New, improved coronavirus thread

[Jets 31]

20.5 million jobs lost in April for the U.S .

 

[Joe Hallenback]

Actually no, not really. Consensus has very little to do with anything. It's a functional buzzword, but that's really about it.

Most papers that are peer reviewed are reviewed by a whopping total of four people, maybe five. Those individuals are generally speaking:
1. Journal editor
2. (maybe) assistant journal editor though in my experience it's one or the other, lead or assistant (if the journal even has assistant editors)
3-5. Three anonymous reviewers.

I don't count four people as equating to many.

Comments are provided back to the author in most cases, very rarely none, and revisions need to be done before the editor will accept or approve the paper. Those revisions may be quite minor (spelling, punctuation, incorrect references) or may be substantial where the data needs to be re-formatted or even re-analyzed in a suitable fashion.

Now the hope is that the Journal editor and the anonymous reviewers are knowledgeable, judicious, fair and thorough. To get to the point of being an editor or even a reviewer you have to be generally well respected and usually well published in your field. So we presume that the reviewers are that. But judicious, fair and thorough are unfortunately often quite suspect. There are a great many fields where papers are submitted and are crap - many should have been outright rejected and weren't. Many papers get published and revised. Some get published and subsequently retracted. You don't hear much about that.

What's never acknowledged is that there is inherent bias in the process. That's regardless of the field. You hope it's not true but it is in most cases - the reviewers know the authors or have even published with them on occasion (happens in many small fields where the number of reviewers can be limited). Many reviewers are lazy or aren't provided with the data to actually run the analyses on their own, so rarely does that aspect even get checked in peer review. It's quite frankly uncommon if not nearly unheard of for the reviewers to be provided with the data at all.

As for consensus, that runs completely counter to science. You have something widely accepted but consensus dictates, or at the very least, should dictate nothing. Public opinion is consensus and I presume you know what value a consensus has on this hockey board on many subjects alone? I'm quite certain with your depth of knowledge in scouting and contacts you can think of multiple opinions on HFJets that were widely accepted as consensus and were vastly wrong. Just look at the "consensus" opinions during drafts alone. Drafting and hockey aren't quite the same as science (I'm trying to be gentle here) but the rationale applies.

A peer reviewed paper isn't infallible. Peer review doesn't make something correct beyond re-examination, it never should. Peer review is a single, simple step to say "yes, we've had presumed experts in the field look this over and they've deemed it to be reasonably written and provides additional knowledge to the field". That's all it means. It doesn't mean no one can contest it, it doesn't even mean the paper is actually accurate. Try to find out how many papers out there have un-reproducible results - it's a major problem when people try and go back and duplicate results. In every field. Think Andrew Wakefield and The Lancet, one of the most widely trusted (peer reviewed) medical journals in the world. It took 12 years to retract that paper. Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines

The public has been lead to believe that peer review is infallible. Anyone that claims that should be suspect because they should damn well know better. It's the best system we currently have but it's far, far from perfect.

It is the best system we have and from what I understand the only one. Of course nothing is infallible but the idea that it is wrong more then it is right is misleading it quit a bit. That kind of thinking allows people with agendas to get into that space and really muddle things up

Which is happening so often nowadays you have people believing it and dying from those beliefs

 

[Howard Chuck]

20.5 million jobs lost in April for the U.S .

Yes, this could all go south very fast. Imagine when the government money stops? It can't go on forever, even EI will run out for some in Canada.

 

[MrBoJangelz71]

It is the best system we have and from what I understand the only one. Of course nothing is infallible but the idea that it is wrong more then it is right is misleading it quit a bit. That kind of thinking allows people with agendas to get into that space and really muddle things up

Which is happening so often nowadays you have people believing it and dying from those beliefs

Good point.

Trumpism has made it acceptable to debate facts and challenge or dismiss truths with no evidence. While there will always be a need to challenge, at some point consensus is consensus, and unless you can prove otherwise, with hard proof, we accept it as fact.

Trump being the lazy baffoon he is, to lazy to read and understand, has made it acceptable to dismiss anything as false, if it doesn't fit his narrative, or if it makes him look bad, without any proof.

He has made this acceptable with his followers, who are also lazy idiots.

 

[buggs]

Good point.

Trumpism has made it acceptable to debate facts and challenge or dismiss truths with no evidence. While there will always be a need to challenge, at some point consensus is consensus, and unless you can prove otherwise, with hard proof, we accept it as fact.

Trump being the lazy baffoon he is, to lazy to read and understand, has made it acceptable to dismiss anything as false, if it doesn't fit his narrative, or if it makes him look bad, without any proof.

He has made this acceptable with his followers, who are also lazy idiots.

And this is exactly what you have been lead to believe, consensus is consensus and it's meaningful. But then discussion, challenge is shut down. You see it as unidirectional and throw Trump out as the strawman to knock down. Go back and re-read my posts, find one, just one where I've openly supported Trump. I've not said a supportive thing about the man in any of the covid threads.

The problem is you're creating a narrative that meets your expectation and then using orange man at every turn to prove your point. That's shallow beyond compare. You continue to ignore any of the points I've brought up about issues not involving Trump.

In this thread I've thrown out examples that apply to many subjects, both you and Joe totally and completely ignored that the mainstream media was quite content to run with the MMR narrative for 12 years. I've provided examples whereby the public is being mislead about the health hazards of pesticides (Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction. - PubMed - NCBI) and how there's no way that Costco could possibly have 50% of the food on their shelves as 'organic'. Yet the consensus is "pesticides bad, organic good". There isn't any science, hard, peer reviewed science to support that notion. It's a media and marketing construct.

This has been ongoing for years. While I agree that "Trumpism" has facilitated easy dismissal for many, it's not like it hasn't been there for many, many years prior.

 

[Howard Chuck]

Good point.

Trumpism has made it acceptable to debate facts and challenge or dismiss truths with no evidence. While there will always be a need to challenge, at some point consensus is consensus, and unless you can prove otherwise, with hard proof, we accept it as fact.

Trump being the lazy baffoon he is, to lazy to read and understand, has made it acceptable to dismiss anything as false, if it doesn't fit his narrative, or if it makes him look bad, without any proof.

He has made this acceptable with his followers, who are also lazy idiots.

Again I would be careful with the absolute generalizations. It makes people look pretty closed minded and turns off any real and honest conversation.

 

[Eyeseeing]

Good point.

Trumpism has made it acceptable to debate facts and challenge or dismiss truths with no evidence. While there will always be a need to challenge, at some point consensus is consensus, and unless you can prove otherwise, with hard proof, we accept it as fact.

Trump being the lazy baffoon he is, to lazy to read and understand, has made it acceptable to dismiss anything as false, if it doesn't fit his narrative, or if it makes him look bad, without any proof.

He has made this acceptable with his followers, who are also lazy idiots.

Well Trump may very well be a baffoon , he’s still a smarter man than 99.9% of his critics...
I know a tough one to swallow.
I’m not a follower.
Just an amused observer.

 

[Mud Turtle]

Good point.

Trumpism has made it acceptable to debate facts and challenge or dismiss truths with no evidence. While there will always be a need to challenge, at some point consensus is consensus, and unless you can prove otherwise, with hard proof, we accept it as fact.

Trump being the lazy baffoon he is, to lazy to read and understand, has made it acceptable to dismiss anything as false, if it doesn't fit his narrative, or if it makes him look bad, without any proof.

He has made this acceptable with his followers, who are also lazy idiots.

So 50% of American voters are lazy idiots because they voted for the person that you disagree with??
Maybe a little bit of a generalization there?

 

[SensibleGuy]

Well Trump may very well be a baffoon , he’s still a smarter man than 99.9% of his critics...

haha...really? 99.9%? Even if Trump were a VERY smart man (and he isn't) that wouldn't be true. Certainly sounds like something he'd say though. Agree totally on the buffoon part though.

 

[Eyeseeing]

So 50% of American voters are lazy idiots because they voted for the person that you disagree with??
Maybe a little bit of a generalization there?

It’s an unhealthy obsession with Trump , I enjoy the salt and Trump is a mine

 

[SensibleGuy]

So 50% of American voters are lazy idiots because they voted for the person that you disagree with??
Maybe a little bit of a generalization there?

Something tells me that percentage is going to be a little smaller in the next election...

 

[MrBoJangelz71]

And this is exactly what you have been lead to believe, consensus is consensus and it's meaningful. But then discussion, challenge is shut down. You see it as unidirectional and throw Trump out as the strawman to knock down. Go back and re-read my posts, find one, just one where I've openly supported Trump. I've not said a supportive thing about the man in any of the covid threads.

The problem is you're creating a narrative that meets your expectation and then using orange man at every turn to prove your point. That's shallow beyond compare. You continue to ignore any of the points I've brought up about issues not involving Trump.

In this thread I've thrown out examples that apply to many subjects, both you and Joe totally and completely ignored that the mainstream media was quite content to run with the MMR narrative for 12 years. I've provided examples whereby the public is being mislead about the health hazards of pesticides (Paracelsus to parascience: the environmental cancer distraction. - PubMed - NCBI) and how there's no way that Costco could possibly have 50% of the food on their shelves as 'organic'. Yet the consensus is "pesticides bad, organic good". There isn't any science, hard, peer reviewed science to support that notion. It's a media and marketing construct.

This has been ongoing for years. While I agree that "Trumpism" has facilitated easy dismissal for many, it's not like it hasn't been there for many, many years prior.

Did you miss the part where I said " dismiss truths without any evidence"?

 

[buggs]

Did you miss the part where I said " dismiss truths without any evidence"?

Absolutely not. Did you miss the part where I said "discussion, challenge is shut down".

See. It's super easy to ignore content, anyone can do it.

Will you ever engage in any of the other topics I've brought up? Doubtful, it seems.

I'm not even arguing Trump. I'm not talking about climate change. I'm not arguing Covid-19. I'm arguing consensus and how easily the public falls for it as being legitimate. Yet you won't engage in that.

I've provided evidence (the papers I'm linking are National Academy of Science papers with respect to pesticide use and health) yet you won't even acknowledge I've posted anything about them. The consensus is that pesticides as they are used by conventional farmers are evil and killing people. This is untrue and there is documented evidence to that effect. Yet the media and the grand marketing machine has manufactured a consensus that organic is better. That's the consensus. The majority of the public doesn't even understand that organic farmers do make use of pesticides. They just have to be of "natural" origin. The word natural is utterly pointless when discussing toxicology. There is ample evidence of what I'm using as a singular example.

Substantial evidence exists in a number of other areas as well. The whole point of my peer review process description was to show that it's not "many" or everyone that allows a paper to meet the standards for publishing. That doesn't make it true or accurate. Andrew Wakefield's paper got through peer review at The Lancet and has cost us thousands of lives. The media deemed it newsworthy and created a functional debate around it. It took 12 years to get that paper retracted. Science isn't infallible.

 

[LucianoBorsato]

Something tells me that percentage is going to be a little smaller in the next election...

Not according to his campaign manager, it's being named after the most indestructible weapon in Star Wars!

Trump campaign calls itself the ‘Death Star’ — the biggest failure of ‘Star Wars’

 

[SensibleGuy]

Not according to his campaign manager, it's being named after the most indestructible weapon in Star Wars!

Trump campaign calls itself the ‘Death Star’ — the biggest failure of ‘Star Wars’

Haha yeah Seth Meyers did a funny bit on that last night...

 

[MrBoJangelz71]

Well Trump may very well be a baffoon , he’s still a smarter man than 99.9% of his critics...
I know a tough one to swallow.
I’m not a follower.
Just an amused observer.

No pill to swallow. If you believe there is a higher level of intelligence in that idiot than 99% if his critics, then I have some land to sell you.

Wow, sorry, Trump is smart at putting people in situations where he can undermined them, and then make them accountable for his moronic screw ups, hold them accountable for some of the most moronic, idiotic, fact less and uneducated statements to ever come out of a politician, let alone the POTUS.

Trump is a pathetic result of the ugliness that society has grown into. He is a moron and anyone that cannot see through his self serving disgusting actions is, well, I will just keep that to myself.

 

[MrBoJangelz71]

Absolutely not. Did you miss the part where I said "discussion, challenge is shut down".

Ok, so if you have evidence that is fact-full and challenges a truth, where did I say that is unacceptable?
You discuss with evidence, not feelings, or wanted beliefs. Smart dialect between people willing to accept facts as facts is not the issue here.

Do you understand the difference?

Trump wanting to tell us global warming is a hoax is a fact less statement made by a moron that does not want to address the issue because it hurts his economy. That is not challenging a truth, just a lazy idiot saying dangerous things.

 

[Positive]

haha...really? 99.9%? Even if Trump were a VERY smart man (and he isn't) that wouldn't be true. Certainly sounds like something he'd say though. Agree totally on the buffoon part though.

I'm sure he'd classify himself as a genius in the top .1% percentile. Would probably award himself a 'Noble' prize for his 'Tremendous' contributions in advancing race relations, international relations, gender equality, and contributions to the LGBTQ community if he could.

Only a genius could solve all these problems. The only man who might be comparable in intellect, coincidentally, is his son-in-law, who has a great handle on the opiod crisis and the covid crisis, all while successfully negotiating peace in the Middle East, despite having no experience in any of these fields. But hey, that's what geniuses do.

 

[JetsWillFly4Ever]

Absolutely not. Did you miss the part where I said "discussion, challenge is shut down".

See. It's super easy to ignore content, anyone can do it.

Will you ever engage in any of the other topics I've brought up? Doubtful, it seems.

I'm not even arguing Trump. I'm not talking about climate change. I'm not arguing Covid-19. I'm arguing consensus and how easily the public falls for it as being legitimate. Yet you won't engage in that.

I've provided evidence (the papers I'm linking are National Academy of Science papers with respect to pesticide use and health) yet you won't even acknowledge I've posted anything about them. The consensus is that pesticides as they are used by conventional farmers are evil and killing people. This is untrue and there is documented evidence to that effect. Yet the media and the grand marketing machine has manufactured a consensus that organic is better. That's the consensus. The majority of the public doesn't even understand that organic farmers do make use of pesticides. They just have to be of "natural" origin. The word natural is utterly pointless when discussing toxicology. There is ample evidence of what I'm using as a singular example.

Substantial evidence exists in a number of other areas as well. The whole point of my peer review process description was to show that it's not "many" or everyone that allows a paper to meet the standards for publishing. That doesn't make it true or accurate. Andrew Wakefield's paper got through peer review at The Lancet and has cost us thousands of lives. The media deemed it newsworthy and created a functional debate around it. It took 12 years to get that paper retracted. Science isn't infallible.

I thought it was common knowledge most pesticides aren't bad for you (they have to go through testing and if they were bad for you they wouldn't be allowed), that and GMO's. The GMO nonsense drives me wild. There is nothing wrong with GMO's.

 

[Yukon Joe]

I thought it was common knowledge most pesticides aren't bad for you (they have to go through testing and if they were bad for you they wouldn't be allowed), that and GMO's. The GMO nonsense drives me wild. There is nothing wrong with GMO's.

Slight quibble - pesticides are in fact bad for you. Very bad - don't go drinking pesticides!

But foods that have been treated with pesticides are safe. Like most things, it's all about dose.

 

[buggs]

Ok, so if you have evidence that is fact-full and challenges a truth, where did I say that is unacceptable?
You discuss with evidence, not feelings, or wanted beliefs. Smart dialect between people willing to accept facts as facts is not the issue here.

Do you understand the difference?

Trump wanting to tell us global warming is a hoax is a fact less statement made by a moron that does not want to address the issue because it hurts his economy. That is not challenging a truth, just a lazy idiot saying dangerous things.

Sorry, I edited my post while you were writing yours.

Smart dialect between people willing to accept facts as facts is not the issue here.

Do you understand the difference?

LOL, seriously? Everything you talk about comes back to Trump. Do you understand the difference? Again, I've provided examples that are science based and unrelated to Trump. I've provided how peer review actually works and it's not a consensus by any stretch of the imagination.

But since you seem stuck on Trump and want to turn this in the direction of global warming, let's go down that rabbit hole...

Global warming isn't a hoax in the sensu stricto that Trump refers to it. The planet is indeed warming. Trumps take on this is simplistic, knee jerk and ignorant.

The discussion in many senses surrounding climate change (it isn't formally referred to as global warming any long and hasn't been for years) is what proportion of any warming we are experiencing is man made. If you listen to the IPCC (a political body that is part of the United Nations) then the majority of the warming is human fault, driven by fossil fuel usage. That's the basic premise.

Where primary issues come with this is that the bulk of the predictions of the IPCC come from model based forecasting. We've all seen Garret around here use the following quote: all models are wrong, some are useful. This is true. What Garret hasn't said but most people that work with models know is GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. What that means is your model is only as good as your inputs.

Probably the most notable model that people are familiar with is Michael Mann's famous (or infamous depending on your bent) 'hockey stick'.

That graph sent shock waves through the world and "showed" that we are destroying the planet in short order. The problem is that the graph is wrong. It does a couple of things that are rather suspect, notably in functionally erasing earlier warms periods that everyone is agreement did exist (Medieval Warm Period). More importantly McIntyre and McKitrick were able to show that the methodology of assembling the graph was incorrect in terms of using early historical proxy data that gave an incorrect result. Essentially they were able to duplicate the graph by inserting random, garbage data into the algorithm and get the same result. Removing either the garbage data or Mann's original data results in a dramatically different graph.

We could argue ad nauseum about that debate but the telling result is that not even the IPCC continues to use the graph in their annual report. It was, for many of their annual reports, the most convincing and most damning piece of evidence that humans were at fault.

Yet many don't want to acknowledge that failing. The discussion is immediately shut down with cries of denier, a term specifically chosen by the global warming side to ensure association of skeptics with holocaust deniers. It's a pejorative term at best, loaded with invective. The funny thing is most of the skeptics I'm familiar with don't deny the climate is changing. So the term isn't really there as functional but meant as dismissive and demeaning.

That's but one example of evidence that is accepted by consensus that seems to have gone astray. There are many more.

Speaking of consensus, virtually everyone agrees that the 97% consensus is accurate with respect to climate change. That is, everyone accepts that 97% of scientists agree on global warming. Obama tweeted about it, so it's infallible, right? It's "man-made, dangerous and real" is what Obama tweeted.

Ever look into how that 97% was arrived at? The 97% ‘consensus’ I urge you to read this. It's a very, very middle of the road, objective view on it.

Speaking consensus to power.

The point being that there is very, very valid debate to be had. The MSM would have you believe otherwise. Debate is muzzled and debaters are belittled, derided and deemed irrelevant or stupid.

This sort of behavior should very much scare you. This is not how science is supposed to work.

 

[buggs]

Slight quibble - pesticides are in fact bad for you. Very bad - don't go drinking pesticides!

But foods that have been treated with pesticides are safe. Like most things, it's all about dose.

Full thumbs up here.

The basic tenet of toxicology is the dose makes the poison. Too much of anything can kill you.

Agree 100% with Joe, pesticides are very bad for you with respect to acute exposure or even chronic, long term exposures above maximum residue limits then harm is possible. My contention isn't that they're harmless, they're not. They're not designed to be. But used judiciously and according to regulations they are very safe to be used in food production systems.

The little, if any, you are exposed to in your food is negligble. Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural). - PubMed - NCBI

 

[Jets 31]

Ok, so if you have evidence that is fact-full and challenges a truth, where did I say that is unacceptable?
You discuss with evidence, not feelings, or wanted beliefs. Smart dialect between people willing to accept facts as facts is not the issue here.

Do you understand the difference?

Trump wanting to tell us global warming is a hoax is a fact less statement made by a moron that does not want to address the issue because it hurts his economy. That is not challenging a truth, just a lazy idiot saying dangerous things.

It's actually quite scary that that idiot is president and even more scary is i wouldn't be surprised at all if he gets another 4 years .

 

[cbcwpg]

Slight quibble - pesticides are in fact bad for you. Very bad - don't go drinking pesticides!

But foods that have been treated with pesticides are safe. Like most things, it's all about dose.

It was my next go to bet as to what Trump was going to suggest injecting next.

 

[cbcwpg]

President or not president... I have to wonder what agenda anyone has that comes out and basically says... I learnt a lot from Nixon - don't fire people and don't have tapes lying around... Kinda makes me think you see him as what not to do if you want to get away with something.