Respectful Insolence

I can only recommend this article about bmj: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/11/15/wtf-happened-to-the-bmj/

The sad fact of the situation that argument by some proxy does not really work. A person goes like "Here is what my scientist say!" and the others are like "No, you are wrong! Here is what my scientist say". It is quite funny thing. But in the link you posted >https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest-new-old-w… I often found that site to be less trustworthy because of a large part of the beginning of the article dedicated to Ad hominm attack. The most insulting is that they condemn admonim attackes, as and attemt to some kind of virtue signalling, and proceed to do it anyway. This can be consistently observed in articles of similar nature in that site. Again, since I am not able to judge the article technically, I take this as an indication that the author is extremely biased and is trying to mislead readers.

Your characterization of the blog post lacks any reference to the blog post. Here's one: > Thacker’s main source was a “whistleblower” named Brook Jackson, who had worked at Ventavia for only two weeks. As I described, the allegations were either big nothingburgers that wouldn’t have affected the quality of the data (e.g., not appropriately using sharps containers to dispose of sharps) or were mainly insinuated and implied without actual evidence (e.g., unblinding or even falsifying clinical trial data). The article follows a familiar format for disinformation. Very definitive and serious accusations are leveled very early in the article, followed much later in the article by “facts” that do not actually substantiate such definitive and serious allegations. ----- It might actually help if I include a better link, what I posted was actually a follow-up that was the first to come up in my history: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/11/15/wtf-happened-to-the-bmj/

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/26/christian-elliots-18-reason… > This is a half-truth that antivaxxers just love. It’s a half-truth in that, yes, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 did require that claims for vaccine injury go through a special “Vaccine Court”, setting up a system called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP or VICP), with the compensation fund funded by a tax on each dose of vaccine. However, the reason for this act was that there were so many dubious lawsuits being filed in the wake of the scare over the DPT vaccine in the 1980s that there was a real fear that vaccine manufacturers would simply stop supplying vaccines to the US due to liability concerns. Moreover, as I’ve discussed many times, the Vaccine Court is actually an easier court for complainants than standard civil court. The standards of evidence are, as has been described, 50% and a feather, the court allows “theories of causation” that no regular court would allow, and there are certain “table injuries” known to be caused by vaccines for which compensation is automatic. Even better for complainants, win or lose, the Court pays reasonable court costs. Moreover, if complainants fail, they can still take their case to federal civil court. The law only mandates that they first go through the Vaccine Court.

As this needs clarified: You’re the one who brought up the state’s overriding “interference” in parental decisions that impact their sick children. You’re the one bringing black-white thinking to a complex and difficult problem space that is every shade of gray. The pseudo-libertarian argument against this—that parents have absolute rights over their own children and no-one else (e.g. the state) has no right to override that, hands carte blanche to all misguided and abusive parents, including those who rape and murder their kids—not just the ones you seek to excuse. It is a warped argument from authority, where the only authority recognized is the parent’s own. You dug that hole for yourself when you used Prince Rehan and Daniel Hauser as body shields in your own defense. If the state was torturing them for profit or glory, you’d have a point. You don’t: the state was protecting those children’s right to life in response to misguided or delusional parents who believe they know better, and act on those beliefs without even considering the harm they will cause if those beliefs are wrong. .. Yeah, chemo for blood cancers is tough as hell. (Though still better than it used to be.) Makes patients feel sick as a dog. Oncologists use it not because they enjoy it, but because it is the best treatment available right now. Fingers crossed that CAR-T renders it obsolete over the next decade or two, and children who develop leukemia 20 years from now will enjoy that new improved…

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2011/12/12/what-dr-stanislaw-burzy… Sounds more like a Doctor preying on desperate people who will try anything for a cure and charging them too much for it.

Beware Vinay Prasad: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2022/07/27/john-ioannidis-and-vina…

He was not "one of the early inventors of mRNA vaccines". He admitted as much when pressed on it: https://www.logically.ai/factchecks/library/3aa2eefd The only reason anyone started thinking he _had_ invented the mRNA vaccine was his wife editing his Wikipedia article to claim that he had: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/07/13/is-mrna-vaccine-inventor-ro…

Interesting discussion of Dr. Malone: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/07/13/is-mrna-vaccine-inventor-ro…

It wasn't Lyme. Kris Kirstofferson is a victim of quackery: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2016/07/08/kris-kristofferson-the-late…

I found this link [0] that seems to debunk, in a lot of detail, the congressional testimony of these two physicists on the specifics of their claims for evidence of gain of function manipulation in the gentic sequence of covid-19. That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19 evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a lab. [0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest-new-old-w… [1] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3

Contrarian view: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/29/no-theres-no-good-evidence-…

No: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/02/10/medical-error-third-most-co…

This study is only interesting as a prerequisite for reading this... https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/05/29/hooker-and-miller-publish-t… And, as mentioned here (among other places), https://twitter.com/gorskon/status/1266391373592309761... "Brian Hooker and Neil Z. Miller, [are] two antivaccine propagandists disguising themselves as scientists."

This is a much better and thorough critique than I could write up: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/03/zelenko-smith-abandoning-ev…

Not very surprising given the quality of the studies that this fad is based on: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/03/zelenko-smith-abandoning-ev… That's a long read, but it's pretty damning. TL;DR: China says "hey, this stuff might work". French doctor conducts two very sketchy rapid-fire studies, then starts promoting himself on TV, including on Dr. Oz. No red flags there, right?

Or for a cynical (but evidence based) rebuttal to this bullshit, have a look here - https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/16/reiki-in-the-atlantic/ It's just another nonsense, unscientific, 'energy healing' pile of woo trying to get itself integrated into medicine.

In your subsequent comment you add the important point - this is Germany. Having lived both in Germany and (now) in China, i can confirm that both of these countries have a problem with quack medicine. I've never been anywhere else in the world where you need to argue with pharmacists to persuade them to sell you evidence-based medicine. In China there is some historical reason for it - Mao needed something to placate the peasants while trying to figure out how to provide healthcare to rural areas[0]. Unfortunately the government is still trying to figure that out. I don't know what the history is in Germany that caused it to be the way it is. [0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2019/05/29/mao-triumphant/

More quack science. See https://respectfulinsolence.com/2016/06/17/the-mend-protocol-for-alzhe… for a slightly less breathless account.

The senior author has a long history of bad science on autism and is funded by an anti-vax group. There's a [complete takedown of this bad science here]((https://respectfulinsolence.com/2017/11/29/christopher-exley-using-bad… There is a reason that this is published in the "Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology", and not in something more reputable.

It sounds like a useful technique, but I'm saying that what you're claiming is a far cry from what the paper claims. They're describing a fruitful research direction and outlining how you might get around certain problems (evaluating models is slow, retraining on inserts, etc.) Also, predicting power usage is a different problem than scheduling. It's not "managing Borg" by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not saying that's impossible, but it's not what was claimed. Also, what did Deep Blue lead to? I'm not saying it wasn't impressive, but it didn't generalize AFAIK. You are making a huge leap and claiming that a technique that isn't even deployed generalizes. What did Watson lead to? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607965/a-reality-check-for-ibms-ai-… https://respectfulinsolence.com/2017/09/18/ibm-watson-not-living-up-to… https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/05/watson-ibm-cancer/