4 ms·

I know nothing about microbiome research. However, I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increas

I know nothing about microbiome research. However, I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increase. This just seems more like typical human advancement and dissemination of knowledge. For instance, I'm sure you'd find a similar trend with "computer", "solar energy" and "global warming". Someone discovers something and it takes a while for everyone to catch on. However, if the concept has legs, more and more research will take place until we understand the concept enough for it to become a part of every day life.

nonbel 10y ago
>"I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increase. This just seems more like typical human advancement and dissemination of knowledge." I mean that the direction things are going it will eventually be discovered that "everything is correlated with everything else"... in hundreds of years. Why not just assume that to begin with? Take it as a first principle. Instead what we care about is measuring the quantitative relationships (what functional form, etc) between various factors. Also, I just now looked at the paper. I cannot believe neuroscientists are still getting away with this. There is not a single scatter plot. Let's look at the highlights: - Gut microbes promote a-synuclein-mediated motor deficits and brain pathology - Depletion of gut bacteria reduces microglia activation - SCFAs modulate microglia and enhance PD pathophysiology - Human gut microbiota from PD patients induce enhanced motor dysfunction in mice So I expect to see scatter plots of: "# of gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "motor deficits" "a-synuclein levels" vs "motor deficits" "# of Gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "brain pathology" "a-synuclein levels" vs "brain pathology" "Gut bacteria levels" vs "microglia activation" "SCFA levels" vs "microglia activity" "SCFA levels" vs "PD pathophysiology" "# of human PD microbes" (or "% human PD microbes") vs "motor dysfunction" You can see the entire project was designed around seeing if there is a correlation, which we should already assume is true. Instead we should be looking at those scatter plots, so we can achieve the useful goal of discerning the relationship between various biological phenomena.

nonbel 10y ago

>"I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increase. This just seems more like typical human advancement and dissemination of knowledge." I mean that the direction things are going it will eventually be discovered that "everything is correlated with everything else"... in hundreds of years. Why not just assume that to begin with? Take it as a first principle. Instead what we care about is measuring the quantitative relationships (what functional form, etc) between various factors. Also, I just now looked at the paper. I cannot believe neuroscientists are still getting away with this. There is not a single scatter plot. Let's look at the highlights: - Gut microbes promote a-synuclein-mediated motor deficits and brain pathology - Depletion of gut bacteria reduces microglia activation - SCFAs modulate microglia and enhance PD pathophysiology - Human gut microbiota from PD patients induce enhanced motor dysfunction in mice So I expect to see scatter plots of: "# of gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "motor deficits" "a-synuclein levels" vs "motor deficits" "# of Gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "brain pathology" "a-synuclein levels" vs "brain pathology" "Gut bacteria levels" vs "microglia activation" "SCFA levels" vs "microglia activity" "SCFA levels" vs "PD pathophysiology" "# of human PD microbes" (or "% human PD microbes") vs "motor dysfunction" You can see the entire project was designed around seeing if there is a correlation, which we should already assume is true. Instead we should be looking at those scatter plots, so we can achieve the useful goal of discerning the relationship between various biological phenomena.