12 ms·
Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations (2007)
- phoe-krk 6y agoLink to the paper in question: https://doi.org/10.2337/diacare.17.2.152 https://doi.org/10.2337/diacare.17.2.152
- vixen99 6y agoThe full paper on available on sci-hub for those who can use it. Am wondering if it's legal to post sci-hub links on HN?
- phoe-krk 6y agoI don't think there's any need to. People who want to use SciHub can simply copy the DOI link into it.
- vixen99 6y agoThanks but I know that. To answer my own question, seems the quoting of a sci-hub link would be a civil matter in the US at least. Moderators will decide for themselves.
- wombatmobile 6y agoCredit to the author for (a) calling this out, whilst (b) maintaining decorum and assuming good faith. > I don’t mean to pick on Dr. Tai, especially since I only have access to the paper’s abstract. In fact, it’s perhaps a credit that s/he rediscovered the rectangle/trapezoidal method. Further and more seriously, this paper is perhaps an important example of the importance of interdisciplinary communication.
- ojnabieoot 6y agoI don’t think the author deserves much credit for “calling this out” - the paper was published in 1994 and has been a meme in math circles for about as long.
- rollulus 6y ago(2007). This has been posted here before a lot: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=discovers+integration https://hn.algolia.com/?q=discovers+integration
- lgeorget 6y agoAnd the paper itself has been published in 1994.
- dang 6y agoMedical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17863514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17863514 - Aug 2018 (33 comments) Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11818833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11818833 - June 2016 (3 comments) Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964613 - Dec 2010 (120 comments)
- cricci16 6y agoGoogle Scholar currently gives many more citations than 75 (424) source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=A+Mathematical+Model+for+the+Determination+of+Total+Area+Under+Glucose+Tolerance+and+Other+Metabolic+Curves&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=A+Ma...
- onorton 6y agoI wonder how many of those are from papers discussing failure of peer review or interdisciplinary communication rather than the value of the formula itself.
- lrem 6y agoFunnily enough it doesn't matter for your career. Bureaucracies stop at counting citations, sometimes weighted by impact factor.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nindalf 6y agoAll citations are good citations, even the bad ones.
- cricci16 6y agoI looked at the most cited paper between those who cite the paper in object: https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/2/275.short https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/2/275.short It states: "Mean BGwas determined using area-under-the curve analysis (10)." where (10) is the paper we are discussing about. Hence in this paper they acknowledge the result... Don't know about the other citers. Also It would be nice to know that, but I cannot immagine how to do it automatically
- ojnabieoot 6y agoThere are a lot of them that say “using the trapezoidal rule” or something and cite the paper. I think that’s a silly case of unnecessary citations (having been a coauthor on a medical paper there’s a lot of pressure to ‘grab a citation that sort of works’). But they almost always call it “the trapezoidal rule” - the original paper is quite famous specifically because of the embarrassment it brought to medical researchers, and implication that medicine is full of doofuses who don’t know calculus is pure clickbait.
- Cu3PO42 6y agoAmusingly this paper is cited in the "Failures" section of Wikipedia's article on "Scholarly peer review": https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=33158412#cite_ref-Tai_1a_165-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=33158412#cite_ref-Tai_1a_165...
- diarrhea 6y agoHow did you randomly dig that up? That's a somewhat hidden entry.
- ulucs 6y agoThis link works too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review#Failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review#Failures
- Cu3PO42 6y agoOn a hunch I put the title of the paper into the Wikipedia search. Among other things, I got the "Scholarly peer review" article, clicked on it and checked where it was referenced.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jack_riminton 6y agoTangental point here, but I find Medical student's relationship to Science quite fascinating. For instance there's a trend for medical students to believe less in evolution than other biology students EDIT: reference to it in this story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/21/religion.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/21/religion.highe...
- airhead969 6y agoWhat frightens me is that osteopath magical thinkers (DOs) are allowed to practice medicine in the US just like MDs. They're glorified chiropractors!
- dreamcompiler 6y agoOsteopaths in the UK and most other countries are quacks. Osteopaths in the US are real physicians. This is not a trick of labeling: In the US osteopath training is a science-based, rigorous medical program identical to that of an MD. Yes DOs are also trained in the historical "chiropractic"-like stuff, but most of the ones I know deemphasize that in practice.
- airhead969 6y agoWhy have it at all? It's magical thinking like religion that needs to be debunked and obliterated. Religion and quackery have no place in scientific medicine!
- wl 6y agoIn practice, it serves the purpose of letting less academically accomplished students become physicians without resorting to Caribbean medical schools. This isn't a net negative to society because much of the overachievement in the pre-med set is overlearning the game, not genuine accomplishment. Talking to people who have gone to osteopathic medical schools, it seems like the true believers there have enough clout that they're not transforming into normal medical schools any time soon. But OMM is such a small part of the curriculum, it's not a huge burden for the majority of students who think it's nonsense.
- newsbinator 6y ago> Further and more seriously, this paper is perhaps an important example of the importance of interdisciplinary communication. I wouldn’t go that far- medical researchers all did high school math. If they didn’t understand it, that’s not an interdisciplinary communication problem. Although it’s true that if Dr. Tai had shown his paper to any physicist (or high school calculus student), with “Tai’s Model” as a label for integration, they would laugh and point out the issue.
- learnstats2 6y agoThe author of this blog post is wrong to say this is 'integration'[0], and is also later wrong to say it's the 'trapezoidal rule'[1]. It seems to me that it's diagnostically useful to have a standardised method for estimating the area under the curve, rather than everyone inventing their own method. [0](since you don't know the whole function, you only know point estimates at particular moments in time) [1] (trapezoidal rule is normally defined by having equal intervals - here, measurements are often taken at irregular intervals)
- klingon78 6y agoIs this something that could be applied in general mathematics? If so, is it truly novel and worthy or a trivial derivation? I’m asking because I don’t know, not rhetorically. I agree that someone shouldn’t be publicly made fun of in-general for sharing something novel and non-trivial that others didn’t already know, and if it highlights a problem in inadequate reviews, maybe it should’ve been presented to the journals that published it with that info.
- ojnabieoot 6y agoI don’t think there’s anything here for mathematicians. The only nontrivial fact in the paper is that the approximation works well in medical practice (which is not something that Leibniz or Newton would have been able to tell you since there could be complicated biological factors confounding it - what if the ‘real curve’ has a bunch of spikes that don’t show up in measurements?). However, the original paper really is incomplete because of its seeming ignorance of the real “trapezoidal rule.” It really needs a discussion along the lines of “the trapezoid rule from ordinary calculus can be used by diabetes practitioners with surprising accuracy” and explained that sources of error, discontinuity, etc., aren’t likely to affects the approximation. But don’t worry about M.M. Tai’s feelings too much :) The paper is almost 30 years old and it’s world-famous for the silly error, Tai has already been throughly roasted.
- Niksko 6y agoThis is kind of where grand parent's thesis (that the paper is in fact novel and useful) falls down. I'd be stunned if the concept of integrating an unknown function that needs to be guessed based on measurements taken at irregular points in time hasn't been studied rigorously from a generalized mathematical point of view. What such study would likely do (that a medical treatment would not) is discuss tradeoffs of different approximation methods, probably explore things like error bounds and behaviours with different unknown functions, and selection of the best integration method. GP is right in that I'm sure it's useful to have a standardized method that allows for comparison between doctors and patients. But I think it's naive to assume that the findings in this paper are mathematically novel, and further, that mathematicians couldn't do a more rigorous job of deducing an accurate 'standard' way of measuring this.
- vilhelm_s 6y agoIn the next issue, the journal published a bunch of letters noting that she had rediscovered the trapezoid rule. https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomments.pdf https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/math1132s20/handouts/taicomme... Mary Tai herself also replied and explained the background to the paper a bit more: > While a doctoral candidate working on my dissertation at Columbia University in 1981, I needed to calculate total area under a curve. During a session with my statistical advisor, and after examining several alternative methods, I worked out the model in front of him. The concept behind it is obviously common sense, and one does not have to consult the trapezoid rule to figure it out. [...] > Why I call it Tai's model. I never thought of publishing the model as a great discovery or accomplishment; it was not published until 14 years later, in 1994. Because of its accuracy and easy application, many collegues at the Obesity Research Center of St Luke's-Roosvelt Hospital Center and Columbia University began using it and addressed it as "Tai's formula" to distinguish it from others. Later, because the investigators were unable to cite an unpublished work, I submitted it for publication at their request. Therefore, my name was rubber-stamped on the model before its publication. [...]
- newswasboring 6y agoI was really on the author's side till I read these responses. Initially in my head it was just a case of misunderstanding or ignorance, but through her letters she has made clear that she thinks it is significant enough. This is borne out by her tone which is palpatably aggressive and contradictory at some points. She says she didn't publish this model for glory, but she also named it after herself. Also, no effort was made to connect it to already known elementary mathematics. And I don't understand why people would need a citation instead of just saying its calculated using the trapezoidal rule. The whole point about model vs formula is IMO pathetic, models are not just bunch of known formulas. They are supposed to give a new understanding of the system (also who brings up Marriam Webbster in a medical journal? Even in letters it sounds incredibly condescending).
- hatmatrix 6y ago> And I don't understand why people would need a citation instead of just saying its calculated using the trapezoidal rule. They didn't know the trapezoidal rule.
- nelsonmandela 6y agoLeibniz on suicide watch (again)
- airhead969 6y agoDamnit! (m >>= (\x -> f x)) >>= g ≡ m >>= (\x -> f x >>= g)
- stuartbman 6y agoI think it's important to note why the 75 citations isn't just 75 dummies who also haven't heard of integration. If you're writing a diabetes paper and want to use integration for your analysis (even if you are fully aware of its background), you'll be forced to justify your approach and defend it's applicability to diabetes. Far easier to say 'as per Tai et al...' and take it as given. You see this a lot- 'we used [x] because Big Name Prof did as well [citation]'
- Robotbeat 6y agoSounds like it’s the reviewers who need to know basic calculus.
- OskarS 6y ago'as per Newton, Leibniz et al...' isn't good enough? Seriously though: if it is indeed true that you need to justify it this way, that is insane: this is just basic calculus. Do you have to justify every single statistics calculation also? Do you have to say 'as per Whoever et al' every time you calculate the standard deviation of something? What referee would object to 'estimating the area using the trapezoidal rules gives us...'? (note that this paper was purely about the CALCULATION of the area, not justifying whether or not the area is a useful thing to know)
- ghostwriter 6y agoIt indicates a broken system with bad incentives. Integration is integration regardless the domain of application.
- ginko 6y agoSurely this is a great opportunity to "discover" Simpson's rule and get a bunch of citations.
- zaik 6y agoDerive the Newton Cotes rule for yearly increasing n.
- airhead969 6y agoI discovered the rate of change as a function! That should be worth 50 citations.
- Robotbeat 6y agoI appreciate the dig at fellow physicists for not recognizing group theory. As a physicist myself, I’m somewhat impressed by the power of many mathematical abstractions which have not yet utilized. Although I think this Avenue of discovery (searching in mathematics textbooks for things to apply to physics) is now fairly well-mined.
- airhead969 6y agoInteresting. I've watched nuclear engineers struggle with higher-order programming concepts and biomedical informatists (MD + PhD CS) struggle with software engineering. And, damn, I saw some exceptionally-beautiful code from some security researcher grad students.. like 17 levels of nested blocks. I guess not everyone can use Rust, Haskell, OCaml, or Idris. :sigh emoji:
- Robotbeat 6y agoI can’t speak for nuclear engineers and biomedical informatists, but physicists are usually pretty good at abstract programming concepts... But you have to overcome the characteristic laziness (doing only what’s necessary to solve the problem at hand).
- marcosdumay 6y agoScientists make particularly bad software engineers. You'll get all kinds of problems, and nearly no good code, in any discipline you care to look. Take the same people and put them for a year in a more predictable environment, and they start to write much better code. (And yeah, this natural experiment happens all the time.)
- agumonkey 6y agoI so often worry about this lack of knowledge in the medical field. This is not reassuring u_u;
- zucker42 6y agoBy the way, the way she found the "true value" of the integral to verify her method was to graph it on graph paper and count the squares underneath.
- tester34 6y ago>unlike calculus—wasn’t something that physicists were expected to take during high school. did you guys have integrals in HS? I had only limits and derivatives for optimization via extremas finding EU, Poland.
- peteradio 6y agoWe did both. I think it makes sense because the muscle memory is almost identical.
- tester34 6y ago"both"? I mentioned 3 things :P
- anthk 6y agoEuropean here. Yes.
- huachimingo 6y agoNope. At least not in an explicit way, because we saw those concepts in free fall problems and similar ones in physics as "instantaneous" quantities. Same with areas, but not that much. My teacher tried to show us limits in one class, but she didnt had more time to do so. At least here in Chile (South America), only the rich or with custom curriculum see those concepts at HS. Unless you go to pre-U paid schools or to bachillerato, calculus is only teached in Unis.
- Balgair 6y agoSpeaking only from personal experience, medical researchers in the US may not have any training in Calculus. I'd put it at ~30% that do not. It is only taught in High Schools if the child and their parents want them to take it and is not required for graduation (though this varies a lot from district to district). Depending on the major and the school, Calculus may also not be required for graduation from university. Depending on the grad-school, Calculus is also not required for a PhD. Speaking personally, I know of entire departments where Calculus is not known among the majority of the faculty members who are publishing in medicine/biology, though this is a bit rare. However, higher order Calculus like Lagrangians, Diff-Eqs, and Matrix algebra is as rare as hen's teeth among bio/medical researchers.
- Gatsky 6y agoAnother bizarre example of reinvention, but unmitigated by ignorance: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0085047 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... For comment: https://eagereyes.org/series/peer-review/1-quilt-plots https://eagereyes.org/series/peer-review/1-quilt-plots First author is now an A/Prof at one of Australia's top Universities.
- jhart99 6y agoI really wonder how no one knew heatmaps exist. How was this not caught by reviewers.
- wyldfire 6y agoXKCD: Purity [1] is semi-relevant. I think many US students learn this kinda stuff in high school, so it's a little odd that the researchers asked for Tai to write something to cite. Neither of them recognized this? https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
- geocrasher 6y agoFrom the article: "this paper is perhaps an important example of the importance of interdisciplinary communication." Indeed. Even within the medical field, huge amounts of progress are never materialized just because the guy who deals with the brain never talks to the guy who deals with the gut. They have another guy who deals with the nervous system who knows little about the brain OR the gut. And you get referrals to all of these, and they contradict each other and argue (by proxy of you) about the best way to treat the thing that none of them fully knows anything about.
- perryizgr8 6y agoIsn't basic calculus a mandatory high school course? How would such a scholarly person be entirely unaware of calculus? Edit: I'm surprised, but it's quite impressive to have discovered the same concept Newton did, all on your own!
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNope
- II2II 6y agoCalculus is not mandatory for high school graduation in many places, but I would shocked if it was not mandatory for university admission in any science based discipline.
- anthony_d 6y agoMany _or most_ universities will just tack it on as a remedial requirement. I guess highly competitive programs might just reject you, but I'd be surprised if many state schools did.
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's treated as a prerequisite by the time you are declaring a major. My state engineering school didn't require calc for freshman admission. The degrees all required the college level classes (or the AP equivalent).
- chmod775 6y agoThis isn't even university level stuff. I remember the application of this rule being taught in 12th or 13th grade.
- jonesn11 6y agoI see the same thing in Applied Machine Learning, where psychologist X writes paper on "My mathematical model for predicting Intimate Partner Violence scores." Where the deep learning model is a basic multilayered perceptron implemented with sklearn. Something any CS Freshman could cook up in 10 minutes.