus, it probably has to just run its course before it will eventually fade away. These collective manias just happen from time to time and appear to be a part of the human condition.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Mountaineer » Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:19 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:31 pm
glennds wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:18 pm
In reality, I think any Trump decisions regarding the pandemic are made solely through the lens of his personal political interests. It does not appear that his political interests will in any way align with what might be indicated by science.
As a lifelong scientist, I am always surprised when people refer to "science" as if it were some guiding light.
My experience is that very little of what goes by the name of science today is actually repeatable, provable and well tested.
Most of it is conjecture by morons.

The majority of my career has been in hard science. Math, physics, optics, chemistry, electronics. I would say that 50% of the peer reviewed technical papers that I read were pure bullshit. Either not understanding statistics, or pure failures of logic or adulterating the experiments. I don't attribute it to malice, just inexperience. Recent college graduates. Yet these are all published papers.

Over the last 20 years or so, I have also been reading medical papers. I was shocked that the amount of sheer ignorance was even higher than in physics papers. Granted, I'm not as up on biology as the other sciences, but I don't have to be to spot errors in math, statistics and logic. I would put the validity of medical research papers at around 10% or less.

It truly bogles the mind.

Please, please, don't cite "science" as your final arbiter. If you can't reproduce the results yourself - via math or experiment or mental exercise... take it with a grain of salt. It might be right, but science is no priesthood.
You might enjoy this book if you haven't read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance

"Knowledge is a big subject, says Stuart Firestein, but ignorance is a bigger one. And it is ignorance--not knowledge--that is the true engine of science.

Most of us have a false impression of science as a surefire, deliberate, step-by-step method for finding things out and getting things done. In fact, says Firestein, more often than not, science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room. The process is more hit-or-miss than you might imagine, with much stumbling and groping after phantoms. But it is exactly this "not knowing," this puzzling over thorny questions or inexplicable data, that gets researchers into the lab early and keeps them there late, the thing that propels them, the very driving force of science. Firestein shows how scientists use ignorance to program their work, to identify what should be done, what the next steps are, and where they should concentrate their energies. And he includes a catalog of how scientists use ignorance, consciously or unconsciously--a remarkable range of approaches that includes looking for connections to other research, revisiting apparently settled questions, using small questions to get at big ones, and tackling a problem simply out of curiosity. The book concludes with four case histories--in cognitive psychology, theoretical physics, astronomy, and neuroscience--that provide a feel for the nuts and bolts of ignorance, the day-to-day battle that goes on in scientific laboratories and in scientific minds with questions that range from the quotidian to the profound.

Turning the conventional idea about science on its head, Ignorance opens a new window on the true nature of research. It is a must-read for anyone curious about science."
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by WiseOne » Tue Jul 28, 2020 9:20 am

Really good discussion guys!!!!

If you modify "science" to mean "good science" then yes, that will exclude more than half of the peer-reviewed literature. Since I do a lot of reviewing I can definitely confirm how much crap is out there. Often I'll review a paper for a journal, reject it for clearly listed reasons, and then see it published elsewhere almost exactly in the same form as what I reviewed. The best defense is to stick with the traditional, higher impact journals. There are a ton of predatory online journals out there that are mostly filled with rejects from the traditional journals. Anything from World Scientific, Hindawi, or that is published out of China should be on your "ignore" list.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Mark Leavy » Tue Jul 28, 2020 10:38 am

Mountaineer wrote:
Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:19 am
You might enjoy this book if you haven't read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance
That looks good, Mountaineer, thank you.
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:14 pm

Mark Leavy wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:31 pm
glennds wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:18 pm
In reality, I think any Trump decisions regarding the pandemic are made solely through the lens of his personal political interests. It does not appear that his political interests will in any way align with what might be indicated by science.
As a lifelong scientist, I am always surprised when people refer to "science" as if it were some guiding light.
My experience is that very little of what goes by the name of science today is actually repeatable, provable and well tested.
Most of it is conjecture by morons.

The majority of my career has been in hard science. Math, physics, optics, chemistry, electronics. I would say that 50% of the peer reviewed technical papers that I read were pure bullshit. Either not understanding statistics, or pure failures of logic or adulterating the experiments. I don't attribute it to malice, just inexperience. Recent college graduates. Yet these are all published papers.

Over the last 20 years or so, I have also been reading medical papers. I was shocked that the amount of sheer ignorance was even higher than in physics papers. Granted, I'm not as up on biology as the other sciences, but I don't have to be to spot errors in math, statistics and logic. I would put the validity of medical research papers at around 10% or less.

It truly bogles the mind.

Please, please, don't cite "science" as your final arbiter. If you can't reproduce the results yourself - via math or experiment or mental exercise... take it with a grain of salt. It might be right, but science is no priesthood.
I would never have guessed that 90% or more of published medical research might be junk, conjecture by morons as you put it.
So if I do not have the educational background or resources to conduct controlled medical experiments myself, then what's a guy to do if he wants to get informed?
Can public organizations like NIH, WHO be trusted?
What about publications like JAMA or the Lancet?
Institutions like Mayo, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard?
Or do you look to some other source?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by glennds » Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:36 pm

glennds wrote:
Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:14 pm
Mark Leavy wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:31 pm
glennds wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:18 pm
In reality, I think any Trump decisions regarding the pandemic are made solely through the lens of his personal political interests. It does not appear that his political interests will in any way align with what might be indicated by science.
As a lifelong scientist, I am always surprised when people refer to "science" as if it were some guiding light.
My experience is that very little of what goes by the name of science today is actually repeatable, provable and well tested.
Most of it is conjecture by morons.

The majority of my career has been in hard science. Math, physics, optics, chemistry, electronics. I would say that 50% of the peer reviewed technical papers that I read were pure bullshit. Either not understanding statistics, or pure failures of logic or adulterating the experiments. I don't attribute it to malice, just inexperience. Recent college graduates. Yet these are all published papers.

Over the last 20 years or so, I have also been reading medical papers. I was shocked that the amount of sheer ignorance was even higher than in physics papers. Granted, I'm not as up on biology as the other sciences, but I don't have to be to spot errors in math, statistics and logic. I would put the validity of medical research papers at around 10% or less.

It truly bogles the mind.

Please, please, don't cite "science" as your final arbiter. If you can't reproduce the results yourself - via math or experiment or mental exercise... take it with a grain of salt. It might be right, but science is no priesthood.
My goodness. I would never have guessed that 90% or more of published medical research might be junk, conjecture by morons as you put it!
So if I do not have the educational background or resources to conduct controlled medical experiments myself, then what's a guy to do if he wants to get informed?
Can public organizations like NIH, WHO be trusted?
What about publications like JAMA or the Lancet, or NEJM?
Institutions like Mayo, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard?
Or do you look to some other source?
Or are you in a position to be conducting your own DIY Covid-19 research and experimentation?
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Re: Suggestions for how Trump could do better

Post by Mark Leavy » Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:22 pm

glennds wrote:
Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:14 pm
I would never have guessed that 90% or more of published medical research might be junk, conjecture by morons as you put it.
So if I do not have the educational background or resources to conduct controlled medical experiments myself, then what's a guy to do if he wants to get informed?
Can public organizations like NIH, WHO be trusted?
What about publications like JAMA or the Lancet?
Institutions like Mayo, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard?
Or do you look to some other source?
I honestly don't know the answer. My 90% was pulled out of my ass, but I don't think it is far off.
WiseOne's advice seems the most reasonable. But even then, most of the population can't read a study and understand it.

I don't know. Relying on flash in the pan reporting: "New study from xxx says yyy" is a disaster.

What do non-techie folks on this board do for sanity?
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