Sep 3, 2022·edited Sep 4, 2022Liked by Alexandros Marinos
Irreverence can be a distinct advantage when evaluating publications; one is free to read with an eye unclouded by admiration-fueled apologia.
The first thing that stood out about Scott Alexander's analysis was his choice of sentence modifiers. They illustrated the focus of his bias. Combined with his refusal to acknowledge the fact of overdose, those combined factors reduce his credibility to the point of rendering him irrelevant.
Given his canonization among intellectuals, this series of essays was necessary.
About five years ago, idle curiosity led me to review the positions of a portion of the "anti-vax community." I was quite surprised at the level of dishonesty exhibited by vaccine cheerleaders. I'd always thought inoculation a "good" form of prophylaxis, but also believed that fellow advocates retained some semblance of objectivity.
My belief was, as can so often be the case, unfounded. This was made plain with the revelation that mothers asking if the children's schedule might benefit from a slower pacing, were being vilified as "anti-vaxers," merely by asking an innocent question.
When I then asked that same question of a few biologists and several researchers, the response was a series of rants and screeds about Wakefield being a charlatan and "safe and effective, no evidence to the contrary, ever" etc. etc. ad nauseum.
At the end of a lengthy series of annoying interrogatories, the admission was finally made that responding to a specific question with bromides and calumny was considered essential to preventing untutored laypersons from experiencing doubt about any representations made by inoculation advocates.
I thought such an approach dishonest and casually murderous, given the record of the pharmaceutical industry's safety record, tantamount to an injunction to uncritically accept design flaws and manufacturing defects.
Conflating intellect with benevolence appears to be the founding precept of an ever-metastasizing secular religion. I can respect articles of faith, but draw a hard line when such devotion leads to Guyana.
Many of our brightest minds are exhibiting a willingness to sacrifice intellectual integrity on an altar of moral bankruptcy, (assuming that the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy remains a moral imperative.)
Many thanks for doing the work Scott should have done, Alexandros. Someone had to do it, and you were elected.
I'm going down the anti-vax rabbit hole now and I keep waiting for the part where the craziness stops...but the craziness isn't from the anti-vax side. To try to give both sides a voice I've been reading books by Dr. Paul Offit but its backfiring badly. The more I read of the anti-vax stuff the more Offit's arguments come off as incomplete and backed by weak science. As far as the history of vaccination goes, which he offers in the book vaccinated, it comes off as a horror show. Maybe I just need to find another vaccine proponent. Or maybe its all been a lot worse than we realized for a long, long time.
I wish you the best of luck with it, Dennis. The subject has been so polluted with hyperbole and motivated reasoning that one spends more time discarding unsupported assertions and mentally proofreading appeals to emotion than reviewing coherent arguments.
It seemed to me a process of escalation and dubious extrapolation, akin to viewing a tennis match with each service being wilder and more powerful than that which preceded it.
I suppose we can expect no less. There is always uncertainty, and where compliance of any sort is involved, oversimplification and deliberately spurious correlation seem to be employed with wild abandon.
The apathetic public does not do well with uncertainty. Where any particular intervention is deemed relatively safe and effective within a strictly utilitarian calculus, the modifier that admits to uncertainty is redacted as a means of obtaining confidence.
Then, when the inevitable consequence of utilitarianism becomes manifest, confidence wanes but, rather than presenting a forthright framework of acknowledged sacrifice, what began as simple obscurantism elevates to the level of outright duplicity.
That's the dynamic to which I refer with the above "tennis match" analogy. Withe each volley, the hyperbole from each side of the net grows.
The result is, shall we say..... suboptimal?
If you are determined to continue with your investigations, prepare to be mentally overshadowed by an ominously unstable, looming intellectual "discard pile" of rejected assertion.
Sep 2, 2022·edited Sep 2, 2022Liked by Alexandros Marinos
I wonder what Scott would say about the weirdness of Harvard School of Public Health researchers saying HCQ works now, but holding back beside prophylaxis when they skip all distinction between early and late treatment of an antiviral.
Hi Alexandros, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think I saw an analysis of Behara et al? Indian healthcare prophylaxis study that showed a very large reduction in Covid with IVM prophylaxis.
Not a DB RCT but personally I thought that was a landmark study in that it had large numbers and showed a positive effect that was seemingly above and beyond the influence of bias.
In the setting of “we need to compromise our usual standards of evidence because it is an emergency” that was used to justify the roll out of the vaccines, it would appear to me that the Behara study was enough to justify twice weekly prophylaxis in healthcare workers. Certainly appeared to do vary little harm.
If you haven’t covered it I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this one
Thanks. For some reason now when I try to open the original Alexander article I can only read half of it. From memory I thought he discussed Behara but couldn’t read the article to check. Could have been GM-K. Either way, it was dismissed rapidly by one of the two.
No sweat, it’s not a perfect study but is large, shows very little harm and appears to protect front line workers so I could never understand why it wasn’t implemented more widely
I've been following these posts very closely. Thanks so much for sharing your critique. It's a master-class of what can go wrong when evaluating clinical trials.
If "myside bias" is the operative problem, as I believe it must be, then the final task should be to specify as precisely as possible what "the side" is.
True. The link below provides a brief overview of the historical shifts in American elites. It ends by identifying the professions of the current establishment:
"At a moment when billionaires can successfully masquerade as “populists,” gone are the “economic royalists” from our political discourse. The real elites are journalists, researchers, and college professors. They now pose the greatest threat to the nation." The last sentence apparently mocking the idea that such an elite could be dangerous.
As I read the 2017 article, it sees such an elite as a good thing. With the hindsight of the failure to control SARS-2, the failure to avoid the Ukrainian war, and God-forbid a looming conflict with China, I believe such an elite is frankly hellish.
But rationalists CANNOT be irrational- it's in their name.
Don't you get it? Rationalist fight irrationality so if you criticize a rationalist you are literally acting irrational. Why can't you understand that everything they say is rational by virtue of their name?
Irreverence can be a distinct advantage when evaluating publications; one is free to read with an eye unclouded by admiration-fueled apologia.
The first thing that stood out about Scott Alexander's analysis was his choice of sentence modifiers. They illustrated the focus of his bias. Combined with his refusal to acknowledge the fact of overdose, those combined factors reduce his credibility to the point of rendering him irrelevant.
Given his canonization among intellectuals, this series of essays was necessary.
About five years ago, idle curiosity led me to review the positions of a portion of the "anti-vax community." I was quite surprised at the level of dishonesty exhibited by vaccine cheerleaders. I'd always thought inoculation a "good" form of prophylaxis, but also believed that fellow advocates retained some semblance of objectivity.
My belief was, as can so often be the case, unfounded. This was made plain with the revelation that mothers asking if the children's schedule might benefit from a slower pacing, were being vilified as "anti-vaxers," merely by asking an innocent question.
When I then asked that same question of a few biologists and several researchers, the response was a series of rants and screeds about Wakefield being a charlatan and "safe and effective, no evidence to the contrary, ever" etc. etc. ad nauseum.
At the end of a lengthy series of annoying interrogatories, the admission was finally made that responding to a specific question with bromides and calumny was considered essential to preventing untutored laypersons from experiencing doubt about any representations made by inoculation advocates.
I thought such an approach dishonest and casually murderous, given the record of the pharmaceutical industry's safety record, tantamount to an injunction to uncritically accept design flaws and manufacturing defects.
Conflating intellect with benevolence appears to be the founding precept of an ever-metastasizing secular religion. I can respect articles of faith, but draw a hard line when such devotion leads to Guyana.
Many of our brightest minds are exhibiting a willingness to sacrifice intellectual integrity on an altar of moral bankruptcy, (assuming that the right to self-determination and bodily autonomy remains a moral imperative.)
Many thanks for doing the work Scott should have done, Alexandros. Someone had to do it, and you were elected.
Clear and wise words Ted. How can we follow you on Twitter?
I'm going down the anti-vax rabbit hole now and I keep waiting for the part where the craziness stops...but the craziness isn't from the anti-vax side. To try to give both sides a voice I've been reading books by Dr. Paul Offit but its backfiring badly. The more I read of the anti-vax stuff the more Offit's arguments come off as incomplete and backed by weak science. As far as the history of vaccination goes, which he offers in the book vaccinated, it comes off as a horror show. Maybe I just need to find another vaccine proponent. Or maybe its all been a lot worse than we realized for a long, long time.
I wish you the best of luck with it, Dennis. The subject has been so polluted with hyperbole and motivated reasoning that one spends more time discarding unsupported assertions and mentally proofreading appeals to emotion than reviewing coherent arguments.
It seemed to me a process of escalation and dubious extrapolation, akin to viewing a tennis match with each service being wilder and more powerful than that which preceded it.
I suppose we can expect no less. There is always uncertainty, and where compliance of any sort is involved, oversimplification and deliberately spurious correlation seem to be employed with wild abandon.
The apathetic public does not do well with uncertainty. Where any particular intervention is deemed relatively safe and effective within a strictly utilitarian calculus, the modifier that admits to uncertainty is redacted as a means of obtaining confidence.
Then, when the inevitable consequence of utilitarianism becomes manifest, confidence wanes but, rather than presenting a forthright framework of acknowledged sacrifice, what began as simple obscurantism elevates to the level of outright duplicity.
That's the dynamic to which I refer with the above "tennis match" analogy. Withe each volley, the hyperbole from each side of the net grows.
The result is, shall we say..... suboptimal?
If you are determined to continue with your investigations, prepare to be mentally overshadowed by an ominously unstable, looming intellectual "discard pile" of rejected assertion.
I wonder what Scott would say about the weirdness of Harvard School of Public Health researchers saying HCQ works now, but holding back beside prophylaxis when they skip all distinction between early and late treatment of an antiviral.
https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/harvard-meta-analysis-shows-statistically
Hi Alexandros, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think I saw an analysis of Behara et al? Indian healthcare prophylaxis study that showed a very large reduction in Covid with IVM prophylaxis.
Not a DB RCT but personally I thought that was a landmark study in that it had large numbers and showed a positive effect that was seemingly above and beyond the influence of bias.
In the setting of “we need to compromise our usual standards of evidence because it is an emergency” that was used to justify the roll out of the vaccines, it would appear to me that the Behara study was enough to justify twice weekly prophylaxis in healthcare workers. Certainly appeared to do vary little harm.
If you haven’t covered it I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this one
I've only covered the studies Scott did, which were early treatment studies. I'll give the study a look, but no promises 😁
Thanks. For some reason now when I try to open the original Alexander article I can only read half of it. From memory I thought he discussed Behara but couldn’t read the article to check. Could have been GM-K. Either way, it was dismissed rapidly by one of the two.
No sweat, it’s not a perfect study but is large, shows very little harm and appears to protect front line workers so I could never understand why it wasn’t implemented more widely
I've been following these posts very closely. Thanks so much for sharing your critique. It's a master-class of what can go wrong when evaluating clinical trials.
Thank you for your hard work on this!!
If "myside bias" is the operative problem, as I believe it must be, then the final task should be to specify as precisely as possible what "the side" is.
The institutional establishment, I'm afraid...
Correct, and that establishment is both culturally and genetically different than the one that was in power up until 1950.
And yet, it's that establishment that created the conditions for this one to arise...
True. The link below provides a brief overview of the historical shifts in American elites. It ends by identifying the professions of the current establishment:
"At a moment when billionaires can successfully masquerade as “populists,” gone are the “economic royalists” from our political discourse. The real elites are journalists, researchers, and college professors. They now pose the greatest threat to the nation." The last sentence apparently mocking the idea that such an elite could be dangerous.
As I read the 2017 article, it sees such an elite as a good thing. With the hindsight of the failure to control SARS-2, the failure to avoid the Ukrainian war, and God-forbid a looming conflict with China, I believe such an elite is frankly hellish.
https://origins.osu.edu/article/fat-cats-egg-heads-changing-american-elite?language_content_entity=en
Damn, you leave no stone unturned!
But rationalists CANNOT be irrational- it's in their name.
Don't you get it? Rationalist fight irrationality so if you criticize a rationalist you are literally acting irrational. Why can't you understand that everything they say is rational by virtue of their name?