4 ms·

Reminds me of the FTL neutrinos too, where the scientist where pretty much "hey, something is wrong, can you help us figure it out?" and the general public were

Reminds me of the FTL neutrinos too, where the scientist where pretty much "hey, something is wrong, can you help us figure it out?" and the general public were the ones screaming "OMG! Physics is dead!" Then when it comes out as measurement error, the public is all "Damn these scientists are all hype machine clowns..."

dd8601fn 2mo ago
I’m fine with that. Put it at the feet of pop science blogging. I’m less fine with the time and resources spent on mouse models. They already know you’d get the same utility from a magic 8 ball, but they do it anyway.
- gus_massa 2mo ago
  Mouse models are useful to discard very bad ideas. There was a recent experiment to use bacteria to kill cancer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 They tried like 40 bacterias in vitro, then like 9 in mice, and only 1 was useful in mice and they will continue only with that, perhaps in humans. Anyway, as you suggest, there is a high chance it will fail. Also, you can do nasty stuff to mice that would never be allowed with humans. In that experiment they injected cancer cells in mice with a bad inmune system, so they could get like 90 mice with cancer and run the experiment in a short time. No ethical committee would approve that in humans.
- IAmBroom 2mo ago
  Your claim seems to be that testing medicines in animals is useless, because "everyone knows it's not going to work". Congratulations. You've just reduced all of medical science to the Tuskegee STD experiment.
pfdietz 2mo ago
That was a fiendish thing to debug; if I recall correctly it was a slightly and intermittently defective connector.
dguest 2mo ago
Unfortunately it wasn't just the public: it caused so much uproar within the experiment that two of the highest ranking members resigned their posts [1]. I was a bit dismayed at the reaction within the physics community. Experiments absolutely do need to follow procedures like blinding and careful internal review (especially before the data unblinding), but you can only spend so long designing the analysis before you unblind, and there are opportunity costs to cross checking everything. In an optimized community experiments will inevitably make mistakes. And once you unblind, it does no one any good to sit on an anomalous result forever. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10371 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10371

dd8601fn 2mo ago

I’m fine with that. Put it at the feet of pop science blogging. I’m less fine with the time and resources spent on mouse models. They already know you’d get the same utility from a magic 8 ball, but they do it anyway.

gus_massa 2mo ago
Mouse models are useful to discard very bad ideas. There was a recent experiment to use bacteria to kill cancer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 They tried like 40 bacterias in vitro, then like 9 in mice, and only 1 was useful in mice and they will continue only with that, perhaps in humans. Anyway, as you suggest, there is a high chance it will fail. Also, you can do nasty stuff to mice that would never be allowed with humans. In that experiment they injected cancer cells in mice with a bad inmune system, so they could get like 90 mice with cancer and run the experiment in a short time. No ethical committee would approve that in humans.
IAmBroom 2mo ago
Your claim seems to be that testing medicines in animals is useless, because "everyone knows it's not going to work". Congratulations. You've just reduced all of medical science to the Tuskegee STD experiment.

pfdietz 2mo ago

That was a fiendish thing to debug; if I recall correctly it was a slightly and intermittently defective connector.

dguest 2mo ago

Unfortunately it wasn't just the public: it caused so much uproar within the experiment that two of the highest ranking members resigned their posts [1]. I was a bit dismayed at the reaction within the physics community. Experiments absolutely do need to follow procedures like blinding and careful internal review (especially before the data unblinding), but you can only spend so long designing the analysis before you unblind, and there are opportunity costs to cross checking everything. In an optimized community experiments will inevitably make mistakes. And once you unblind, it does no one any good to sit on an anomalous result forever. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10371 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10371