4 ms·

This has nothing to do with "accept the vital importance of chemicals" and everything to do with the fact that we record smoker status when patients enter hospi

by ebg13 7y ago

This has nothing to do with "accept the vital importance of chemicals" and everything to do with the fact that we record smoker status when patients enter hospitals and HOLY COW, LOOK, A TREND IN THE DATA. > Now tobacco smoke is preventative? Maybe! If you just casually ignore data, you will miss opportunities for important discovery. > And that must be because of nicotine. Not one of 1000s of other chemicals in the same smoke? That's called a _hypothesis_. Hypotheses are somewhat important for research.

LatteLazy 7y ago
Now you're in trouble. You named a hypothesis but the experiment doesn't test that hypothesis does it? No one checked whether any or all of these people actually smoked. Weirdly they let them report different levels of smoking but don't include that data And no one thought to ask about vaping (where there are far fewer chemicals and you would have a stronger case to pin point nicotine). Plus they included Chinese data which is mostly made up. And they excluded random arbitrarily groups (no ICU patients, maybe all the smokers went straight there?). A good experiment is one where you learn something. You prove or disprove your hypothesis. This paper doesn't mean anything. Like you say, the answer to the question si "maybe". Maybe nicotine helps, maybe it doesn't. Maybe literally any chemical helps, maybe it doesn't. Great, thanks for wasting everyone time...
- ebg13 7y ago
  > You named a hypothesis but the experiment doesn't test that hypothesis does it? This paper doesn't claim to be an experiment to test that hypothesis. That's all you. This paper claims to be a data record highlighting an interesting trend for future experimentation. The hypothesis for cause is in the DISCUSSION section at the end and references things that we already know about interactions between nicotine, ACE2, and sars-cov-2.
  - LatteLazy 7y ago
    Call it what you like, experiment or report, hypothesis (your word) or trend (I think this the wrong term but I can't think of abetter one...). As it is, they have found nothing because they did such a bad job of looking. Leaving aside that apparently 601% of patients were men (now there is a concerning trend), they haven't tested nicotine or smokers because their methods don't differentiate the Corona cases involving those factors from ones that don't. Nicotine could kill every user and this study wouldn't find that, nicotine could make its users immortal and this study wouldn't notice. That's what makes it bad: they found nothing because they did a bad job of looking. This is a badly dressed up version of "my aunt smoked and she lived to be 97 so it can't be all bad".

by ebg13 7y ago

LatteLazy 7y ago

Now you're in trouble. You named a hypothesis but the experiment doesn't test that hypothesis does it? No one checked whether any or all of these people actually smoked. Weirdly they let them report different levels of smoking but don't include that data And no one thought to ask about vaping (where there are far fewer chemicals and you would have a stronger case to pin point nicotine). Plus they included Chinese data which is mostly made up. And they excluded random arbitrarily groups (no ICU patients, maybe all the smokers went straight there?). A good experiment is one where you learn something. You prove or disprove your hypothesis. This paper doesn't mean anything. Like you say, the answer to the question si "maybe". Maybe nicotine helps, maybe it doesn't. Maybe literally any chemical helps, maybe it doesn't. Great, thanks for wasting everyone time...

ebg13 7y ago
> You named a hypothesis but the experiment doesn't test that hypothesis does it? This paper doesn't claim to be an experiment to test that hypothesis. That's all you. This paper claims to be a data record highlighting an interesting trend for future experimentation. The hypothesis for cause is in the DISCUSSION section at the end and references things that we already know about interactions between nicotine, ACE2, and sars-cov-2.
- LatteLazy 7y ago
  Call it what you like, experiment or report, hypothesis (your word) or trend (I think this the wrong term but I can't think of abetter one...). As it is, they have found nothing because they did such a bad job of looking. Leaving aside that apparently 601% of patients were men (now there is a concerning trend), they haven't tested nicotine or smokers because their methods don't differentiate the Corona cases involving those factors from ones that don't. Nicotine could kill every user and this study wouldn't find that, nicotine could make its users immortal and this study wouldn't notice. That's what makes it bad: they found nothing because they did a bad job of looking. This is a badly dressed up version of "my aunt smoked and she lived to be 97 so it can't be all bad".