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I have met Derek Lowe personally. He's got 35 years in the game as a bench chemist working on theraputics and knows this world inside and out. What are your s

I have met Derek Lowe personally. He's got 35 years in the game as a bench chemist working on theraputics and knows this world inside and out. What are your similarly long-term credentials that give you such definitive knowledge?

m0zg 7y ago
^ and he's still wrong. There are several drugs and vaccines undergoing trials as we speak, and being given to patients in China. At least two drugs, Remdesivir and Chloroquine have shown efficacy already. Chloroquine is a generic that costs a dollar a bucket and can be produced in any quantity.
- WaltPurvis 7y ago
  These are antiviral drugs that may partially lessen the effects for some people who are already demonstrably sick (Remdesivir is administered intravenously to patients who are already hospitalized and is only in very first stage of initial trials). They will do very little to stop the spread of the virus. (Also, perhaps if you read the article instead of just doing Ctl-F for Remdesivir, you'd have noticed that he said he plans to discuss specific drugs in an upcoming post.)
- empath75 7y ago
  There’s no guarantee any of those will work and none of them will be ready before it goes pandemic.
lazyjones 7y ago
This kind of "appeal to authority" argument reminds me of the recent interview with an industry "veteran" (60 years experience in developing combustion engines) and professor where he condemned electric cars and claimed they will not help the climate. Being experienced doesn't mean you can't be foolish/dogmatic or simply wrong. And it doesn't always take an even more experienced researcher to prove someone wrong. I wish we would discuss more about the actual issues instead of belittling users' qualifications to speak about them.
- toxik 7y ago
  Appeal to authority is not the same as appeal to expertise. An expert does have a better shot at knowing. Appeal to authority is saying "climate change doesn't exist, the US president denies it", appeal to expertise is saying "artificial general intelligence is not coming soon, Michael I. Jordan denies it".
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Please explain how this "authority" could write an article which does not mention any of the candidate drugs currently undergoing human trials, yet spends an entire paragraph on "orange man bad".
  - inshadows 7y ago
    You're just using expertise as synonym for authority.
    - toxik 7y ago
      That is explicitly what I'm arguing _against_.
- rzwitserloot 7y ago
  Maybe you and m0zg reading it a little heavy. m0zg appears to be implying that in the collaboration between Derek Lowe and the professionals he has talked to to write this article, nobody is aware of remdesivir, or, alternatively, that they are aware, that they explicitly chose not to write it / to accord their contribution to the article without requiring that it is mentioned, and that makes them unqualified hacks. Because if that is not what was implied, I don't get why the words 'epic fail' are used. And that is an extraordinary claim, at least in the mind of user hprotagonist, given that he is aware of Derek Lowe's expertise levels. Disregarding it without further proof is _NOT_ an appeal to authority. The point that hprotaganist is making is NOT: "remdesivir is useless; Derek Lowe did not mention it here which is proof enough for me". Their point is simply: "I am not convinced that remdesivir is an obvious answer, because I find it highly implausible that if it is such a slam dunk answer, that Derek Lowe would fail to mention it." In other words, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; your claim that remdesivir could be a plausible route to a quick fix for the problem and that Derek Lowe isn't aware of this is extraordinary. Your evidence of basically nothing other than the word of random joe hackernews commenter + the word 'remdesivir' (so, I guess, the wikipedia entry which anybody can search the web for armed solely with the word?) isn't sufficient proof for it. That's all. This is not an appeal to authority fallacy in my book, simply a request that you provide a little more direct indication that remdesivir is likely to be a panacea here, especially if you start insinuating that the article author has 'epic failed' here.

m0zg 7y ago

^ and he's still wrong. There are several drugs and vaccines undergoing trials as we speak, and being given to patients in China. At least two drugs, Remdesivir and Chloroquine have shown efficacy already. Chloroquine is a generic that costs a dollar a bucket and can be produced in any quantity.

WaltPurvis 7y ago
These are antiviral drugs that may partially lessen the effects for some people who are already demonstrably sick (Remdesivir is administered intravenously to patients who are already hospitalized and is only in very first stage of initial trials). They will do very little to stop the spread of the virus. (Also, perhaps if you read the article instead of just doing Ctl-F for Remdesivir, you'd have noticed that he said he plans to discuss specific drugs in an upcoming post.)
empath75 7y ago
There’s no guarantee any of those will work and none of them will be ready before it goes pandemic.

lazyjones 7y ago

This kind of "appeal to authority" argument reminds me of the recent interview with an industry "veteran" (60 years experience in developing combustion engines) and professor where he condemned electric cars and claimed they will not help the climate. Being experienced doesn't mean you can't be foolish/dogmatic or simply wrong. And it doesn't always take an even more experienced researcher to prove someone wrong. I wish we would discuss more about the actual issues instead of belittling users' qualifications to speak about them.

toxik 7y ago
Appeal to authority is not the same as appeal to expertise. An expert does have a better shot at knowing. Appeal to authority is saying "climate change doesn't exist, the US president denies it", appeal to expertise is saying "artificial general intelligence is not coming soon, Michael I. Jordan denies it".
- m0zg 7y ago
  Please explain how this "authority" could write an article which does not mention any of the candidate drugs currently undergoing human trials, yet spends an entire paragraph on "orange man bad".
- inshadows 7y ago
  You're just using expertise as synonym for authority.
  - toxik 7y ago
    That is explicitly what I'm arguing _against_.
rzwitserloot 7y ago
Maybe you and m0zg reading it a little heavy. m0zg appears to be implying that in the collaboration between Derek Lowe and the professionals he has talked to to write this article, nobody is aware of remdesivir, or, alternatively, that they are aware, that they explicitly chose not to write it / to accord their contribution to the article without requiring that it is mentioned, and that makes them unqualified hacks. Because if that is not what was implied, I don't get why the words 'epic fail' are used. And that is an extraordinary claim, at least in the mind of user hprotagonist, given that he is aware of Derek Lowe's expertise levels. Disregarding it without further proof is _NOT_ an appeal to authority. The point that hprotaganist is making is NOT: "remdesivir is useless; Derek Lowe did not mention it here which is proof enough for me". Their point is simply: "I am not convinced that remdesivir is an obvious answer, because I find it highly implausible that if it is such a slam dunk answer, that Derek Lowe would fail to mention it." In other words, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; your claim that remdesivir could be a plausible route to a quick fix for the problem and that Derek Lowe isn't aware of this is extraordinary. Your evidence of basically nothing other than the word of random joe hackernews commenter + the word 'remdesivir' (so, I guess, the wikipedia entry which anybody can search the web for armed solely with the word?) isn't sufficient proof for it. That's all. This is not an appeal to authority fallacy in my book, simply a request that you provide a little more direct indication that remdesivir is likely to be a panacea here, especially if you start insinuating that the article author has 'epic failed' here.