7 ms·

I'm going to hop on this. I am a structural biologist, I study mainly viruses, admittedly not normally mammalian viruses. Recently, I've been involved in a coll

I'm going to hop on this. I am a structural biologist, I study mainly viruses, admittedly not normally mammalian viruses. Recently, I've been involved in a collaboration for developing a new, Covid vaccine. Full disclosure - not mRNA. As part of that, I've been working directly with Covid-19. I'm not a Covid expert, but I am aware enough of the science to spot many obvious falsehoods. I didn't write this article, nor did I rigorously fact check it. But it struck me as at least, mostly reasonable questions around which to foment a discussion. Most of the points in this article I'd be comfortable asking to a room of PhD scientists with expertise on Covid and vaccines. I'd be disappointed to see this flagged.

dekhn 5y ago
If you're at a university, drop this article into the queue at your grad school journal club. Give folks a week to prepare counterarguments. Attend, and see what you think. prediction: this "article" contains 18 invalidating points in the first three paragraphs.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
nostromo 5y ago
It's worth noting that the author is a PhD biochemist from Rutgers. I have no idea if her concerns have merit, but I don't believe it should be shot down without consideration either.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  BBC: “ Scientists not backing Covid jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds”. Link below. UK’s vaccine top advisory body (that refused to recommend the vaccine for 12-15 age bracket) membership: Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford) Professor Lim Wei Shen, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals) Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford) Dr Kevin Brown (Public Health England) Dr Rebecca Cordery (Public Health England) Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust) Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick) Alison Lawrence (lay member) Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital) Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol) Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands) Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen) Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London) Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol) Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals) Approved government media: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 What was the risk and is it approved for discussion if the absolute top vaccine experts declined to recommend it and a government funded news media, BBC, reported on that? Is this too fringe to talk about? Is BBC anti-vaxx now? Are these professors anti-vaxxers?
  - 6510 5y ago
    I'm surprised by the ever growing HN trend of not reading articles before commenting. This time the comments fail to guess what the article is about spectacularly. Tell me again how the public should not get involved in the debate but this time give the right example and do it silently?
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      - 6510 5y ago
  - iso1631 5y ago
    "Approved government media" That's not what the BBC is
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
      It's literally the national broadcaster, and governed by the culture secretary. How much more government approval do you need? The Queen to notarize personally every utterance, noise and word they say/write? It's literally as close to that as one can get, has a Royal Charter too. Next would be the queen herself broadcasting live 24/7/365, might be hard to get that much juice out of a 90 year old. Maybe one day.
      - iso1631 5y ago
        No, government broadcaster would be the government broadcasting directly from a government broadcast centre over other platforms This is the youtube outlet for it https://www.youtube.com/user/number10gov https://www.youtube.com/user/number10gov Are you American by any chance? Is CBS a government mouthpiece because they carry actual government broadcasts like presidential addresses and have some oversight from a government agency (FCC)?
- dekhn 5y ago
  phd in algae/oil production. So they'd have plenty of base knowledge about biology, but hard to say that they learned anything about human medical biology.
  - nostromo 5y ago
    Sure, but it makes me question these HN comments like "the author is clueless about statistics" and the like.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      the vast majority of scientists are know are clueless about statistics. Biochemisty isn't a field that is strongly dependent on stats, in a way that (for example) genomics is.
      - nkurz 5y ago
        "Clueless" is misleading. It seems fair to assume anyone with a PhD in a hard science is probably in the 99%+ percentile for statistical knowledge. Sure, even at this level the statistics often get applied incorrectly, but I'm not sure how well statistical intuition correlates with the number of courses taken. Deep within the linked piece there is a small section entitled 'On “statistical significance”'. It says this: Now, this result does not happen to be “statistically significant.” People often use arguments like “but it’s not statistically significant” to try to discount results. I even hear people with PhDs or MDs say this, because somewhere in their schooling they were falsely taught that results need to be “statistically significant” to be “real.” But even if a result is not statistically significant, absent better data, it still remains the best available estimate for the effect in question. This is just common sense. “Statistically insignificant” does not mean that there is no effect. More on statistical significance here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9. As a non-PhD who has (relatively) thought a lot about statistics, and who has previously linked others to that Nature article, this is the sort of balanced statement that makes me think she is not clueless. How about you?
mcguire 5y ago
"Most of the points in this article I'd be comfortable asking to a room of PhD scientists with expertise on Covid and vaccines." How about discussing those points with a roomful of non-PhD, non-scientists, with no particular knowledge of medicine in general?
- COGlory 5y ago
  I think its important we have the same conversations in public as we do behind closed doors in academia. Especially when we are asking people to inject medicine in their bodies.
  - igetspam 5y ago
    Are you wanting to invite the public as spectators or participants?
    - janto 5y ago
      If they get injected they are participants already.
      - igetspam 5y ago
        They're participants in society but not the scientific community. They're not even part of a study. What makes their opinions on the science worth entertaining? Do you think John and Jane Q Public should be involved in network architecture because they have phones? Or civil engineering of bridges because sometimes they drive over one? I cannot find th logic in these arguments.
        6510 5y ago
        This is exactly what the article [that you didn't read] talks about. The end user can usefully participate in the network architecture debate if enough of their messages are vanishing. If the expert then says: "oh, but 1 in 2680 is rare" other professionals may adjust their opinion about them personally. If they then go on a crusade to get the exchange scrubbed from the record it would make them more credible to you?

dekhn 5y ago

If you're at a university, drop this article into the queue at your grad school journal club. Give folks a week to prepare counterarguments. Attend, and see what you think. prediction: this "article" contains 18 invalidating points in the first three paragraphs.

inter_netuser 5y ago

nostromo 5y ago

It's worth noting that the author is a PhD biochemist from Rutgers. I have no idea if her concerns have merit, but I don't believe it should be shot down without consideration either.

inter_netuser 5y ago
BBC: “ Scientists not backing Covid jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds”. Link below. UK’s vaccine top advisory body (that refused to recommend the vaccine for 12-15 age bracket) membership: Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford) Professor Lim Wei Shen, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals) Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford) Dr Kevin Brown (Public Health England) Dr Rebecca Cordery (Public Health England) Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust) Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick) Alison Lawrence (lay member) Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital) Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol) Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands) Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen) Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London) Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol) Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals) Approved government media: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 What was the risk and is it approved for discussion if the absolute top vaccine experts declined to recommend it and a government funded news media, BBC, reported on that? Is this too fringe to talk about? Is BBC anti-vaxx now? Are these professors anti-vaxxers?
- 6510 5y ago
  I'm surprised by the ever growing HN trend of not reading articles before commenting. This time the comments fail to guess what the article is about spectacularly. Tell me again how the public should not get involved in the debate but this time give the right example and do it silently?
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    - 6510 5y ago
- iso1631 5y ago
  "Approved government media" That's not what the BBC is
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    It's literally the national broadcaster, and governed by the culture secretary. How much more government approval do you need? The Queen to notarize personally every utterance, noise and word they say/write? It's literally as close to that as one can get, has a Royal Charter too. Next would be the queen herself broadcasting live 24/7/365, might be hard to get that much juice out of a 90 year old. Maybe one day.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      No, government broadcaster would be the government broadcasting directly from a government broadcast centre over other platforms This is the youtube outlet for it https://www.youtube.com/user/number10gov https://www.youtube.com/user/number10gov Are you American by any chance? Is CBS a government mouthpiece because they carry actual government broadcasts like presidential addresses and have some oversight from a government agency (FCC)?
dekhn 5y ago
phd in algae/oil production. So they'd have plenty of base knowledge about biology, but hard to say that they learned anything about human medical biology.
- nostromo 5y ago
  Sure, but it makes me question these HN comments like "the author is clueless about statistics" and the like.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    the vast majority of scientists are know are clueless about statistics. Biochemisty isn't a field that is strongly dependent on stats, in a way that (for example) genomics is.
    - nkurz 5y ago
      "Clueless" is misleading. It seems fair to assume anyone with a PhD in a hard science is probably in the 99%+ percentile for statistical knowledge. Sure, even at this level the statistics often get applied incorrectly, but I'm not sure how well statistical intuition correlates with the number of courses taken. Deep within the linked piece there is a small section entitled 'On “statistical significance”'. It says this: Now, this result does not happen to be “statistically significant.” People often use arguments like “but it’s not statistically significant” to try to discount results. I even hear people with PhDs or MDs say this, because somewhere in their schooling they were falsely taught that results need to be “statistically significant” to be “real.” But even if a result is not statistically significant, absent better data, it still remains the best available estimate for the effect in question. This is just common sense. “Statistically insignificant” does not mean that there is no effect. More on statistical significance here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9. As a non-PhD who has (relatively) thought a lot about statistics, and who has previously linked others to that Nature article, this is the sort of balanced statement that makes me think she is not clueless. How about you?

mcguire 5y ago

"Most of the points in this article I'd be comfortable asking to a room of PhD scientists with expertise on Covid and vaccines." How about discussing those points with a roomful of non-PhD, non-scientists, with no particular knowledge of medicine in general?

COGlory 5y ago
I think its important we have the same conversations in public as we do behind closed doors in academia. Especially when we are asking people to inject medicine in their bodies.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Are you wanting to invite the public as spectators or participants?
  - janto 5y ago
    If they get injected they are participants already.
    - igetspam 5y ago
      They're participants in society but not the scientific community. They're not even part of a study. What makes their opinions on the science worth entertaining? Do you think John and Jane Q Public should be involved in network architecture because they have phones? Or civil engineering of bridges because sometimes they drive over one? I cannot find th logic in these arguments.
      - 6510 5y ago
        This is exactly what the article [that you didn't read] talks about. The end user can usefully participate in the network architecture debate if enough of their messages are vanishing. If the expert then says: "oh, but 1 in 2680 is rare" other professionals may adjust their opinion about them personally. If they then go on a crusade to get the exchange scrubbed from the record it would make them more credible to you?