So, it turns out Scott Alexander has written a response to my analysis of his original article on ivermectin. I will, of course, be writing a counter-response, but before I do that, I want to read through the entirety of the article. We should be live in about 5 minutes from now, here:
Feb 2, 2023·edited Feb 2, 2023Liked by Alexandros Marinos
Anyone who has followed Alexandros will find this new response deeply disingenuous and unsatisfying, but it is par for Scott's MO when he throws out his whole rationalist dogma to just go with his gut:
1. Decent steelman review of the opposing side
2. Humorous and sincere response
3. Very lengthy review of some individual points with apparent concessions
4. Brief hand waving dismissal of the strongest and most relevant points (in this case the fundamental problems with the large industry funded studies that suffer conflicts of interest and which used *materially different protocols* from the studies on IP-protected drugs)
5. Quick, poorly-defended Hail Mary (i.e. parasites, new studies)
6. Non-sequitur conclusion and declaration of *even greater* victory.
This has been an especially interesting debate because Scott is rhetorically much more effective while Alexandros has been the dutiful rationalist. I can see why skimmers side with Scott.
1: I dont think you can discuss publication bias in this context, without mentioning unitaid/hill/lawrie. Are you sure its those 3 well funded dots at the bottom of the graph you want to take as the baseline for funnel plot truth? Dont be too quick to say no, because im sure there will be plenty of 20M grants for you otherwise!
2: Where did those supposed 100s of unpublished negative IVM trials go? While I agree publication bias is a thing; how would you have been able to hide those, in a climate like this? Those trials involve a lot of researchers, and many more participants. Can we identify a single one such unpublished trial? Every single negative IVM study was shown as trending on google news to me for days; even if no journal would even touch it! (cough TOGETHER) This has never happened with any drug (nor positive IVM trials!) Thats the climate we are actually talking about. It really stretches my credulity beyond belief that those 100s of unpublished studies balancing out the funnel plot actually existed. It is hard to quantify these things using generally agreed upon methodology; yet I rank this as about a similar certainty as 'cogity, ergo sum'.
3: cannabis is a massive for profit industry in the US (10B a year), with a lot of people defending it with literal religious zeal. Whats wrong with these people, that they cant just un-publish a few negative trials? Are they too high on their own supply for such contrived plans? Or is 'publication bias' indeed far too simplistic an explanation?
- He is still an order of magnitude more hyped about the worms hypothesis then I am
- Some strong words being levelled at ivmmeta. It would be nice if those were balanced out with an actual critique, beyond 'I dont like their outcomes'. It seems to me ivmmeta and sister sites results are broadly consistent with the notion, that many of the nasty sides of covid are excessive inflammation, and lo and behold; most widely agreed upon inflammation-modulators show measurable effect against bad outcomes.
I've been thinking recently that the best case against ivermectin was impracticality. Giving a proper dose, length, and stage (early, during viral replication), it clearly works well. But maybe a lot of people wouldn't have sought treatment until inflammatory phase when the disease is much harder to treat. Probably still treatable but much more damage potential.
Now I'm seeing COVID PSAs all over national TV with celebrities telling us to "have a plan", "act fast", and "talk to your doctor about oral treatments". So it was practical if public health was the goal rather than free Pfizer marketing.
"No matter how cynical you are, you're still being naive."
I have not watched the video yet. Prefer to speedread transcripts for time. I did comment on Scotts piece after reading it, as I have the read 21 parts Alex wrote. My comment on his article is here. Same respectful sentiments to Alex really.
I have followed this since the start. In many respects, "can't see the wood for the trees" comes to mind. I am pro ivermectin but it is not available to me here in the UK so For prophylaxis I take Multivitamins, C, D3, zinc AND Quercetin as the ionophore. (Mercola Qurcetin articles and other studies show benefit).Got cold like symptoms once in 3 years. Never masked, never tested with PCR so I do not know if I had Covid. However, I now have parosmia so smell and taste ruined. Onion, garlic and certain toiletries are disgusting to me now. Meanwhile, not a hysterical Alex Jones type analysis....
https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/02/01/covid-19-vaccine-a-military-response-to-a-public-health-threat/ covers the framework and mechanism building on Katherine Watt and Sasha Latypova work around the bioweapon. Long but thorough. Far more pressing than a spat about a suppressed Nobel prize winning, cheap, safe and effective molecule that has been around for decades. Remember, EUAs predicated on no treatments available. Dont get me started on HCQ and the murderous Oxford overdosing trial. Dont worry after all is over we can Build Back Better. I mean us, not Schwab, Tedros, Gates, Fink and their cronies.
Unfortunately I saw this too late & Rumble does not work in France due to a conflict between France & Rumble ...
About Scott's answer. The problem is that even I lost the thread & patience to finish it. (And to be honest, your articles sometimes run in the same problem.) And I am very interested in this!
However, his conclusion seems odd after acknowledging several, imho important, errors that you pointed out. My biggest disappointment is that he acknowledges ivmmeta.com as a fantastic site but then does not use it in any way. It is a fantastic innovative tool that we never had before. E.g. he ignores the 30 newer studies since his article and of course he totally ignores all observational studies. If he does not believe the outcome of their automatic meta-study, he should indicate where they are wrong and ask them to correct. It is quite unbelievable that he does not leverage it in anyway.
My take therefore is that his take is still very much only based on intuition. However, I distinctly have the feeling that he will not touch this subject again. Ever. And also the commenters are not even remotely interested in finding out. There is a distinct sense of been there, done that, shut up.
Sadly, to me it looks like a failure of rationality if even Scott has to trust his gut feeling over actual analysis.
I've been running around with an idea for some time now. Twitter should organize a number of _courts_ every week. Topics could be selected by a way to raise money for the costs. The top funded topics would be elected. Twitter would then randomly choose 18 people for well paid jury duty. A professional judge would preside. The pro and con side would have professional lawyers, also paid for. It should follow a strict format. The proceedings should be available on video and all evidence online. I think this is the only way to provide a counterweight to the domination of these stories by a few interested parties. Maybe should send this to Elon Musk? Twitter courts! :-)
Did you ever do a written response and I missed it? Some people do still care about all this; and a written article would be a lot more digestible than your initial reaction.
Should we not all be able to agree that we can estimate an upper bound on the influence of publication bias, by separately funnelling pre-registered trials?
I suppose it also has its limits; pre-registered trial are likely later and bigger trials (and juicier target for buying of conclusions). But insofar as the pre-registered trials (including pre-registered and not0completed trials as presumed negative trials?) do not tell a different story, publication bias can not be the answer.
Anyone who has followed Alexandros will find this new response deeply disingenuous and unsatisfying, but it is par for Scott's MO when he throws out his whole rationalist dogma to just go with his gut:
1. Decent steelman review of the opposing side
2. Humorous and sincere response
3. Very lengthy review of some individual points with apparent concessions
4. Brief hand waving dismissal of the strongest and most relevant points (in this case the fundamental problems with the large industry funded studies that suffer conflicts of interest and which used *materially different protocols* from the studies on IP-protected drugs)
5. Quick, poorly-defended Hail Mary (i.e. parasites, new studies)
6. Non-sequitur conclusion and declaration of *even greater* victory.
This has been an especially interesting debate because Scott is rhetorically much more effective while Alexandros has been the dutiful rationalist. I can see why skimmers side with Scott.
Funnel plot can also be due to politicized science. Big study = big money = orthodox result.
Ignoring ACTIV6 flaws should count as ignorance.
Good to see civil debate progress.
My initial takeaways from his response:
- We diverge on publication bias.
1: I dont think you can discuss publication bias in this context, without mentioning unitaid/hill/lawrie. Are you sure its those 3 well funded dots at the bottom of the graph you want to take as the baseline for funnel plot truth? Dont be too quick to say no, because im sure there will be plenty of 20M grants for you otherwise!
2: Where did those supposed 100s of unpublished negative IVM trials go? While I agree publication bias is a thing; how would you have been able to hide those, in a climate like this? Those trials involve a lot of researchers, and many more participants. Can we identify a single one such unpublished trial? Every single negative IVM study was shown as trending on google news to me for days; even if no journal would even touch it! (cough TOGETHER) This has never happened with any drug (nor positive IVM trials!) Thats the climate we are actually talking about. It really stretches my credulity beyond belief that those 100s of unpublished studies balancing out the funnel plot actually existed. It is hard to quantify these things using generally agreed upon methodology; yet I rank this as about a similar certainty as 'cogity, ergo sum'.
3: cannabis is a massive for profit industry in the US (10B a year), with a lot of people defending it with literal religious zeal. Whats wrong with these people, that they cant just un-publish a few negative trials? Are they too high on their own supply for such contrived plans? Or is 'publication bias' indeed far too simplistic an explanation?
- He is still an order of magnitude more hyped about the worms hypothesis then I am
- Some strong words being levelled at ivmmeta. It would be nice if those were balanced out with an actual critique, beyond 'I dont like their outcomes'. It seems to me ivmmeta and sister sites results are broadly consistent with the notion, that many of the nasty sides of covid are excessive inflammation, and lo and behold; most widely agreed upon inflammation-modulators show measurable effect against bad outcomes.
I've been thinking recently that the best case against ivermectin was impracticality. Giving a proper dose, length, and stage (early, during viral replication), it clearly works well. But maybe a lot of people wouldn't have sought treatment until inflammatory phase when the disease is much harder to treat. Probably still treatable but much more damage potential.
Now I'm seeing COVID PSAs all over national TV with celebrities telling us to "have a plan", "act fast", and "talk to your doctor about oral treatments". So it was practical if public health was the goal rather than free Pfizer marketing.
"No matter how cynical you are, you're still being naive."
I have not watched the video yet. Prefer to speedread transcripts for time. I did comment on Scotts piece after reading it, as I have the read 21 parts Alex wrote. My comment on his article is here. Same respectful sentiments to Alex really.
I have followed this since the start. In many respects, "can't see the wood for the trees" comes to mind. I am pro ivermectin but it is not available to me here in the UK so For prophylaxis I take Multivitamins, C, D3, zinc AND Quercetin as the ionophore. (Mercola Qurcetin articles and other studies show benefit).Got cold like symptoms once in 3 years. Never masked, never tested with PCR so I do not know if I had Covid. However, I now have parosmia so smell and taste ruined. Onion, garlic and certain toiletries are disgusting to me now. Meanwhile, not a hysterical Alex Jones type analysis....
https://21stcenturywire.com/2023/02/01/covid-19-vaccine-a-military-response-to-a-public-health-threat/ covers the framework and mechanism building on Katherine Watt and Sasha Latypova work around the bioweapon. Long but thorough. Far more pressing than a spat about a suppressed Nobel prize winning, cheap, safe and effective molecule that has been around for decades. Remember, EUAs predicated on no treatments available. Dont get me started on HCQ and the murderous Oxford overdosing trial. Dont worry after all is over we can Build Back Better. I mean us, not Schwab, Tedros, Gates, Fink and their cronies.
Unfortunately I saw this too late & Rumble does not work in France due to a conflict between France & Rumble ...
About Scott's answer. The problem is that even I lost the thread & patience to finish it. (And to be honest, your articles sometimes run in the same problem.) And I am very interested in this!
However, his conclusion seems odd after acknowledging several, imho important, errors that you pointed out. My biggest disappointment is that he acknowledges ivmmeta.com as a fantastic site but then does not use it in any way. It is a fantastic innovative tool that we never had before. E.g. he ignores the 30 newer studies since his article and of course he totally ignores all observational studies. If he does not believe the outcome of their automatic meta-study, he should indicate where they are wrong and ask them to correct. It is quite unbelievable that he does not leverage it in anyway.
My take therefore is that his take is still very much only based on intuition. However, I distinctly have the feeling that he will not touch this subject again. Ever. And also the commenters are not even remotely interested in finding out. There is a distinct sense of been there, done that, shut up.
Sadly, to me it looks like a failure of rationality if even Scott has to trust his gut feeling over actual analysis.
I've been running around with an idea for some time now. Twitter should organize a number of _courts_ every week. Topics could be selected by a way to raise money for the costs. The top funded topics would be elected. Twitter would then randomly choose 18 people for well paid jury duty. A professional judge would preside. The pro and con side would have professional lawyers, also paid for. It should follow a strict format. The proceedings should be available on video and all evidence online. I think this is the only way to provide a counterweight to the domination of these stories by a few interested parties. Maybe should send this to Elon Musk? Twitter courts! :-)
Did you ever do a written response and I missed it? Some people do still care about all this; and a written article would be a lot more digestible than your initial reaction.
One more beating of this dead horse (dewormer):
Should we not all be able to agree that we can estimate an upper bound on the influence of publication bias, by separately funnelling pre-registered trials?
I suppose it also has its limits; pre-registered trial are likely later and bigger trials (and juicier target for buying of conclusions). But insofar as the pre-registered trials (including pre-registered and not0completed trials as presumed negative trials?) do not tell a different story, publication bias can not be the answer.
You've not started yet, right? Don't see anything.