4 ms·

Can anyone offer insights to how reliable this article is? I don’t know the field and am reduced to looking at superficial signals, like: I see business school

Can anyone offer insights to how reliable this article is? I don’t know the field and am reduced to looking at superficial signals, like: I see business school bylines and the “see additional publications by this author” links don’t turn up anything… but the Nature imprint seems impressive? Can anyone weigh in on the methodology or data? (Interesting to note that the linked page puts this article in something like the 99th percentile for how much it’s tweeted, which I would put squarely in the “reduces my confidence” category…)

netsharc 4y ago
I guess many anti-vax people confirmation-biased this article and are tweeting about it, and if I can guess, you're pro-vax and your confirmation bias is skeptical about it (if it was an article that touted how good the vaccines are, you'de be less skeptical about it, and less critical pro-vax minds would be on Twitter saying "See, I was right!").
- johanneswu 4y ago
  I don't know ryandamm, so I can't judge whether he is pro- or anti-vax, but you should be fact checking every article before sharing it. Doing basic checks like "what else did the authors publish" seem fairly sensible.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    Actually it isn't really since the scientific community regularly has the problem of ostracising those that offer much progress. It is a decent method in practice but ultimately fallacious. The corpus of published works is far too massive so it is a compromise. A bad one, because the pressure to publish has a negative effect on scientific rigour.
buildbot 4y ago
I am leaning to towards not reliable, as they claim the trend started in Jan 2021, which is a little early for when Israel was vaccinating that population: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/israel-covid-vaccination-data-offers-hope-exit-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/israel-covid-v... It seems like the authors probably went into this with a conclusion in mind…
- cft 4y ago
  - buildbot 4y ago
    Please follow HN guidelines when responding, you could have simply stated, "Looking at figure 1b, it seems like there was time delay between the first dose and the increase in rates".
    - cft 4y ago
      This is a wrong venue to condescendingly teach other people how to write comments. The goal of this forum is to contribute information or insights. If you you think I violated HN guidelines, please downvote and report to dang.
      - buildbot 4y ago
        Respectfully, it is exactly the right venue? I sorta thought that was the point here. And sure, done.
  - alimov 4y ago
    I’m not very knowledgeable about this, but I was wondering if MIT (professor?) co-authorship precludes papers from coming to the wrong conclusions? Or is it we’ll know that when a co-author is from MIT that the paper is as rigorous and objective as possible?
    - cft 4y ago
      I am just comparing the potential veracity of a peer reviewed article in Nature of two MIT authors and one emergency physician from Ben Gurion University with a one line dismissal and a newspaper link. Which one is "we'll [sic] known" to be more plausible?
      - fsh 4y ago
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Don't know in general but there is another study with the same statement for young people with increased heart problems. Cannot find it, but it is just a few weeks old and I think the country of study was Denmark. Not sure though.
mpfundstein 4y ago
on the page, there is a link to his google scholar page He is a serious scientist: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RBSyaTIAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RBSyaTIAAAAJ&hl=en
folli 4y ago
> but the Nature imprint seems impressive It's Scientific Reports from the same publisher, but not Nature, the journal itself. Scientific Reports has a very high acceptance rate, i.e. they publish pretty much anything that passes peer review.
- jrapdx3 4y ago
  Traditional paper-bound journals are intrinsically limited re: number of articles that can be published. OTOH online publications aren't so restricted, so why not publish all that are worthy? I think the real question is the quality of peer review. A "high rate of acceptance" isn't bad if accepting an article happens only after good quality peer review. But a high rate of acceptance without adequate peer review would be a big source of concern. Not sure which of these publishing considerations applies to this article. I'll have to go over it again in detail when I'm more rested, anyway on quick overview I didn't spot any glaring problems in it.
scantis 4y ago
Looks like a straight forward article. Instead of a conclusion you are left with a discussion, which sadly is quite weak, but this seems to be the point. (As I understand it after skimming through it) Basically you have a data set and some statistical evaluation. The gabs are filled with some medical and statistical "Mumbo Jambo" I didn't read. Seems professional, the graphs are pretty clear cut, which is nice. The discussion basically states that the data is flawed for the purpose of making clear connections and urges the necessity to provide better data in the future. They aren't even able to make their derived call data public, due to privacy laws in this case. They are absolute right and have a valid point here. No reason not to publish this and it conveys some important messages. We should gather better data and find a way to share it, without touching on the privacy of individuals. A very difficult topic I personally wouldn't touch with a stick.
- logifail 4y ago
  > A very difficult topic I personally wouldn't touch with a stick Agree completely. This topic has got so ideological that if (when) it comes up in conversation I tend to demur and politely change the subject. Perhaps at some point there will be a genuine attempt to gather more data on just who genuinely benefits from vaccination (obese/elderly/other comorbidities?), and who doesn't (young/healthy). One thing we can be sure of is that no such study will ever be funded by Big Pharma.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  Of all the parts of the paper to gloss over, the medical and statistical "Mumbo Jambo" is the most important one to evaluate!
  - scantis 4y ago
    Would you like to discuss why they use Spearman instead of Kendall and if this negative binomial distrubition asumption is valid in this case? It won't have any effect on the final result, which basically states that the data set is insufficient.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

netsharc 4y ago

I guess many anti-vax people confirmation-biased this article and are tweeting about it, and if I can guess, you're pro-vax and your confirmation bias is skeptical about it (if it was an article that touted how good the vaccines are, you'de be less skeptical about it, and less critical pro-vax minds would be on Twitter saying "See, I was right!").

johanneswu 4y ago
I don't know ryandamm, so I can't judge whether he is pro- or anti-vax, but you should be fact checking every article before sharing it. Doing basic checks like "what else did the authors publish" seem fairly sensible.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  Actually it isn't really since the scientific community regularly has the problem of ostracising those that offer much progress. It is a decent method in practice but ultimately fallacious. The corpus of published works is far too massive so it is a compromise. A bad one, because the pressure to publish has a negative effect on scientific rigour.

buildbot 4y ago

I am leaning to towards not reliable, as they claim the trend started in Jan 2021, which is a little early for when Israel was vaccinating that population: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/israel-covid-vaccination-data-offers-hope-exit-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/israel-covid-v... It seems like the authors probably went into this with a conclusion in mind…

cft 4y ago
- buildbot 4y ago
  Please follow HN guidelines when responding, you could have simply stated, "Looking at figure 1b, it seems like there was time delay between the first dose and the increase in rates".
  - cft 4y ago
    This is a wrong venue to condescendingly teach other people how to write comments. The goal of this forum is to contribute information or insights. If you you think I violated HN guidelines, please downvote and report to dang.
    - buildbot 4y ago
      Respectfully, it is exactly the right venue? I sorta thought that was the point here. And sure, done.
- alimov 4y ago
  I’m not very knowledgeable about this, but I was wondering if MIT (professor?) co-authorship precludes papers from coming to the wrong conclusions? Or is it we’ll know that when a co-author is from MIT that the paper is as rigorous and objective as possible?
  - cft 4y ago
    I am just comparing the potential veracity of a peer reviewed article in Nature of two MIT authors and one emergency physician from Ben Gurion University with a one line dismissal and a newspaper link. Which one is "we'll [sic] known" to be more plausible?
    - fsh 4y ago

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Don't know in general but there is another study with the same statement for young people with increased heart problems. Cannot find it, but it is just a few weeks old and I think the country of study was Denmark. Not sure though.

mpfundstein 4y ago

on the page, there is a link to his google scholar page He is a serious scientist: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RBSyaTIAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RBSyaTIAAAAJ&hl=en

folli 4y ago

> but the Nature imprint seems impressive It's Scientific Reports from the same publisher, but not Nature, the journal itself. Scientific Reports has a very high acceptance rate, i.e. they publish pretty much anything that passes peer review.

jrapdx3 4y ago
Traditional paper-bound journals are intrinsically limited re: number of articles that can be published. OTOH online publications aren't so restricted, so why not publish all that are worthy? I think the real question is the quality of peer review. A "high rate of acceptance" isn't bad if accepting an article happens only after good quality peer review. But a high rate of acceptance without adequate peer review would be a big source of concern. Not sure which of these publishing considerations applies to this article. I'll have to go over it again in detail when I'm more rested, anyway on quick overview I didn't spot any glaring problems in it.

scantis 4y ago

Looks like a straight forward article. Instead of a conclusion you are left with a discussion, which sadly is quite weak, but this seems to be the point. (As I understand it after skimming through it) Basically you have a data set and some statistical evaluation. The gabs are filled with some medical and statistical "Mumbo Jambo" I didn't read. Seems professional, the graphs are pretty clear cut, which is nice. The discussion basically states that the data is flawed for the purpose of making clear connections and urges the necessity to provide better data in the future. They aren't even able to make their derived call data public, due to privacy laws in this case. They are absolute right and have a valid point here. No reason not to publish this and it conveys some important messages. We should gather better data and find a way to share it, without touching on the privacy of individuals. A very difficult topic I personally wouldn't touch with a stick.

logifail 4y ago
> A very difficult topic I personally wouldn't touch with a stick Agree completely. This topic has got so ideological that if (when) it comes up in conversation I tend to demur and politely change the subject. Perhaps at some point there will be a genuine attempt to gather more data on just who genuinely benefits from vaccination (obese/elderly/other comorbidities?), and who doesn't (young/healthy). One thing we can be sure of is that no such study will ever be funded by Big Pharma.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
Of all the parts of the paper to gloss over, the medical and statistical "Mumbo Jambo" is the most important one to evaluate!
- scantis 4y ago
  Would you like to discuss why they use Spearman instead of Kendall and if this negative binomial distrubition asumption is valid in this case? It won't have any effect on the final result, which basically states that the data set is insufficient.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]