I hope I never get dunked on by Bad Cat. It's like watching a video where someone gets nailed in the nuts by a dodgeball. You can't help but wince when reading.
"it's like watching sociologists pretend to be particle physicists and build a supercollider from a holly hobby easybake oven so they can pretend it's CERN."
Well written. You actually made me nostalgic for statistical analysis class.
...and aside from me and a vanishing number of gatofans, no one will ever see it. Hundreds of thousands, though, will see Lyman's apparently unopposed "yas slay kween" rebuttal and hear that.
"Hands up, don't shoot" is the part everyone remembers.
"surely even lyman adheres to a unidirectional model of experienced time…"
I wouldn't bet on it, considering the trashing science took for the last year and a half, scraping the Second Law of Thermodynamics is par for the course.
I admit I skimmed this as I do not understand most of the "lingo". I do know that you need a baseline when conducting any kind of research. And I had to take statistics twice to pass. Not genius stuff. Glad you got this off your furry back! (and it sure isn't changing my mind about masks!)
The lead "researcher" is an economist, and as anyone in finance will tell you, no one who deals w money professionally really knows why economists even exist. Because certainly no one takes them seriously or takes their advice or believes their models. Because if they had, they would no longer be employed or solvent. Self loathing among economists is nearly universal. They don't call it the dismal science for nothing, and that is really too charitable a term for this paper. Something beneath dismal is needed. Gato's excellent debriefing aside, anyone with even the tiniest understanding of "science" would've know early on that there was simply no way such a study could ever produce valid results. You could spend days listing the potential confounders long before anyone went to Bangladesh. Finally, who the hell is this Lyman turd anyway and why does he have 22k followers? I've run across him staying stupid shit on Twitter a few times but usually just saying stupid shit won't get you to 22k.
It feels like all the sero-stuff was tacked on after the fact. Like these researchers were intending to do a study purely on how to get people to wear masks, and someone convinced them (or they convinced themselves) to add 'do they actually work' later.
Yes, that's how it reads to me as well - a "well intentioned" petty authoritarian missionary campaign which started off as taking it as gospel that masks "save lives" and only thought of how to possibly prove it midway through
Your arguments are all good, but you only have to make them because you failed to anticipate how susceptible an attack on the study's conclusions would end up being. Just step back and evaluate what it would mean if the study in fact displayed an inviolable fact about reality: i.e., post-first wave case counts can be reduced with masks. Well, so what? 2nd and 3rd waves will just have more fuel to burn, and burn it they will. We're all on wave 3 by now, and SARS-CoV-2 is endemic; it's too late to accrue any benefit from a partially suppressed first wave.
That's irrelevant (though true) to the motivation of the cheerleading of this garbage study: to have yet another wall of text to wave in people's faces while screeching that masks work- doesn't matter how, doesn't matter when. Just shut up because you're wrong and obey, because this is all your fault.
Right - which is why a hedged critique - one that says "even if this is true, so what?" - is always better than wading into the weeds. All the narratives that advanced lockdowns need to be attacked at the root, not on the grounds of efficacy.
I agree. The virus is .1 μm and masks are absurd (though their psychological effects, as I said, can pointlessly contribute to "slowing" spread by sending society into hypothermia), but even if they worked directly, fuck them. Don't want them. Feel like a goon wearing them. "Live free or die" is the only argument I need.
First wave, second wave, third wave -- I don't see what the wave number would have to do with the effect of masks to mitigate the wave. ... Unless the laws of nature change, and the laws of fluid dynamics magically alter to favor subsequent waves, masks will continue to be an argument via superstition, pseudo-science, or really bad research design, as has been illustrated.
The research design wasn't "really bad." It was just "pretty bad." Again, if the resort to litigating the design was such a strong attack there wouldn't be any need to exaggerate the flaws in the paper.
It has everything to do with the effects of masks. Say they "worked" indirectly in this place and time - i.e., rural Bangladesh, in a lull between waves. It means rural Bangladesh went into the summer wave with less background immunity, leading to more cases. So the net effect is 0 no matter if they "work" or not. So there's no reason to even attack the study's conclusions, shaky as they are.
This is what I was screaming in Feb 2020 when everyone started testing for Covid, and seeing numbers go up. What the hell is the baseline you muppets, I yelled.
But no, they carried on reporting the numbers as though they were the spread of a brand new event with no evidence of any such thing. And here we are.
There is just no reason whatsoever to program a medical trial of global importance in the villages of Bangladesh.
That's a very delicate point to make, so few people will make it.
I can make it without qualms, because I love the Indian-subcontinent to bits. Know parts of it well, spent years in school there, love the people with an inextinguishable love. Fact is all my most cherished longtime personal relationships are with people from this part of the planet.
But science is science, and the truth is, Bangladesh is not just a 'poor' country. It is a VERY poor country with 160 million people. Living conditions are appalling. Families in villages are often illiterate and typically have an ANNUAL income of about 800 dollars per year.
Of course, in cities like Dhaka or Chittagong you see much higher incomes, because that's where the country's 'shining classes' are located.
But it is in the many thousands of tiny Bangladeshi villages where well over half the country's population resides.
So the data collection problems, the adherence problems, the 'please the paymaster' problems, the confounder problems and the problem of researchers eager to get the result they crave, would obviously make any such a project a non-starter - especially if it had international pretensions.
Go figure.
It reminds me of the studies in the 1970s that compared African tribal diets to those in the West, and concluded that high fiber foods were automatic lifesavers.
You are being slightly unfair to a poor study. It does seem to show wearing masks doesn't increase transmission. Granted that isn't the claim made for it nor what it was intended to show. Regardless it is a useful add to the knowledge base or would be if people looked at what is there rather than what they want to be there!
"Poor" is the understatement of the century. "Slightly unfair", therefore, is giving the study too much.
Carrying a rabbit's foot doesn't increase transmission.
Standing on one leg, holding a murder hornet in one hand and a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut in the other hand, on the third Tuesday of the month ... doesn't increase transmission. But what good, really, would such studies along these lines, do for us?
El Gato, you get top marks for persevering with discrediting the fire hose of bad science coming from these charlatans. They use fire hoses because they know we will be unable to refute their bullshit. If it wasn't for kitties making the effort to stop them, where would we be? And somebody who jumps on "start date" with a highlight and doesn't realise it reads "start state" is obviously in a state of panic, induced by cat scratch fever. They'll be taking him away in a straitjacket soon.
I hope I never get dunked on by Bad Cat. It's like watching a video where someone gets nailed in the nuts by a dodgeball. You can't help but wince when reading.
well, i almost included:
"it's like watching sociologists pretend to be particle physicists and build a supercollider from a holly hobby easybake oven so they can pretend it's CERN."
so, it could have been worse...
Funny. Trouble is, they would not be pretending -- they would truly BELIEVE it's CERN.
this 'thing' (not calling it a study...it's not) **couldn't** have been worse!!!
Well written. You actually made me nostalgic for statistical analysis class.
...and aside from me and a vanishing number of gatofans, no one will ever see it. Hundreds of thousands, though, will see Lyman's apparently unopposed "yas slay kween" rebuttal and hear that.
"Hands up, don't shoot" is the part everyone remembers.
don't bet on it.
this stack is starting to get a pretty good following and a lot of internet coverage.
the re-catforming is starting to take hold.
Someone who can still get into the bluebird kingdom should link post this in reply to his rant.
I found out about you from reddit, before I left.
I can do that. My suspension is over, though the bluebird has me under "reply deboosting", and I have virtually zero followers.
Get on Gab
Fact check: yellow bird, not bluebird, surely?
https://youtu.be/SIlfhE8oQ3M
"surely even lyman adheres to a unidirectional model of experienced time…"
I wouldn't bet on it, considering the trashing science took for the last year and a half, scraping the Second Law of Thermodynamics is par for the course.
Not even needing a De Lorean, merely a mask.
I admit I skimmed this as I do not understand most of the "lingo". I do know that you need a baseline when conducting any kind of research. And I had to take statistics twice to pass. Not genius stuff. Glad you got this off your furry back! (and it sure isn't changing my mind about masks!)
The lead "researcher" is an economist, and as anyone in finance will tell you, no one who deals w money professionally really knows why economists even exist. Because certainly no one takes them seriously or takes their advice or believes their models. Because if they had, they would no longer be employed or solvent. Self loathing among economists is nearly universal. They don't call it the dismal science for nothing, and that is really too charitable a term for this paper. Something beneath dismal is needed. Gato's excellent debriefing aside, anyone with even the tiniest understanding of "science" would've know early on that there was simply no way such a study could ever produce valid results. You could spend days listing the potential confounders long before anyone went to Bangladesh. Finally, who the hell is this Lyman turd anyway and why does he have 22k followers? I've run across him staying stupid shit on Twitter a few times but usually just saying stupid shit won't get you to 22k.
It feels like all the sero-stuff was tacked on after the fact. Like these researchers were intending to do a study purely on how to get people to wear masks, and someone convinced them (or they convinced themselves) to add 'do they actually work' later.
Yes, that's how it reads to me as well - a "well intentioned" petty authoritarian missionary campaign which started off as taking it as gospel that masks "save lives" and only thought of how to possibly prove it midway through
Yea, but he's holding a baby and you're not.
"l see the flaws pop like taking a blacklight to a hotel bedspread."
I'm summarizing using this quote for my friends who I can never get to read anything.
You broke my internet with this line ‘like, need the arecibo radio telescope to hear it weak’. Very clever and great rebuttal.
el gato, i did my last formal education 39 years ago, i did take a grad level stat for refresh 20 years ago.
i am stunned at how the advance of stat science has degenerated, at least at cdc and big pharma.
i wonder if we can getthe whole paper cdc used to push the eua's through.
i think the errors of the hypotheses, used by fda, are way too high!
optics and politics are two science beyond my knowing.
Your arguments are all good, but you only have to make them because you failed to anticipate how susceptible an attack on the study's conclusions would end up being. Just step back and evaluate what it would mean if the study in fact displayed an inviolable fact about reality: i.e., post-first wave case counts can be reduced with masks. Well, so what? 2nd and 3rd waves will just have more fuel to burn, and burn it they will. We're all on wave 3 by now, and SARS-CoV-2 is endemic; it's too late to accrue any benefit from a partially suppressed first wave.
That's irrelevant (though true) to the motivation of the cheerleading of this garbage study: to have yet another wall of text to wave in people's faces while screeching that masks work- doesn't matter how, doesn't matter when. Just shut up because you're wrong and obey, because this is all your fault.
Right - which is why a hedged critique - one that says "even if this is true, so what?" - is always better than wading into the weeds. All the narratives that advanced lockdowns need to be attacked at the root, not on the grounds of efficacy.
I thought you were critiquing El Gato, by saying he should "step back"?
Excellent point. But what you're missing is the psychological harm done by masks. It's not only about the virus.
I agree. The virus is .1 μm and masks are absurd (though their psychological effects, as I said, can pointlessly contribute to "slowing" spread by sending society into hypothermia), but even if they worked directly, fuck them. Don't want them. Feel like a goon wearing them. "Live free or die" is the only argument I need.
First wave, second wave, third wave -- I don't see what the wave number would have to do with the effect of masks to mitigate the wave. ... Unless the laws of nature change, and the laws of fluid dynamics magically alter to favor subsequent waves, masks will continue to be an argument via superstition, pseudo-science, or really bad research design, as has been illustrated.
Waves are just winter flu seasons.
The research design wasn't "really bad." It was just "pretty bad." Again, if the resort to litigating the design was such a strong attack there wouldn't be any need to exaggerate the flaws in the paper.
It has everything to do with the effects of masks. Say they "worked" indirectly in this place and time - i.e., rural Bangladesh, in a lull between waves. It means rural Bangladesh went into the summer wave with less background immunity, leading to more cases. So the net effect is 0 no matter if they "work" or not. So there's no reason to even attack the study's conclusions, shaky as they are.
This is what I was screaming in Feb 2020 when everyone started testing for Covid, and seeing numbers go up. What the hell is the baseline you muppets, I yelled.
But no, they carried on reporting the numbers as though they were the spread of a brand new event with no evidence of any such thing. And here we are.
Terrific, Gato. Have only one thing to stress:
There is just no reason whatsoever to program a medical trial of global importance in the villages of Bangladesh.
That's a very delicate point to make, so few people will make it.
I can make it without qualms, because I love the Indian-subcontinent to bits. Know parts of it well, spent years in school there, love the people with an inextinguishable love. Fact is all my most cherished longtime personal relationships are with people from this part of the planet.
But science is science, and the truth is, Bangladesh is not just a 'poor' country. It is a VERY poor country with 160 million people. Living conditions are appalling. Families in villages are often illiterate and typically have an ANNUAL income of about 800 dollars per year.
Of course, in cities like Dhaka or Chittagong you see much higher incomes, because that's where the country's 'shining classes' are located.
But it is in the many thousands of tiny Bangladeshi villages where well over half the country's population resides.
So the data collection problems, the adherence problems, the 'please the paymaster' problems, the confounder problems and the problem of researchers eager to get the result they crave, would obviously make any such a project a non-starter - especially if it had international pretensions.
Go figure.
It reminds me of the studies in the 1970s that compared African tribal diets to those in the West, and concluded that high fiber foods were automatic lifesavers.
You are being slightly unfair to a poor study. It does seem to show wearing masks doesn't increase transmission. Granted that isn't the claim made for it nor what it was intended to show. Regardless it is a useful add to the knowledge base or would be if people looked at what is there rather than what they want to be there!
"Poor" is the understatement of the century. "Slightly unfair", therefore, is giving the study too much.
Carrying a rabbit's foot doesn't increase transmission.
Standing on one leg, holding a murder hornet in one hand and a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut in the other hand, on the third Tuesday of the month ... doesn't increase transmission. But what good, really, would such studies along these lines, do for us?
The aptly named Lyman.
I took the liberty of posting your rebuke to the bottom of his thread. Thanks!! Was a great coffee read.
El Gato, you get top marks for persevering with discrediting the fire hose of bad science coming from these charlatans. They use fire hoses because they know we will be unable to refute their bullshit. If it wasn't for kitties making the effort to stop them, where would we be? And somebody who jumps on "start date" with a highlight and doesn't realise it reads "start state" is obviously in a state of panic, induced by cat scratch fever. They'll be taking him away in a straitjacket soon.