4 ms·

A very large proportion of the population spends 8-10 hours a day, 5-7 days a week, 3/4 to 11/12ths of the year, doing things they don't particularly enjoy, for

A very large proportion of the population spends 8-10 hours a day, 5-7 days a week, 3/4 to 11/12ths of the year, doing things they don't particularly enjoy, for money. Per Piketty & our dear senator from Vermont, less than 1% of world population controls over half of of the world's wealth. "Conspiracy" is just rhetoric. It's a word to shoo people away who aren't inclined to think things through. Replace "conspiracy" with "paycheck", and you've just explained how the world works. There are chemical plants, with hundreds of employees each, that have been poisoning communities for generations. And most of these employees live in the same communities they've been poisoning! And the situation persists! And you're rolling your eyes at us for doubting that the medical establishment--the 3rd leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, with its whopping 19.7% of US GDP--couldn't hide their boo-boos (even if they tried!) behind esoteric epidemiologyese?

justinjlynn 4y ago
> "Conspiracy" is just rhetoric. I believe that's at the heart of what we're discussing. There's an important distinction to be made between actual malice and simple ignorance. This is not a Russel Bliss/Times Beach situation, as you seemingly imply. This is many independent actors all working independently on many potential solutions, each of which stand to gain massive financial benefit for exposing malfeasance. I would not confuse that with "looking the other way for a paycheck". It's quite the opposite, in fact.
- georgia_peach 4y ago
  They aren't independent actors. If you spend any time in the journals, it's all funded by either the government or pharma. Mostly the government. And given regulatory capture, these entities might as well be one-in-the-same. Disagree with either, and kiss your grad students goodbye. There is also an unspoken professional hierarchy. It is simply understood that if you run contrary to the current 800-lb gorilla of the field, your career is going nowhere--look into what's been going on with the beta-amyloid hypothesis for the last 20 years, or recall Planck's remark that "science advances one funeral at a time". Or, to paraphrase Lewis Grizzard: "One boy, one whole brain. Two boys, half a brain. Three boys, no brain at all."
  - justinjlynn 4y ago
    I have another aphorism for you: If you distrust everyone - especially those who do not know each other and have little to no other reason to cooperate or seek each other out - no one is going to be able to convince you to trust anyone.
    - georgia_peach 4y ago
      I am an empiricist. For my own ailments, the track record has been: Dr Google & Dr. Wikipedia: 4 GPs & Specialists: 1 And the one ailment that the system did successfully treat was primarily a result of misinformation that the system perpetuated. If the system were functioning, there would be no way for an amateur to outperform them so consistently. edit: and since HN is slowposting me now: I mentioned a study in my original comment: https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long While this comment made no claim to being a study. It is highlighting an extreme improbability. If random taco cart guy is besting the average software dev 80% of the time, that's a pretty clear sign something is wrong with the field. edit 2: and to joshuamorton Mine was by a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins and his research assistant, subsequently published in the British Medical Journal. Yours is a blog post by a "science communicator," whatever that is supposed to be. Of course the BMJ article would be widely criticized by an industry that claims almost 20% of US GDP. They can afford to have it criticized--by professional criticizers no less. And the BMJ article is but one of many on the misrepresentations and oversellings of modern medicine. Read Ioannidis, or Mendelssohn, or Illich, or Mullins, or so many others! As an old person, who has seen a lot of people cut short by the hospitals, all of these takedowns have held true to life. I've seen heart patients MRSA-ed to death by the hospitals, who would have been just fine if they stayed home; cancer patients killed off by post-radiation pleural effusion long before the cancer would have gotten them; people losing 1/3 of their blood volume, or suffering from intestinal perforations, from "routine" colonoscopies. The primary contribution to human life expectancy in the last century was not mainstream medicine. It was public hygiene.
      - justinjlynn 4y ago
        As you're an empiricist, you also know that a study with an n of 1 is not a study; it is a case report and should be interpreted as such. You, by yourself, are not generalisable.
- jseban 4y ago
  The WHO and it's director has an enormous amount of centralised global power on this matter, which anyone would argue is ridiculously dangerous and disproportionate, especially considering how many scandals and investigations the WHO have already had due to funding from private corporations and pharma companies. And the fact that they simply changed the definition of what a pandemic is, seemingly on a whim, to no longer include death rates, with no scientific intervention, is that something we should accept as some kind of perfect and neutral decision making that's obviously in the interest of.. whom exactly?
  - justinjlynn 4y ago
    I'm sorry, did you have a specific assertion or accusation to make? I can't tell.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    >The WHO and it's director has an enormous amount of centralised global power on this matter, which anyone would argue is ridiculously dangerous and disproportionate better phrased: 'I, personally, as 1 of the people in the world, argue this thing' so, argue it, but try to stick to specifics: "This is the direct evidence that the CDC killed scientists who disagreed with this study" or whatever the specific conspiracy theory is as it pertains to this article

justinjlynn 4y ago

> "Conspiracy" is just rhetoric. I believe that's at the heart of what we're discussing. There's an important distinction to be made between actual malice and simple ignorance. This is not a Russel Bliss/Times Beach situation, as you seemingly imply. This is many independent actors all working independently on many potential solutions, each of which stand to gain massive financial benefit for exposing malfeasance. I would not confuse that with "looking the other way for a paycheck". It's quite the opposite, in fact.

georgia_peach 4y ago
They aren't independent actors. If you spend any time in the journals, it's all funded by either the government or pharma. Mostly the government. And given regulatory capture, these entities might as well be one-in-the-same. Disagree with either, and kiss your grad students goodbye. There is also an unspoken professional hierarchy. It is simply understood that if you run contrary to the current 800-lb gorilla of the field, your career is going nowhere--look into what's been going on with the beta-amyloid hypothesis for the last 20 years, or recall Planck's remark that "science advances one funeral at a time". Or, to paraphrase Lewis Grizzard: "One boy, one whole brain. Two boys, half a brain. Three boys, no brain at all."
- justinjlynn 4y ago
  I have another aphorism for you: If you distrust everyone - especially those who do not know each other and have little to no other reason to cooperate or seek each other out - no one is going to be able to convince you to trust anyone.
  - georgia_peach 4y ago
    I am an empiricist. For my own ailments, the track record has been: Dr Google & Dr. Wikipedia: 4 GPs & Specialists: 1 And the one ailment that the system did successfully treat was primarily a result of misinformation that the system perpetuated. If the system were functioning, there would be no way for an amateur to outperform them so consistently. edit: and since HN is slowposting me now: I mentioned a study in my original comment: https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long While this comment made no claim to being a study. It is highlighting an extreme improbability. If random taco cart guy is besting the average software dev 80% of the time, that's a pretty clear sign something is wrong with the field. edit 2: and to joshuamorton Mine was by a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins and his research assistant, subsequently published in the British Medical Journal. Yours is a blog post by a "science communicator," whatever that is supposed to be. Of course the BMJ article would be widely criticized by an industry that claims almost 20% of US GDP. They can afford to have it criticized--by professional criticizers no less. And the BMJ article is but one of many on the misrepresentations and oversellings of modern medicine. Read Ioannidis, or Mendelssohn, or Illich, or Mullins, or so many others! As an old person, who has seen a lot of people cut short by the hospitals, all of these takedowns have held true to life. I've seen heart patients MRSA-ed to death by the hospitals, who would have been just fine if they stayed home; cancer patients killed off by post-radiation pleural effusion long before the cancer would have gotten them; people losing 1/3 of their blood volume, or suffering from intestinal perforations, from "routine" colonoscopies. The primary contribution to human life expectancy in the last century was not mainstream medicine. It was public hygiene.
    - justinjlynn 4y ago
      As you're an empiricist, you also know that a study with an n of 1 is not a study; it is a case report and should be interpreted as such. You, by yourself, are not generalisable.
jseban 4y ago
The WHO and it's director has an enormous amount of centralised global power on this matter, which anyone would argue is ridiculously dangerous and disproportionate, especially considering how many scandals and investigations the WHO have already had due to funding from private corporations and pharma companies. And the fact that they simply changed the definition of what a pandemic is, seemingly on a whim, to no longer include death rates, with no scientific intervention, is that something we should accept as some kind of perfect and neutral decision making that's obviously in the interest of.. whom exactly?
- justinjlynn 4y ago
  I'm sorry, did you have a specific assertion or accusation to make? I can't tell.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  >The WHO and it's director has an enormous amount of centralised global power on this matter, which anyone would argue is ridiculously dangerous and disproportionate better phrased: 'I, personally, as 1 of the people in the world, argue this thing' so, argue it, but try to stick to specifics: "This is the direct evidence that the CDC killed scientists who disagreed with this study" or whatever the specific conspiracy theory is as it pertains to this article