5 ms·

There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. I think it is just relatively rare, because it is a lot of work and takes particular skill. Most pe

There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. I think it is just relatively rare, because it is a lot of work and takes particular skill. Most people who care about this research are indeed crackpots, unfortunately. Those who aren't have mostly moved on from Ivermectin because they have better things to do. Ivermectin is being tested in large RCTs, as it should. If it works, it will be used. If it doesn't, it won't. Until we know, doctors will do what works.

RubberMullet 5y ago
>There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. ... >Most people who care about this research are indeed crackpots, unfortunately. Where is the evidence to support this statement?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 5y ago
  He replies to your question afterwards: > Those who aren't have mostly moved on from Ivermectin because they have better things to do. Ivermectin is being tested in large RCTs, as it should. If it works, it will be used. If it doesn't, it won't. Until we know, doctors will do what works.
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    .. which many doctors believe is ivermectin based on their own mini-trials, so we're right back to where we started.
aantix 5y ago
>There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. Why did this post get flagged on HN? https://imgur.com/a/GgDVfNe https://imgur.com/a/GgDVfNe
- mcguire 5y ago
  I'm sorry, was there some analysis there?
rlt 5y ago
[flagged]
- yxwvut 5y ago
  Because 'works' in a medical context is a boolean that encompasses everything from 'order of magnitude lower chances of death' (effective vaccines) to '1% relative reduction in death' (off-label use of some random drug not intended to target improvement in COVID recovery), so the focus has naturally been on finding treatments with high effect sizes and distributing them as quickly as possible. Not to mention the herd immunity element to vaccines.
roenxi 5y ago
Going through one of those studies from https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ on YouTube would be a risky proposition for a YouTuber. It goes against YouTube's medical misinformation policy [0]. It is pretty clear that a study with that sort of effect size could encourage someone to take Ivermectin. Particularly the "Categorical claims that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19 " would be a worry depending on how the censors feel that day. They'd potentially be arguing a technicality against some Silicon Valley type with an axe to grind. Despite the fact that it appears those studies were honest, and picking up an actual factual effect. Now it turns out, laughably in hindsight, that the effect is probably whether people had parasites or not and I hadn't thought of that. But it isn't obvious how I'm going to figure that out without someone pointing it out to me. Ideally on YouTube where there are some really good channels covering COVID, often with actual doctors involved. No-one else seems to have figured it out either, given I've seen lots of people shouting at each other and none suggested it as a possibility. [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > Now it turns out, laughably in hindsight, that the effect is probably whether people had parasites or not and I hadn't thought of that. Your eagerness to jump on to this idea (which is a cool theory, and isn't meritless, but it should be stressed is a theory that a psychiatrist and social commentator came up with) makes me think you should be wary of how personally susceptible you are to what I'm going to call "fetishization of contrarianism". It's fun to be right, and fun to be right when other people are wrong. It's cool. But its easy to move from "I don't implicitly value what experts say" to "I implicitly distrust so-called experts", which you appear to be doing throughout this and other threads. You've further jumped from what could uncharitably be called a conspiracy theory to a counter-conspiracy theory. Scott even presents his idea as, essentially a conspiracy theory: > It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong! "everyone was wrong", look at me, I'm right, here's a fantastic narrative that perfectly ties up all the loose ends. He looks smart and cool. And you do too[1] if you agree with him. But, to keep on theme, this is a brain worm. (and since we're on a Scott Alexander post, I'll tie this into the broader theme of rationalism) And it's a brain worm that I think a lot of people who otherwise think they're rational/rationalist fall for. The conventional wisdom is, usually, mostly right. Not always all the way right, and sometimes really wrong. But usually, it's most of the way there. This makes alternate modes of thinking really boring, because despite all the fancy self-reflection and attempts to be superior, you're going to draw relatively few conclusions that are all that different from the mainstream. So what's the point? Either you do all this work for a marginal gain, or...or...or, well what if the conventional wisdom is actually wrong a lot more often? What if the experts are misleading us? What if the experts fall into thinking traps that make them wrong all the time? We shouldn't just disregard the experts, we should actively distrust them and assume the opposite! This opens up lots of possibilities for cool ideas. Incredibly compelling narratives, narratives where you can say that everyone else was wrong, and you were right. You can be a hero, or at least feel like one. Outsmarting the experts is cool, and knowing things first is cool. It's cool. And the "problem" with this is that sometimes you'll be right. The government is spying on citizens illegally. Snowden was right. And Ivermectin might have a small effect on covid, and even cooler it might be due to worms! But there have been tons of quack covid cures (HCQ, bleach, silver, etc.) and not every conspiracy theory about the government is true, even if the narrative would be cooler, because we distrust the government and the profit motives of these corporations, and that makes us want to distrust everything they do. But the world is more boring than that, and even though the contrary opinion is true sometimes, usually it isn't. [1]: Another, potentially equally compelling take here is that Scott's presentation here has allowed you to change your mind without admitting (even to yourself) that you were wrong! Because as he presents it, you weren't "wrong". We really, really dislike doing that, but this way you don't have to. The data did/does show an an effect for Ivermectin. You were right. That the effect was due to a "global" confounding factor allows you to change your conclusion without admitting that you were wrong in how you did the analysis. Like, whether or not you were wrong, the people who disagreed with you were right: it's unlikely that it would be helpful for your mother or whomever to take Ivermectin. The rational thing to do here would be to update your priors to trust the "experts" a bit more, perhaps their expert analysis that you weren't willing to believe before, had some truth to it, even though you don't know precisely how or why they reached that conclusion!
podgaj 5y ago
Dr. John Campbell posted a video that was "fact checked" by facebook which he calmly dismantles in the video below. Facebook puts up a big warning if you see it or post it. Soft censorship is still censorship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTAOvgd_JE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTAOvgd_JE
mgamache 5y ago
"There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed" Please think about that for a while...
- CRConrad 5y ago
  "There is no evidence that Queen Elizabeth is a lizard alien from outer space -- that must mean she is!"
abandonliberty 5y ago
Doctors are are much more trades/crafts people than scientists. Among the several I know personally and/or professionally, few are current with the latest research, or even know how to interpret it. They follow the treatment manuals they're provided, which do the best they can with the information available at the time. At the beginning of COVID, the manuals had to make many decisions on incomplete data; none of the drugs they recommended early on are still in use. Most of the world understands this. It's mostly in the USA that we deify doctors. Few have first-year statistics competency, or can critically read a publication. And that's fine - it's not their profession.

RubberMullet 5y ago

>There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. ... >Most people who care about this research are indeed crackpots, unfortunately. Where is the evidence to support this statement?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oblio 5y ago
He replies to your question afterwards: > Those who aren't have mostly moved on from Ivermectin because they have better things to do. Ivermectin is being tested in large RCTs, as it should. If it works, it will be used. If it doesn't, it won't. Until we know, doctors will do what works.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  .. which many doctors believe is ivermectin based on their own mini-trials, so we're right back to where we started.

aantix 5y ago

>There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed. Why did this post get flagged on HN? https://imgur.com/a/GgDVfNe https://imgur.com/a/GgDVfNe

mcguire 5y ago
I'm sorry, was there some analysis there?

rlt 5y ago

[flagged]

yxwvut 5y ago
Because 'works' in a medical context is a boolean that encompasses everything from 'order of magnitude lower chances of death' (effective vaccines) to '1% relative reduction in death' (off-label use of some random drug not intended to target improvement in COVID recovery), so the focus has naturally been on finding treatments with high effect sizes and distributing them as quickly as possible. Not to mention the herd immunity element to vaccines.

roenxi 5y ago

Going through one of those studies from https://ivmmeta.com/ https://ivmmeta.com/ on YouTube would be a risky proposition for a YouTuber. It goes against YouTube's medical misinformation policy [0]. It is pretty clear that a study with that sort of effect size could encourage someone to take Ivermectin. Particularly the "Categorical claims that Ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID-19 " would be a worry depending on how the censors feel that day. They'd potentially be arguing a technicality against some Silicon Valley type with an axe to grind. Despite the fact that it appears those studies were honest, and picking up an actual factual effect. Now it turns out, laughably in hindsight, that the effect is probably whether people had parasites or not and I hadn't thought of that. But it isn't obvious how I'm going to figure that out without someone pointing it out to me. Ideally on YouTube where there are some really good channels covering COVID, often with actual doctors involved. No-one else seems to have figured it out either, given I've seen lots of people shouting at each other and none suggested it as a possibility. [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en

joshuamorton 5y ago
> Now it turns out, laughably in hindsight, that the effect is probably whether people had parasites or not and I hadn't thought of that. Your eagerness to jump on to this idea (which is a cool theory, and isn't meritless, but it should be stressed is a theory that a psychiatrist and social commentator came up with) makes me think you should be wary of how personally susceptible you are to what I'm going to call "fetishization of contrarianism". It's fun to be right, and fun to be right when other people are wrong. It's cool. But its easy to move from "I don't implicitly value what experts say" to "I implicitly distrust so-called experts", which you appear to be doing throughout this and other threads. You've further jumped from what could uncharitably be called a conspiracy theory to a counter-conspiracy theory. Scott even presents his idea as, essentially a conspiracy theory: > It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong! "everyone was wrong", look at me, I'm right, here's a fantastic narrative that perfectly ties up all the loose ends. He looks smart and cool. And you do too[1] if you agree with him. But, to keep on theme, this is a brain worm. (and since we're on a Scott Alexander post, I'll tie this into the broader theme of rationalism) And it's a brain worm that I think a lot of people who otherwise think they're rational/rationalist fall for. The conventional wisdom is, usually, mostly right. Not always all the way right, and sometimes really wrong. But usually, it's most of the way there. This makes alternate modes of thinking really boring, because despite all the fancy self-reflection and attempts to be superior, you're going to draw relatively few conclusions that are all that different from the mainstream. So what's the point? Either you do all this work for a marginal gain, or...or...or, well what if the conventional wisdom is actually wrong a lot more often? What if the experts are misleading us? What if the experts fall into thinking traps that make them wrong all the time? We shouldn't just disregard the experts, we should actively distrust them and assume the opposite! This opens up lots of possibilities for cool ideas. Incredibly compelling narratives, narratives where you can say that everyone else was wrong, and you were right. You can be a hero, or at least feel like one. Outsmarting the experts is cool, and knowing things first is cool. It's cool. And the "problem" with this is that sometimes you'll be right. The government is spying on citizens illegally. Snowden was right. And Ivermectin might have a small effect on covid, and even cooler it might be due to worms! But there have been tons of quack covid cures (HCQ, bleach, silver, etc.) and not every conspiracy theory about the government is true, even if the narrative would be cooler, because we distrust the government and the profit motives of these corporations, and that makes us want to distrust everything they do. But the world is more boring than that, and even though the contrary opinion is true sometimes, usually it isn't. [1]: Another, potentially equally compelling take here is that Scott's presentation here has allowed you to change your mind without admitting (even to yourself) that you were wrong! Because as he presents it, you weren't "wrong". We really, really dislike doing that, but this way you don't have to. The data did/does show an an effect for Ivermectin. You were right. That the effect was due to a "global" confounding factor allows you to change your conclusion without admitting that you were wrong in how you did the analysis. Like, whether or not you were wrong, the people who disagreed with you were right: it's unlikely that it would be helpful for your mother or whomever to take Ivermectin. The rational thing to do here would be to update your priors to trust the "experts" a bit more, perhaps their expert analysis that you weren't willing to believe before, had some truth to it, even though you don't know precisely how or why they reached that conclusion!

podgaj 5y ago

Dr. John Campbell posted a video that was "fact checked" by facebook which he calmly dismantles in the video below. Facebook puts up a big warning if you see it or post it. Soft censorship is still censorship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTAOvgd_JE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTAOvgd_JE

mgamache 5y ago

"There is little evidence of such analysis being suppressed" Please think about that for a while...

CRConrad 5y ago
"There is no evidence that Queen Elizabeth is a lizard alien from outer space -- that must mean she is!"

abandonliberty 5y ago

Doctors are are much more trades/crafts people than scientists. Among the several I know personally and/or professionally, few are current with the latest research, or even know how to interpret it. They follow the treatment manuals they're provided, which do the best they can with the information available at the time. At the beginning of COVID, the manuals had to make many decisions on incomplete data; none of the drugs they recommended early on are still in use. Most of the world understands this. It's mostly in the USA that we deify doctors. Few have first-year statistics competency, or can critically read a publication. And that's fine - it's not their profession.