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Freakonomics has a history (IMO) of being way too uncritical of the podcast's guests and PIMA seems worse about it. Personally, I think the article is a bit too
by gs17 2y ago
Freakonomics has a history (IMO) of being way too uncritical of the podcast's guests and PIMA seems worse about it. Personally, I think the article is a bit too harsh, but it's in the same direction as why I stopped listening.
> First, Levitt starts out by accepting that a certain suspect claim “actually has been replicated a number of times.” Going with your interviewee can make sense in a podcast, but, again, it’s counter to Levitt’s earlier goal of asking, “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?”
I haven't listened to the episode, but Levitt really should have pushed back a bit more. The conversation went (paraphrased) "Here's a surprising result" "Really? Has that been replicated?" "Yes, many times sort of, now here's another surprising result from myself". She really should have been asked about replications done by other groups at least. The replication question kind of gets dodged and then they drop it for the rest of the hour-long discussion (according to the transcript: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-will-thank-you/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/pay-attention-your-body-wil... ), which is a bit odd when he made “How do you know whether you should believe surprising results?” a theme of the episode. If her work had good replications, it would be more believable.
- tdeck 2y agoI stopped listening over a decade ago for this exact reason. Dr. Oz (I prefer to think of him as Mr. Oz) has been a friend of the show for years, but this is the episode that put me over the edge: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop This guy claims he can cure Parkinson's with a fecal transplant and they just let him frame the conversion and the medical community's skepticism however he wants like it's a given that he is a misunderstood genius. It was so obvious the hosts lacked the basic tools of skepticism. Now if you look up that doctor 13 years later he's been promoting ivermectin as a cure for COVID which is totally on brand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Borody
- throwawaythekey 2y agoCure is a strong word but there's plenty of research which supports ivermectin being effective against COVID. https://c19ivm.org/ https://c19ivm.org/ The medical commmunity will almost always be skeptical of new theories, sometimes this is well placed but sometimes it isn't. That's neither here nor there though, the main takeaway is you probably shouldn't go to economists for medical advice.
- mplewis 2y agoPlease don’t spread ivermectin conspiracy theories on HN.
- throwawaythekey 2y agoI'm mostly just trying to provide Thomas Borody the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure he would do a much better job of defending himself.
- nateglims 2y agoIf if you click through for meta analysis of most of the drugs listed, it claims a statistically significant reduction in mortality. That seems incredible.
- throwawaythekey 2y agoI'm not an expert but gut checking against this chart https://c19early.org/plot/bpall.png https://c19early.org/plot/bpall.png 1. The exercise, diet, sunlight, zinc, and vitamin d results all seem plausible. They are well known to improve your immune system. 2. Remdesivir was originally recommended for covid19 but then they stopped using it. I'm surprised the plasma has such a poor result because that was heavily hailed originally too. 3. Paxlovid and HCQ are both widely recommended, in line with the results presented. So as far as I can tell (which isn't far!) it seems like a reasonable analysis. The main point I wanted to make is Borody is far from alone in being interested in c19 and ivermectin.