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> That's an ad-hominem argument. And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason

> That's an ad-hominem argument. And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason to believe his conclusion except a positive aspect of his reputation (i.e., his discovery of PCR in the first place). In that case, negative aspects of his reputation (i.e., the fluorescent raccoon; or, closer to the domain in question, his belief on HIV and AIDS) are surely also relevant. They don't mean what he's saying is false, but they'd cause a reasonable person to approach his unsupported statements with more care. For convenience, I'm linking my other comment below. This is a detailed explanation of why I believe almost all patients who test positive by PCR are (or were very recently) infected with SARS-CoV-2, fully referenced. It has so far received zero interaction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 If you think I'm wrong, please explain why, and I'll reply. If you think I'm right, then I'd also appreciate a reply. The belief that coronavirus cases are grossly over-diagnosed is a common element of claims that no precautions against it are necessary, which cause real harm; so I hope you don't want to falsely spread that belief. ETA: And for completeness, here's a paper discussing the ability to culture virus from PCR-positive samples. I believe that's the real point Mullis was alluding to in his comments, that people who test PCR positive aren't necessarily shedding replication-competent virus; but that's a separate question from whether they are (or very recently were) infected. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1491/5912603 https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...

theclap 5y ago
You might find this interesting, an article from 2007 about PCR tests being used to confirm a whooping cough epidemic at a hospital: https://archive.ph/ugiWQ https://archive.ph/ugiWQ I wonder if the same mistakes are being repeated.
- tripletao 5y ago
  From the article: > These tests, called “home brews,” are not commercially available, and there are no good estimates of their error rates. So this is about clinical use of an uncharacterized test. Why is that relevant to the test for SARS-CoV-2, which has probably now been run more times than any other PCR test in history, including on large populations with extremely low test positivity (e.g., most of Australia, <0.1%), which bounds the specificity (e.g., to >99.9%)? Seriously, engage with the evidence. There are still zero replies to my detailed explanation linked above. Did you read it? What did you think?
  - theclap 5y ago
    You didn't read the article. You stopped reading right at that sentence didn't you?
    - tripletao 5y ago
      I read to the end of the article. They even developed a better (though still not perfect) PCR test that excluded most of the initial false positives! > Its scientists also did additional P.C.R. tests on samples from 116 of the 134 people who were thought to have whooping cough. Only one P.C.R. was positive, but other tests did not show that that person was infected with pertussis bacteria. It's absolutely possible to develop bad PCR tests, and that's why it's necessary to characterize them on large populations to determine their specificity and sensitivity. It seems the Dartmouth team didn't do that before using the test clinically, and that was their problem; but the SARS-CoV-2 tests are the most intensively-studied PCR tests in human history, and the evidence I've seen looks quite good. So again, did you read my detailed explanation? Do you understand it? If you're just looking to knowingly spread baseless doubt, there's far more effective places to do it. So why not engage with the actual science?
      - theclap 5y ago
        I did read your linked explanation, I did not get a chance to read your sources however but I will when I get a chance. You don't need to be so condescending. Are you in the medical field by chance? Anyhow my concerns around the virus aren't so much with the tests but with the lack of data on the long term effects of the new vaccines. Since I am not in an elderly age group, I am reluctant to take the vaccine without at least waiting a few years to observe if there are any other effects.
        tripletao 5y ago
        Please do read the sources. My background is math/CS, though I've done statistical work for life sciences. Evidence like the excess mortality requires zero medical knowledge though, just the ability to count deaths and compare that count year over year. Whatever the PCR test is doing, PCR-confirmed COVID deaths track reasonably well with excess deaths in regions hard enough hit for the excess deaths to be statistically distinguishable: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 In fact excess mortality usually exceeds COVID deaths, suggesting there are more false negative PCR tests (at least on dead/dying people) than false positive. The vaccine is an entirely different topic. There's certainly a higher risk that the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine will have unforeseen long-term effects than for other, longer-studied vaccines; but there's also a higher risk that SARS-CoV-2 itself will have unforeseen long-term effects than for other, longer-studied diseases. I'm not elderly, but I've placed my bet on the vaccine. I don't mean to be condescending. I'm just frustrated that I've spent considerable time explaining why I believe the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is almost always accurate, and received zero engagement with any of that. The evidence is there for anyone willing to invest the effort to understand it.
silicon2401 5y ago
> And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason to believe his conclusion except a positive aspect of his reputation (i.e., his discovery of PCR in the first place). Nice try but your tit for tat doesn't quite work. I explicitly said I have no attachment to Mullis or his claims. I didn't make an argument myself. I was asking "the creator of PCR made this claim, what are the counter-arguments?" Then, and now again, you gave your irrelevant ad-hominem points. I don't care if he believed in voodoo or saw pink elephants in the sky, because they're irrelevant to my question. And as I already said, Newton believed some outlandish things, yet I still believe in physics. I'm interested in what the counterpoints to his argument, not his reputation, are. I also read your comment, and it's also not relevant to my question. You seem upset that it's gotten zero interaction, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about that. But I'm not looking for info on why PCR tests are true positives, I'm looking for arguments on Mullis' claims
- tripletao 5y ago
  So to be clear, do you agree that almost all positive PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 are true positives (i.e., that almost all patients testing positive are truly infected)? If yes, then what do you think (or think Mullis thinks) is wrong with "the way that PCR is being used today"? The comment you replied to was speculating about "false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid". Mullis's comments are not too coherent, but I read them as a claim that PCR tests will result in false positives, and I assumed that was why you thought they were relevant. At least one other user seems to have read them the same way, since user theclap responded with a link to a different article explicitly about PCR false positives. Do you read them as something else?
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    I don't agree with anything; I don't have an opinion or stance, I've said that from the beginning. I'm looking for someone _else_ to give _their_ opinion or evidence. I don't know how many different ways I can rephrase the same point. Here's a quote from another reply to my original comment: > > Kary Mullis: I think misused PCR is not quite ... I don't think you can misuse PCR. No, the results, the interpretation of it. See if you can say, if they wanted, if they could find this virus in you at all, and with PCR if you do it well you can find almost anything in anybody. It starts making you believe in the, sort of buddhist notion, that everything is contained in everything else. Right, I mean because if you can amplify one single molecule up to to something that you can really measure which PCR can do, then there's just very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body. Okay, so that could be thought of as a misuse of it just to claim that it's meaningful. It is, there's very little of what they call HIV and what's been brought out here by Phil ... the measurement for it is not exact at all, it's not it's not as good as our measurement for things like apples. An apple is an apple. You know, you can get something that's kind of like, if you've got enough things that look kind of like an apple you stick them all together you might think it as an apple. And HIV is like that. Those tests are all based on things that are invisible, and they are the results are inferred in a sense. PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something that's why it's not, it doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that. An example of what I'm looking for info on is this in particular: > PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something that's why it's not, it doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that. I don't have an opinion myself and I'm just looking for someone informed to comment on how today's use of PCR for diagnosing covid aligns with the inventor of PCR's comments that it isn't useful for diagnosing illness. Not whether or not today's covid tests are false or true positives

theclap 5y ago

You might find this interesting, an article from 2007 about PCR tests being used to confirm a whooping cough epidemic at a hospital: https://archive.ph/ugiWQ https://archive.ph/ugiWQ I wonder if the same mistakes are being repeated.

tripletao 5y ago
From the article: > These tests, called “home brews,” are not commercially available, and there are no good estimates of their error rates. So this is about clinical use of an uncharacterized test. Why is that relevant to the test for SARS-CoV-2, which has probably now been run more times than any other PCR test in history, including on large populations with extremely low test positivity (e.g., most of Australia, <0.1%), which bounds the specificity (e.g., to >99.9%)? Seriously, engage with the evidence. There are still zero replies to my detailed explanation linked above. Did you read it? What did you think?
- theclap 5y ago
  You didn't read the article. You stopped reading right at that sentence didn't you?
  - tripletao 5y ago
    I read to the end of the article. They even developed a better (though still not perfect) PCR test that excluded most of the initial false positives! > Its scientists also did additional P.C.R. tests on samples from 116 of the 134 people who were thought to have whooping cough. Only one P.C.R. was positive, but other tests did not show that that person was infected with pertussis bacteria. It's absolutely possible to develop bad PCR tests, and that's why it's necessary to characterize them on large populations to determine their specificity and sensitivity. It seems the Dartmouth team didn't do that before using the test clinically, and that was their problem; but the SARS-CoV-2 tests are the most intensively-studied PCR tests in human history, and the evidence I've seen looks quite good. So again, did you read my detailed explanation? Do you understand it? If you're just looking to knowingly spread baseless doubt, there's far more effective places to do it. So why not engage with the actual science?
    - theclap 5y ago
      I did read your linked explanation, I did not get a chance to read your sources however but I will when I get a chance. You don't need to be so condescending. Are you in the medical field by chance? Anyhow my concerns around the virus aren't so much with the tests but with the lack of data on the long term effects of the new vaccines. Since I am not in an elderly age group, I am reluctant to take the vaccine without at least waiting a few years to observe if there are any other effects.
      - tripletao 5y ago
        Please do read the sources. My background is math/CS, though I've done statistical work for life sciences. Evidence like the excess mortality requires zero medical knowledge though, just the ability to count deaths and compare that count year over year. Whatever the PCR test is doing, PCR-confirmed COVID deaths track reasonably well with excess deaths in regions hard enough hit for the excess deaths to be statistically distinguishable: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361 In fact excess mortality usually exceeds COVID deaths, suggesting there are more false negative PCR tests (at least on dead/dying people) than false positive. The vaccine is an entirely different topic. There's certainly a higher risk that the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine will have unforeseen long-term effects than for other, longer-studied vaccines; but there's also a higher risk that SARS-CoV-2 itself will have unforeseen long-term effects than for other, longer-studied diseases. I'm not elderly, but I've placed my bet on the vaccine. I don't mean to be condescending. I'm just frustrated that I've spent considerable time explaining why I believe the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is almost always accurate, and received zero engagement with any of that. The evidence is there for anyone willing to invest the effort to understand it.

silicon2401 5y ago

> And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason to believe his conclusion except a positive aspect of his reputation (i.e., his discovery of PCR in the first place). Nice try but your tit for tat doesn't quite work. I explicitly said I have no attachment to Mullis or his claims. I didn't make an argument myself. I was asking "the creator of PCR made this claim, what are the counter-arguments?" Then, and now again, you gave your irrelevant ad-hominem points. I don't care if he believed in voodoo or saw pink elephants in the sky, because they're irrelevant to my question. And as I already said, Newton believed some outlandish things, yet I still believe in physics. I'm interested in what the counterpoints to his argument, not his reputation, are. I also read your comment, and it's also not relevant to my question. You seem upset that it's gotten zero interaction, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about that. But I'm not looking for info on why PCR tests are true positives, I'm looking for arguments on Mullis' claims

tripletao 5y ago
So to be clear, do you agree that almost all positive PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 are true positives (i.e., that almost all patients testing positive are truly infected)? If yes, then what do you think (or think Mullis thinks) is wrong with "the way that PCR is being used today"? The comment you replied to was speculating about "false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid". Mullis's comments are not too coherent, but I read them as a claim that PCR tests will result in false positives, and I assumed that was why you thought they were relevant. At least one other user seems to have read them the same way, since user theclap responded with a link to a different article explicitly about PCR false positives. Do you read them as something else?
- silicon2401 5y ago
  I don't agree with anything; I don't have an opinion or stance, I've said that from the beginning. I'm looking for someone _else_ to give _their_ opinion or evidence. I don't know how many different ways I can rephrase the same point. Here's a quote from another reply to my original comment: > > Kary Mullis: I think misused PCR is not quite ... I don't think you can misuse PCR. No, the results, the interpretation of it. See if you can say, if they wanted, if they could find this virus in you at all, and with PCR if you do it well you can find almost anything in anybody. It starts making you believe in the, sort of buddhist notion, that everything is contained in everything else. Right, I mean because if you can amplify one single molecule up to to something that you can really measure which PCR can do, then there's just very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body. Okay, so that could be thought of as a misuse of it just to claim that it's meaningful. It is, there's very little of what they call HIV and what's been brought out here by Phil ... the measurement for it is not exact at all, it's not it's not as good as our measurement for things like apples. An apple is an apple. You know, you can get something that's kind of like, if you've got enough things that look kind of like an apple you stick them all together you might think it as an apple. And HIV is like that. Those tests are all based on things that are invisible, and they are the results are inferred in a sense. PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something that's why it's not, it doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that. An example of what I'm looking for info on is this in particular: > PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something that's why it's not, it doesn't tell you that you're sick and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that. I don't have an opinion myself and I'm just looking for someone informed to comment on how today's use of PCR for diagnosing covid aligns with the inventor of PCR's comments that it isn't useful for diagnosing illness. Not whether or not today's covid tests are false or true positives