Comments on: Links For July 2014

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 22:56:41 +0000

It’s not sarcastic, but it is one of four listed fallacies.

But she’s not arguing against RCTs per se. She’s making the observation that almost all RCTs of “complex interventions” failed to show significant results, and arguing that perhaps we should re-evaluate what we’re doing. She’s arguing that it’s a mistake to try the same old thing, only trying harder this time.

That doesn’t mean we should go back to non-randomized or non-controlled studies. Those things are important. But maybe we’re missing something. Maybe RCTs are not good enough. Or, maybe “complex interventions” generally don’t work and we should do RCTs on something else.

She’s arguing that if we fail to fly every time we jump off a cliff, we shouldn’t simply try to jump off a higher cliff. Maybe we need to add something, like wings. Add some wings, and then jump off a cliff. Or maybe we need to reevaluate the goal. The goal of flying is to catch the bird. Maybe we could skip flying and use a net instead. Who knows? All we do know is that what we’re doing right now isn’t very effective.

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By: gwern

gwern — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 21:17:32 +0000

I don’t think it’s sarcastic at all. It seems quite sincere in its espousal of the biased ineffective approaches which have been discredited by RCTs.

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By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 02:26:27 +0000

I would dispute the term “random” in this case. It’s not irrelevant, and there are already gender links in the above post.

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By: suntzuanime

suntzuanime — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 02:21:46 +0000

Presumably the reason for the “no random flamebait in the open thread” rule is to keep there from being random flamebait in the comments, not to ensure that the random flamebait is in the comments of some other article.

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By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 02:08:05 +0000

I can’t put this in the open thread because flamebait, but I thought this would probably interest people: The Feminist Leader Who Became A Men’s Rights Activist

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By: Jaskologist

Jaskologist — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 01:32:58 +0000

It seems worth pointing out that @SalonDotCom has been suspended. One presumes that it is because it was impossible to tell from the real one.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/16/free-salondotcom-twitter-shuts-down-hila

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By: Nestor

Nestor — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 17:04:03 +0000

Tarrare was autopsied, no tapeworms were reported.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:08:42 +0000

what was in the water? tapeworms.

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By: Nestor

Nestor — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:48:47 +0000

I wonder if there are people like Tarrare and Charles Domery running around in the modern world, and we just don’t know because it’s relatively trivial to feed their appetites with modern food availability.

(Could’ve sworn I first heard about Domery from this blog, but a cursory search didn’t find him, but it unearthed Tarrare while I was doing it. Amazing there were 2 people like that in the same time period and close geographical proximity. Must’ve been something in the water.)

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By: pseudo-chrysostom

pseudo-chrysostom — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 07:14:10 +0000

>Telegony

centip- i mean, xenochimerism? its moar likely than you think.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201303/the-you-in-me
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16084184
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0045592

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