4 ms·

It is shallow because it doesn't teach anything to people that are not already familiar with this kind of work. Something not shallow would be like "only eleve

It is shallow because it doesn't teach anything to people that are not already familiar with this kind of work. Something not shallow would be like "only eleven people participated in this study, this is too little to get a clear result that's not due to luck."

dang 7y ago
That would be just as shallow. The issue isn't brevity, it's genericness. Are we really making the assumption that every study with a small sample is worthless, and that our reflexes know better than the people who worked on it? Obviously we need to do better than that. Generic discussion is shallow discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Here's a comparable comment that at least begins to engage with the specifics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798031. I don't know if it's a good point, but it's at least actually about this particular study. We wouldn't moderate such a comment.
- klmadfejno 7y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this. Would you feel the same way if the sample size was 1? 5? 11 is very small, and useful only for evaluating the presence of very very prominent effect sizes, regardless of domain. A comment saying n=11 is not a novel insight, but I believe it is useful, similar to people who add "in mice" to articles whose headlines might imply the test was on humans. I appreciate those comments. In this case I think it is fair to conclude that the headline "Severe Covid-19 Cases Don't Respond to..." is an accurate takeaway purely because the sample size is so small. With this sample size you can, at best, conclude that these combinations of drugs don't reliably cure the disease in severe cases, which is a very different idea.
  - dang 7y ago
    Why not? It depends on the study. I agree with you about misleading headlines and the mice thing. It's an interesting point to compare. While I have you: could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that, and in fact this account was banned. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
    - klmadfejno 7y ago
      Yes
      - dang 7y ago
        Appreciated! (I only just saw this.)

dang 7y ago

That would be just as shallow. The issue isn't brevity, it's genericness. Are we really making the assumption that every study with a small sample is worthless, and that our reflexes know better than the people who worked on it? Obviously we need to do better than that. Generic discussion is shallow discussion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Here's a comparable comment that at least begins to engage with the specifics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798031. I don't know if it's a good point, but it's at least actually about this particular study. We wouldn't moderate such a comment.

klmadfejno 7y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this. Would you feel the same way if the sample size was 1? 5? 11 is very small, and useful only for evaluating the presence of very very prominent effect sizes, regardless of domain. A comment saying n=11 is not a novel insight, but I believe it is useful, similar to people who add "in mice" to articles whose headlines might imply the test was on humans. I appreciate those comments. In this case I think it is fair to conclude that the headline "Severe Covid-19 Cases Don't Respond to..." is an accurate takeaway purely because the sample size is so small. With this sample size you can, at best, conclude that these combinations of drugs don't reliably cure the disease in severe cases, which is a very different idea.
- dang 7y ago
  Why not? It depends on the study. I agree with you about misleading headlines and the mice thing. It's an interesting point to compare. While I have you: could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that, and in fact this account was banned. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - klmadfejno 7y ago
    Yes
    - dang 7y ago
      Appreciated! (I only just saw this.)