6 ms·

>industry steamrolled the science. Not only that, industry paid for "science" that hid the dangers. People today however seem to strangely think this doesn't h

by zionic 5y ago

>industry steamrolled the science. Not only that, industry paid for "science" that hid the dangers. People today however seem to strangely think this doesn't happen anymore.

christophilus 5y ago
It's genuinely hard to know how to make sense of information. I'm generally skeptical of "big anything", whether that's business or government. Incentives can be screwy at any scale, but once you get to very large numbers, incentives seem to simply go off the rails. Industry and governments have a pretty terrible track record of skewing data to suit their needs-- sometimes with a truly tragic consequences. That's why my initial stance on COVID vaccines was to be skeptical of the industry claims. This lumped me in with a lot of quacks, and with a political (US) group with whom that I don't normally align much. It's been a strange few years. At this point, I'm not sure I know how to strike a balance between healthy skepticism and paranoia. Regarding the vaccines, I'm fully vaccinated, as enough time has passed to get me to a place where I think the stats bear it out.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I don’t know if it is really that incentives change when you get very big, as much as it is that you become more capable of achieving desires that are counter to the public good. At smaller scales, your power isn’t enough to override the preferences of the masses. Get big enough, and you can.
- azinman2 5y ago
  While not impossible, it’s much harder to create false stats when going through clinical review with the FDA. Super double extra when the lives of the world are at stake and the total eyeballs on a single vaccine are so high.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    But the processes are very flawed leading to the wrong stats being used to make decisions. For example, an experimental vaccine isn't given out widely till there is good data that it is safe (often taking years). However, for risky diseases (like COVID), as soon as there are even rough indications that it is safer than COVID, it makes sense to give it to everyone. Every month you spend doing more safety tests, millions of people die. The same is happening right now for malaria treatments which are being trialled. Skipping the trial and handing it out untested will probably save more lives.
    - fuckcensorship 5y ago
      > For example, an experimental vaccine isn't given out widely till there is good data that it is safe (often taking years). How is this an example of “the wrong stats being used to make decisions”? You believe that undergoing safety trials with control groups is a bad thing because they take time? > However, for risky diseases (like COVID), as soon as there are even rough indications that it is safer than COVID, it makes sense to give it to everyone. What if we find out several years down the road that the vaccine is causing a drop in IQ, affecting birth rates, etc.? Wouldn’t it have been nice to catch these things during the safety trials before injecting it into billions of people?
      - lkbm 5y ago
        > You believe that undergoing safety trials with control groups is a bad thing because they take time? You can always do more trials and more studies, but at some point the cost of delays outweighs the risks. A blanket "this is the degree of safety testing needed" for every single intervention makes no sense if the cost of that testing differs significantly — and when you have a rapidly spreading disease killing millions of people, the cost of delays is much higher than it would be if you're trying to cure the common cold. No testing at all would be a really bad idea, but "we'll spend just as long testing this one as this as we would on a common cold vaccine" is also a really bad idea. I'd also drive faster if I were rushing to the hospital with a dying friend, even though speeding is risky. You have to weigh risks and benefits and do what has the best expected outcome.
      - 5y ago
dredmorbius 5y ago
A chief tool used by industry to deceive was to cast doubt on independent science and scientists. A popular book on misuse of statistical methods, one that I'd read and liked myself, How to Lie With Statistics, turns out to have been part of that effort, as detailed by Tim Harford in his own book, How To Make The World Add Up https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/ https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/ The ultimate cautionary tale here is Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic, How to Lie With Statistics. Huff’s book is clever, insightful, and impish, and it may be the best-selling book about statistics ever written. It is also, from cover to cover, a warning that statistics are all about misinformation, and that one should no more believe in them than in stage magic. Huff ended up testifying at a Senate hearing that the evidence linking smoking and cancer was as spurious as the evidence linking storks and babies. His unpublished sequel, How to Lie With Smoking Statistics, was paid for by a tobacco-lobby group. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-conspiracy-theorists-problem-isnt-what-they-believe/618285/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-conspi... People are very well aware that the war over what is truth and real continues to be fought. And that it is not merely corporations engaged in it, as control over truth and perception is at the heart of power. "All warfare is based on deception." https://suntzusaid.com/book/1/18/ https://suntzusaid.com/book/1/18/ As a hint, if one side has a long record of lies, and another a long record of honest relations and owning their errors --- the smart money takes counsel from the second. It's wise to assess one's own sources on this basis from time to time.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  I don't really understand your argument. Are you trying to say that "How to Lie with Statistics" is wrong? That's an unbelievably bold assertion to make on an engineering-focused site where we regularly work with deceptive stats that the public eats up.
  - hallarempt 5y ago
    You don't? It's crystal clear to me: that book was paid for, as was its sequel, so industrialists could argue that statistics from independent researchers were not to be trusted. Whether or not the book was right or wrong is not part of that contention.
coldtea 5y ago
The US in particular seems to be full of either such naive types (where enterprise, state, science, NGOs, law, etc can do no wrong, and even if something happens, it's just some individual bad apples at worst) or the other extreme (pizzagate-aliens-they're coming for us conspiracy nuts).
ken47 5y ago
The scientific method is absolutely trustworthy. People, however, are a different story.
Sharlin 5y ago
Even worse, now we have the actual anti-science narrative where, say, the Big Evil Climate Lobby is making up global warming in the hopes of getting more grant money while your friendly neighborhood petrochem megacorporation is just trying to make do and provide jobs and petrol in your tank.

by zionic 5y ago

>industry steamrolled the science. Not only that, industry paid for "science" that hid the dangers. People today however seem to strangely think this doesn't happen anymore.

christophilus 5y ago

It's genuinely hard to know how to make sense of information. I'm generally skeptical of "big anything", whether that's business or government. Incentives can be screwy at any scale, but once you get to very large numbers, incentives seem to simply go off the rails. Industry and governments have a pretty terrible track record of skewing data to suit their needs-- sometimes with a truly tragic consequences. That's why my initial stance on COVID vaccines was to be skeptical of the industry claims. This lumped me in with a lot of quacks, and with a political (US) group with whom that I don't normally align much. It's been a strange few years. At this point, I'm not sure I know how to strike a balance between healthy skepticism and paranoia. Regarding the vaccines, I'm fully vaccinated, as enough time has passed to get me to a place where I think the stats bear it out.

cortesoft 5y ago
I don’t know if it is really that incentives change when you get very big, as much as it is that you become more capable of achieving desires that are counter to the public good. At smaller scales, your power isn’t enough to override the preferences of the masses. Get big enough, and you can.
azinman2 5y ago
While not impossible, it’s much harder to create false stats when going through clinical review with the FDA. Super double extra when the lives of the world are at stake and the total eyeballs on a single vaccine are so high.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  But the processes are very flawed leading to the wrong stats being used to make decisions. For example, an experimental vaccine isn't given out widely till there is good data that it is safe (often taking years). However, for risky diseases (like COVID), as soon as there are even rough indications that it is safer than COVID, it makes sense to give it to everyone. Every month you spend doing more safety tests, millions of people die. The same is happening right now for malaria treatments which are being trialled. Skipping the trial and handing it out untested will probably save more lives.
  - fuckcensorship 5y ago
    > For example, an experimental vaccine isn't given out widely till there is good data that it is safe (often taking years). How is this an example of “the wrong stats being used to make decisions”? You believe that undergoing safety trials with control groups is a bad thing because they take time? > However, for risky diseases (like COVID), as soon as there are even rough indications that it is safer than COVID, it makes sense to give it to everyone. What if we find out several years down the road that the vaccine is causing a drop in IQ, affecting birth rates, etc.? Wouldn’t it have been nice to catch these things during the safety trials before injecting it into billions of people?
    - lkbm 5y ago
      > You believe that undergoing safety trials with control groups is a bad thing because they take time? You can always do more trials and more studies, but at some point the cost of delays outweighs the risks. A blanket "this is the degree of safety testing needed" for every single intervention makes no sense if the cost of that testing differs significantly — and when you have a rapidly spreading disease killing millions of people, the cost of delays is much higher than it would be if you're trying to cure the common cold. No testing at all would be a really bad idea, but "we'll spend just as long testing this one as this as we would on a common cold vaccine" is also a really bad idea. I'd also drive faster if I were rushing to the hospital with a dying friend, even though speeding is risky. You have to weigh risks and benefits and do what has the best expected outcome.
    - 5y ago

dredmorbius 5y ago

A chief tool used by industry to deceive was to cast doubt on independent science and scientists. A popular book on misuse of statistical methods, one that I'd read and liked myself, How to Lie With Statistics, turns out to have been part of that effort, as detailed by Tim Harford in his own book, How To Make The World Add Up https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/ https://timharford.com/books/worldaddup/ The ultimate cautionary tale here is Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic, How to Lie With Statistics. Huff’s book is clever, insightful, and impish, and it may be the best-selling book about statistics ever written. It is also, from cover to cover, a warning that statistics are all about misinformation, and that one should no more believe in them than in stage magic. Huff ended up testifying at a Senate hearing that the evidence linking smoking and cancer was as spurious as the evidence linking storks and babies. His unpublished sequel, How to Lie With Smoking Statistics, was paid for by a tobacco-lobby group. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-conspiracy-theorists-problem-isnt-what-they-believe/618285/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/the-conspi... People are very well aware that the war over what is truth and real continues to be fought. And that it is not merely corporations engaged in it, as control over truth and perception is at the heart of power. "All warfare is based on deception." https://suntzusaid.com/book/1/18/ https://suntzusaid.com/book/1/18/ As a hint, if one side has a long record of lies, and another a long record of honest relations and owning their errors --- the smart money takes counsel from the second. It's wise to assess one's own sources on this basis from time to time.

jimbob45 5y ago
I don't really understand your argument. Are you trying to say that "How to Lie with Statistics" is wrong? That's an unbelievably bold assertion to make on an engineering-focused site where we regularly work with deceptive stats that the public eats up.
- hallarempt 5y ago
  You don't? It's crystal clear to me: that book was paid for, as was its sequel, so industrialists could argue that statistics from independent researchers were not to be trusted. Whether or not the book was right or wrong is not part of that contention.

coldtea 5y ago

The US in particular seems to be full of either such naive types (where enterprise, state, science, NGOs, law, etc can do no wrong, and even if something happens, it's just some individual bad apples at worst) or the other extreme (pizzagate-aliens-they're coming for us conspiracy nuts).

ken47 5y ago

The scientific method is absolutely trustworthy. People, however, are a different story.

Sharlin 5y ago

Even worse, now we have the actual anti-science narrative where, say, the Big Evil Climate Lobby is making up global warming in the hopes of getting more grant money while your friendly neighborhood petrochem megacorporation is just trying to make do and provide jobs and petrol in your tank.