6 ms·

"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that, at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars" being a

by nonbel 8y ago

"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that, at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars" being a success? The three that come to mind are: War on drugs: fail War on cancer: fail War on poverty: fail Why is the economist trying to link climate change to this?

SamUK96 8y ago
War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".
- nonbel 8y ago
  The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.
  - heyitsguay 8y ago
    Cancer is many diseases, that all happen to be characterized by uncontrolled cell growth. A "cure for cancer" is like a "cure for fever".
    - nonbel 8y ago
      Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Huh? You consider it a fail because we learned that there are many different kinds of Cancers? Yes a "one magic pill" option will probably never exist, but we can chip away at all forms of Cancer until they all have a cure. But realistically, this is not a war I think we can win in my lifetime. It's much bigger than people may have originally thought.
    - nonbel 8y ago
      Its just an excuse, you are talking about a field with 10% replication rate, and when they tried to start doing more replications it was too expensive to even figure out what generated the data so they had to drop 25% of the studies before even beginning. One guy even calling the literature "augean stables": https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-scales-back-ambitions-1.18938 https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-s... Every disease can be arbitrarily split or combined into multiple categories. It doesnt mean anything. Here is a cure for cancer: 1) Detect aneuploid cells that fail to show the initial steps of the response to extracellular apoptosis signals, and have been dividing more often than usual for that tissue/environment (eg you have to take into account wound healing, etc). 2) Kill those cells. This is technological problem, not a "cancer is many diseases" problem. Every problem can manifest in many ways and have multiple solutions. EDIT: Ref for "10% replication rate": >"scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (11%) cases." https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a More info in this (short) thread from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10687879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10687879
      - jmcgough 8y ago
        I know a lot of smart people who've devoted their lives to solving this problem. It's very easy for you to dismiss it as easy or say that researchers are incompetent when you haven't spent years working on cancer research in a wet lab.
        nonbel 8y ago
        I have worked in a "wet lab" for years, but not cancer research. The first 3 were largely (of course there is always learning going on) a waste because I didn't understand what statistical significance really meant. I can't really blame myself since neither did anyone else in my committee, department, or seemingly the entire area of research. But anyway this meant the whole project was misdesigned from the start (the design was standard). The next two were spent attempting to save the project by working 18 hour days almost constantly. In the end, despite what they claimed about doing it the usual way because "its so complicated, no one can come up with mathematical/computational models or actual predictions to test, no one can describe this or that in so much detail, etc", the actual truth was that it wasnt "too hard". It was that no one really cared about that. Instead they just wanted to know whether there were statistically significant differences anyway... From what I've read of the cancer literature it looks exactly the same, probably worse. And guess what, there's been no real progress made for decades on the topic I was studying either.
  - mohaine 8y ago
    Well, I don't think they just started calling it that for no reason. The fact that they they now know more means they are marking progress, even if it makes it harder to declare victory. The way I read it is that they were so far from a cure that they didn't even know what they were trying to achieve.
    - nonbel 8y ago
      Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877
steego 8y ago
I can't help but think that picking apart a magazine's headline is a huge distraction from an important issue, but I also can't help myself in pointing out how off the mark you with such a superficial observation. As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does not correlate, but to say efforts to reduce poverty have failed are just flat wrong. Cancer is an intractably complex disease, but to dismiss all efforts and advancements is also off the mark. Life expectancy for many types of cancers has improved significantly. Oncolytic viruses have been shown to treat some very advanced forms of cancer with profound results. I wish I could be more optimistic about the war on drugs, so I'll concede that one to you. If you think the branding of the effort is that terrible and counter productive, I'd love to hear your ideas on how we should brand the effort.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does not correlate, but to say efforts to reduce poverty have failed are just flat wrong." Those "war on" phrases refer to specific projects in the US. For that one I wasn't too familiar but quickly looked it up and didn't see anyone claiming success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty Regarding cancer, I responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877
  - steego 8y ago
    > For that one I wasn't too familiar but quickly looked it up and didn't see anyone claiming success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty Think about it. The "War on Poverty" was Lyndon Johnson's campaign to expand Roosevelt's New Deal. Does that sound like something that would prosper under the Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton (consider the congress), and Bush Jr administrations? Unlike the "War on Drugs", which was actually a never-ending boondoggle that received ample bi-partisan and financial support, Johnson's programs were in the political cross-hairs since day one. In other words, these two programs were failures for very different reasons. The comparison of the "War on Drugs" to the "War on Poverty" is incredibly superficial insofar as the only real thing they have in common are their names.
JamesBarney 8y ago
The war on poverty is arguably effective. The poverty rate is lower than it would be if we stopped all transfers.

by nonbel 8y ago

SamUK96 8y ago

War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".

nonbel 8y ago
The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.
- heyitsguay 8y ago
  Cancer is many diseases, that all happen to be characterized by uncontrolled cell growth. A "cure for cancer" is like a "cure for fever".
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877
- jandrese 8y ago
  Huh? You consider it a fail because we learned that there are many different kinds of Cancers? Yes a "one magic pill" option will probably never exist, but we can chip away at all forms of Cancer until they all have a cure. But realistically, this is not a war I think we can win in my lifetime. It's much bigger than people may have originally thought.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Its just an excuse, you are talking about a field with 10% replication rate, and when they tried to start doing more replications it was too expensive to even figure out what generated the data so they had to drop 25% of the studies before even beginning. One guy even calling the literature "augean stables": https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-scales-back-ambitions-1.18938 https://www.nature.com/news/cancer-reproducibility-project-s... Every disease can be arbitrarily split or combined into multiple categories. It doesnt mean anything. Here is a cure for cancer: 1) Detect aneuploid cells that fail to show the initial steps of the response to extracellular apoptosis signals, and have been dividing more often than usual for that tissue/environment (eg you have to take into account wound healing, etc). 2) Kill those cells. This is technological problem, not a "cancer is many diseases" problem. Every problem can manifest in many ways and have multiple solutions. EDIT: Ref for "10% replication rate": >"scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (11%) cases." https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a More info in this (short) thread from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10687879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10687879
    - jmcgough 8y ago
      I know a lot of smart people who've devoted their lives to solving this problem. It's very easy for you to dismiss it as easy or say that researchers are incompetent when you haven't spent years working on cancer research in a wet lab.
      - nonbel 8y ago
        I have worked in a "wet lab" for years, but not cancer research. The first 3 were largely (of course there is always learning going on) a waste because I didn't understand what statistical significance really meant. I can't really blame myself since neither did anyone else in my committee, department, or seemingly the entire area of research. But anyway this meant the whole project was misdesigned from the start (the design was standard). The next two were spent attempting to save the project by working 18 hour days almost constantly. In the end, despite what they claimed about doing it the usual way because "its so complicated, no one can come up with mathematical/computational models or actual predictions to test, no one can describe this or that in so much detail, etc", the actual truth was that it wasnt "too hard". It was that no one really cared about that. Instead they just wanted to know whether there were statistically significant differences anyway... From what I've read of the cancer literature it looks exactly the same, probably worse. And guess what, there's been no real progress made for decades on the topic I was studying either.
- mohaine 8y ago
  Well, I don't think they just started calling it that for no reason. The fact that they they now know more means they are marking progress, even if it makes it harder to declare victory. The way I read it is that they were so far from a cure that they didn't even know what they were trying to achieve.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877

steego 8y ago

I can't help but think that picking apart a magazine's headline is a huge distraction from an important issue, but I also can't help myself in pointing out how off the mark you with such a superficial observation. As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does not correlate, but to say efforts to reduce poverty have failed are just flat wrong. Cancer is an intractably complex disease, but to dismiss all efforts and advancements is also off the mark. Life expectancy for many types of cancers has improved significantly. Oncolytic viruses have been shown to treat some very advanced forms of cancer with profound results. I wish I could be more optimistic about the war on drugs, so I'll concede that one to you. If you think the branding of the effort is that terrible and counter productive, I'd love to hear your ideas on how we should brand the effort.

nonbel 8y ago
>"As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does not correlate, but to say efforts to reduce poverty have failed are just flat wrong." Those "war on" phrases refer to specific projects in the US. For that one I wasn't too familiar but quickly looked it up and didn't see anyone claiming success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty Regarding cancer, I responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17698877
- steego 8y ago
  > For that one I wasn't too familiar but quickly looked it up and didn't see anyone claiming success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty Think about it. The "War on Poverty" was Lyndon Johnson's campaign to expand Roosevelt's New Deal. Does that sound like something that would prosper under the Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton (consider the congress), and Bush Jr administrations? Unlike the "War on Drugs", which was actually a never-ending boondoggle that received ample bi-partisan and financial support, Johnson's programs were in the political cross-hairs since day one. In other words, these two programs were failures for very different reasons. The comparison of the "War on Drugs" to the "War on Poverty" is incredibly superficial insofar as the only real thing they have in common are their names.

JamesBarney 8y ago

The war on poverty is arguably effective. The poverty rate is lower than it would be if we stopped all transfers.