2,749 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2021
    1. Scott Sampson has argued that we should subjectify nature rather than objectifying it. People are a part of nature and integral to it. We are not separate from it and we are assuredly not above it.

      Can the injection of multi-disciplinary research and areas like big history help us to see the bigger picture? How have indigenous and oral cultures managed to do so much better than us at this? Is it the way we've done science in the past? Is it our political structures?

    1. Liu, W., Russell, R. M., Bibollet-Ruche, F., Skelly, A. N., Sherrill-Mix, S., Freeman, D. A., Stoltz, R., Lindemuth, E., Lee, F.-H., Sterrett, S., Bar, K. J., Erdmann, N., Gouma, S., Hensley, S. E., Ketas, T., Cupo, A., Cruz Portillo, V. M., Moore, J. P., Bieniasz, P. D., … Hahn, B. H. (2021). Predictors of Nonseroconversion after SARS-CoV-2 Infection. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 27(9), 2454–2458. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2709.211042

  2. Aug 2021
    1. Basic research leading to scientific discovery is thus a public good. It will benefit all. But, because the private incentive to pay for basic research is therefore attenuated, the private sector as a matter of economic self-interest is likely to underinvest in it. Therefore, if the full social potential of this public good is to be realized, the investment must come from government.

      Sounds argument against neoliberal views for privitized R&D.

    2. investments in basic research are variously estimated as ultimately returning between 20% and 60% per year (13).

      Science delivers x20 the typicall ROI!

    3. Their finding was that at most half of the historical growth could be explained by known factors. The unexplained part, sometimes estimated as large as 85%, was termed the Solow residual

      Definition of the "Solow residual".

    1. Pham, Q. T., Le, X. T. T., Phan, T. C., Nguyen, Q. N., Ta, N. K. T., Nguyen, A. N., Nguyen, T. T., Nguyen, Q. T., Le, H. T., Luong, A. M., Koh, D., Hoang, M. T., Pham, H. Q., Vu, L. G., Nguyen, T. H., Tran, B. X., Latkin, C. A., Ho, C. S. H., & Ho, R. C. M. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on the Life and Work of Healthcare Workers During the Nationwide Partial Lockdown in Vietnam. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 563193. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.563193

    1. Kai Kupferschmidt on Twitter: “One of the most important things I was looking for in reporting on #SARSCoV2 evolution was a way of making sense of all the virus variants, putting them in some framework. And one of the most useful things I found for that is this antigenic map. It’s worth explaining a bit: Https://t.co/miO8Kh9w9e” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved August 22, 2021, from https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1428650961652916230?s=20

    1. by the eighteenth century, suchchapters were being expanded into sizeable books that functioned primarily as natural historybibliographies in their own right. An early example of this practice was Johann JakobScheuchzer’s Bibliotheca scriptorium(1716).
    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “@ToddHorowitz3 ok, but I would have hoped that in an ideal public communication medium for science, people had megaphones that were commensurate with their skills and expertise, if there was variation among platform members at all. And I’d hope that users were calibrated re own expertise” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved August 10, 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1423710934925598725

    1. Everett, J. A. C., Colombatto, C., Awad, E., Boggio, P., Bos, B., Brady, W. J., Chawla, M., Chituc, V., Chung, D., Drupp, M., Goel, S., Grosskopf, B., Hjorth, F., Ji, A., Kealoha, C., Kim, J. S., Lin, Y., Ma, Y., Maréchal, M. A., … Crockett, M. (2021). Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mzswb

    1. Tammy Duckworth. (2021, July 22). Please—Listen to the experts. 97% of those hospitalized from COVID-19 are unvaccinated. Over 99% of those dying from COVID-19 are unvaccinated. This is not political. It is not a hoax. I got my vaccine right away and you should too. [Tweet]. @TammyDuckworth. https://twitter.com/TammyDuckworth/status/1418258402623557634

  3. Jul 2021
    1. I would rather see the scientists and the healers and the artists depicted in a heroic light.

      Why are so many villains in comic books depicted as scientists? Has this harmed the American psyche? Encouraged an anti-science temperament?

      Observation sparked, in part, to episode of Young Sheldon, Season 1 about Sheldon's eating issues.

    1. Aristotle already thought the argument to be deceiving. He ridicules it by saying that according to the same kind of argument a hair, which was subject to an even pulling power from opposing sides, would not break, and that a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve. To him it was the wrong argument for the right proposition. Absolute propositions concerning the non-existence of things are always in danger of becoming falsified on closer investigation. They contain a kind of subjective aspect: “as far as I know.”

      Aristotle came up with some solid counter examples against using the principle of sufficient reason and showed how they could be falsified.

      What is the flaw in logic that would cause it to fail? Are there situations in which it could be used reliably? Ones in which it can't?

    1. Leah Keating on Twitter: “This work with @DavidJPOS and @gleesonj is now on arXiv (https://t.co/hxjZnCmKcM): ‘A multi-type branching process method for modelling complex contagion on clustered networks’ Here is a quick overview of our paper: (1/6) https://t.co/3jQ2flhk71” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved July 23, 2021, from https://twitter.com/leahakeating/status/1418150117106978816

    1. Some bugs are more expensive than others. You can sort of imagine it being a Gaussian, or maybe a power law: most bugs are relatively cheap, a few are relatively expensive.

      to me, there's a quality of life aspect that works across the aggregate. long term bugs are indicator of generally poor code health. as the number of long term bugs grows, it implies a code-base which has become complex or hard to work with, is a system that lacks ease & elegance of understanding.

      a system where bugs are caught earlier is one that is generally healthy, where complexity is lower, where it's easier to test, find, and more importantly, to design & build "within the lines" of the system.

      this jives with the tentative assertion below, certain bugs take more time to fix, and said bugs are issues in design. but not just in isolation, that the total system design & impediment of other long-standing bugs / complications begets a more difficult environment where further bugs are likely and are more likely to be difficult.

    1. Prof Cath Noakes #Ventilate 😷 💙 on Twitter: “A thread today about windows and ventilation, and some things you can do to make the most of your windows for comfort and infection risk 1/” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2021, from https://twitter.com/CathNoakes/status/1416368008801492994

    1. Prof Nichola Raihani on Twitter: “Submitted a paper reporting null results to a mid tier journal. Guess how it went. I literally don’t care at this point but I do feel bad for the first author (who I won’t name here). Https://t.co/sX5lTcEl29” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2021, from https://twitter.com/nicholaraihani/status/1415308025179656194

    1. Incapable of preventing viral infection, binding antibodies can instead trigger paradoxical immune enhancement. What that means is that it looks good until you get the disease, and then it makes the disease far worse than it would have been otherwise. As detailed in my interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in one coronavirus vaccine trial using ferrets, all the vaccinated animals died when exposed to the actual virus.

      They say "follow the science". Well, what about this science? What they really mean to say is "Follow OUR science".

    1. I can see the characteristics of the vampire coming in her face.

      Physiognomy.

    2. We have the best proof of that: your own evidence, when in the hypnotic trance this morning.
    3. To believe in things that you cannot.

      To defeat Dracula requires that these educated, professional men fall back on lore and legend.

    4. Charcot
    5. corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialisation. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism——”

      Mystic practices that were growing in popularity, like seances (Arthur Conan Doyle). Hypnotism however has been accepted as a scientific method.

    6. it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all

      This was a time of great disagreement between science and it's professions vs. the Church and legends.

    7. I have no data on which to found a conjecture.

      A scientific mind requires data to support conclusions.

    8. See, I place them myself in your room. I make myself the wreath that you are to wear.

      Now we see the educated professor of science turning to myth and legend when science can not provide solutions.

    9. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day; and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, an indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats—these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind

      Needed to defeat Dracula. He is a great scientific mind but is also not limited to the science of his time.

    10. Men sneered at vivisection

      Experimental surgery on live animals. Animal welfare was beginning to become a huge topic for England, mostly about work horses and dogs. (See previous annotation about hierarchy of animals).

    11. strong jaw and the good forehead

      Physiognomy, judgement of character based on facial features. A popular pseudoscience of Victorian society.

    12. I was becoming hypnotised

      Mystic practice that is becoming scientific around this time.

    13. He must hypnotise me before the dawn, and then I shall be able to speak

      Hypnosis was mentioned earlier in reference to Charcot as a legitimate medical/scientific practice

    14. He is uncommonly clever, if one can judge from his face

      Physiognomy, again

    15. there are things done to-day in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity

      Science and technology have advanced in such a way they can be confused with magic.

    1. Dr. Tara C. Smith. (2021, March 26). ‘What motivation could anti-vaxxers possibly have to spread misinformation?’ Story: ‘Organizers of the course attended by CBC journalists said that 400 people had signed up, which at $623 per student, adds up to almost $250,000 in course fees’ + tests & supplements she plugged. [Tweet]. @aetiology. https://twitter.com/aetiology/status/1375468823508348928

    1. My feelings at the moment are that blogs are too linear—it would be quite hard to see which comments relate to which, which ones are most worth reading, and so on. A wiki, on the other hand, seems not to be linear enough—it would be quite hard to see what order the comments come in.

      The same problem exists for paleogeography Q&A forum.

    2. overall, the article proposes a way for massive collaboration in math, and explains the potential advantages which ultimately result from the inherent differences of human race and relativity (not the Einstein relativity, but the philosophical one which relates to the perspectives/angles of viewing the world in general): 1) the tendency of trying out different techniques to solve problems (assuming that we know exactly the same amount of knowledge), 2) the complementing nature of collective knowledge (if we know about different things), and 3) different strategies for approaching problems as people prefer and are good at different aspects of solving the same problem.

    3. it might be quite hard to say on your CV, “I had an idea that proved essential to Polymath’s solution of the *** problem,” but if you made significant contributions to several collaborative projects of this kind, then you might well start to earn a reputation amongst people who read mathematical blogs, and that is likely to count for something. (Even if it doesn’t count for all that much now, it is likely to become increasingly important.) And it might not be as hard as all that to put it on your CV: you could think of yourself as a joint author, with the added advantage that people could find out exactly what you had contributed

      interesting perspective; by contributing to discussions in written format, people can trace the contribution of each author (or participant of a discussion) more accurately in a later published result

    4. The next obvious question is this. Why would anyone agree to share their ideas? Surely we work on problems in order to be able to publish solutions and get credit for them. And what if the big collaboration resulted in a very good idea? Isn’t there a danger that somebody would manage to use the idea to solve the problem and rush to (individual) publication? Here is where the beauty of blogs, wikis, forums etc. comes in: they are completely public, as is their entire history

      The answer isn't that convincing and motivating; we need better stimuli for people to contribute

    5. Different people have different characteristics when it comes to research. Some like to throw out ideas, others to criticize them, others to work out details, others to re-explain ideas in a different language, others to formulate different but related problems, others to step back from a big muddle of ideas and fashion some more coherent picture out of them, and so on. A hugely collaborative project would make it possible for people to specialize

      mechanism 3: it is the difference that makes the human race flourish.

    6. Sometimes luck is needed to have the idea that solves a problem. If lots of people think about a problem, then just on probabilistic grounds there is more chance that one of them will have that bit of luck

      mechanism 1: trying out different techniques for solving the problem at hand

    7. we don’t have to confine ourselves to a purely probabilistic argument: different people know different things, so the knowledge that a large group can bring to bear on a problem is significantly greater than the knowledge that one or two individuals will have. This is not just knowledge of different areas of mathematics, but also the rather harder to describe knowledge of particular little tricks that work well for certain types of subproblem, or the kind of expertise that might enable someone to say, “That idea that you thought was a bit speculative is rather similar to a technique used to solve such-and-such a problem, so it might well have a chance of working,” or “The lemma you suggested trying to prove is known to be false,” and so on—the type of thing that one can take weeks or months to discover if one is working on one’s own

      mechanism 2: collective knowledge of a community is likely to better approximate reality; this applies especially to subjects like paleogeography; also related to relativity

    8. what you would not tend to do, at least if you wanted to keep within the spirit of things, is spend a month thinking hard about the problem and then come back and write ten pages about it. Rather, you would contribute ideas even if they were undeveloped and/or likely to be wrong.

      rules of the game

    9. Suppose one had a forum (in the non-technical sense, but quite possibly in the technical sense as well) for the online discussion of a particular problem. The idea would be that anybody who had anything whatsoever to say about the problem could chip in

      The platform and mechanism for collaboration

    10. classification of finite simple groups, or of a rather different kind of example such as a search for a new largest prime

      types of problems that require huge collaboration

    11. there are certain kinds of problems that lend themselves to huge collaborations

      the same for paleogeographic reconstruction, human genome sequencing, building large colliders, etc.

    1. Jesse O’Shea MD, MSc on Twitter: “Okay Twitter! Here is the new vaccine side effect chart (aka reactogenicity) for FDA submitted COVID19 vaccines vs Shingrix & Flu. J&J’s Ad26.COV2.S has the least side effect profile of the COVID vaccines so far. Https://t.co/MFGzWDqQKZ” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved July 2, 2021, from https://twitter.com/JesseOSheaMD/status/1364645966826070016?s=20

    1. What a great about page. Reminds me in part of some of the underlying ethos of the IndieWeb.

    2. New Atlantis was the title Francis Bacon selected for his speculative story of a society living with the benefits and challenges of advanced science and technology. Bacon, a founder and champion of modern science, sought not only to highlight the potential of technology to improve human life, but also to foresee some of the social, moral, and political difficulties that confront a society shaped by the great scientific enterprise.
  4. Jun 2021
    1. Borobia, A. M., Carcas, A. J., Pérez-Olmeda, M., Castaño, L., Bertran, M. J., García-Pérez, J., Campins, M., Portolés, A., González-Pérez, M., García Morales, M. T., Arana-Arri, E., Aldea, M., Díez-Fuertes, F., Fuentes, I., Ascaso, A., Lora, D., Imaz-Ayo, N., Barón-Mira, L. E., Agustí, A., … Torvisco, J. M. (2021). Immunogenicity and reactogenicity of BNT162b2 booster in ChAdOx1-S-primed participants (CombiVacS): A multicentre, open-label, randomised, controlled, phase 2 trial. The Lancet, S0140673621014203. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01420-3