CharonY

Seems similar to what was reported previously, in terms of conclusion. But with more context.

It is a huge issue in the medical field, and especially in medical research. There was basically a 180 in terms of having minorities in a cohort. Initially often such cohorts were deemed non-representative. Now in most applications you need to at least write a bit about inclusiveness in patient cohorts, to make sure that you do not selectively exclude folks. Medical algorithms are getting a hard look for the same reasons, though folks are often unsure how it should be tweaked. For the most part it is really that research shows that we have inequity here and there is some mechanism leading to it. But often it is difficult to pinpoint a clear mechanism, as quite a few of those can be part of a long pipeline. E.g. folks not living close to good medical facilities and being diagnosed later, or MDs having preconceptions and treating certain folks just a bit worse (or sometimes way worse, something that pops up a fair bit especially when it comes to indigenous folks), leading to delayed or sub-optimal treatment and so on. The issue is then that these data are then used to train algorithms than often perpetuate these inequalities. I will add that while specifics are different, systemic (not systematic) minority exclusion is not uncommon. It tends to be a bit invisible, unless you conduct some level of research into it. In Germany, for example, there are about 1 million black folks, and in recent census it appears that certain false assumptions e.g. regarding pain tolerance in POC is still very prevalent. In contrast to the US that perception is not targeted exclusively against black folks, but also against minorities (especially Turkish folks, but also folks from the Mediterranean in general). There, whiteness is probably even more narrowly defined. It is so bad that among the medical community a term was coined (Morbus Bosporus sometimes also Morbus mediterraneus or "Anatolian pain" further back in the past it was coined on Italian immigrants, where it was called "Mamma-mia" syndrome). This "diagnosis" basically assumes that folks from that area are more likely to exaggerate their pain. This, of course, without actual evidence. This has resulted in differential pain treatment and some issues for immigrants to properly contextualize their pain to German MDs (at which point, the diversity issue raises its head again).

I don't think that there was fundamentally new information (or at least I recall that one or two years ago it was reported that there were some folks working at the institute getting ill around the early times of the outbreak. It was a tick towards a potential leak, but nothing conclusive as far as I can tell, even assuming that they got COVID-19 (and not something else). Transparency is certainly something to critique them for, but so far no smoking gun. One problem that I am still seeing is that the earliest timelines are a bit hazy. Now that we know a bit more about the transmissibility of the early variant plus the associated severe disease rate, there is a bit more uncertainty regarding the earliest transmission. This could push the timelines a bit further back, especially in a younger population. But this is purely speculative at this point, of course. It would be interesting to follow up on some of the sample found early in Europe to see whether one can get a bit more precise data (or if available, blood samples in Wuhan). Also, if I recall correctly, at least one of the infected researchers was working in BSL4? If so, that makes it even less likely as they are way better protected there than outside. If there was a leak, I would think that BSL2 conditions are (way) more conducive to escape.

There are a couple of reports regarding the impact of minimum wage increases in the UK. For example : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/minimum-wage-rates-for-2023/low-pay-commission-summary-of-findings-2022 It should also be noted that minimum wage is a particular part of the wage range and folks receiving it are particularly vulnerable to inflation, for example.

Generally speaking, a collaboration requires a certain alignment of interest and trust. Especially as an undergraduate, it might be difficult to get hold of a Prof as we generally are overcomitted, anyway. The best bet is to talk to folks you have interned with. If they are not interested, at least they make introductions to folks. If you have funding, you could try to set up a contract, but chances are that it might be too expensive.

This discussion tends to focus on bits and pieces, sometimes out of context. To make an analogy (yet again), some folks argue that we need more accessibility ramps for wheelchairs (reparations to account for past inadequacies). Others (or the same) might also argue that we need accessibility rules baked into building codes and city design, so that we do not systematically exclude folks who are unable to walk (systemic change). Yet others argue that we should not focus on those, but the ultimate issue is that folks get injured or have developmental issues resulting in their inability to walk, so we should fix that, so that there is no need for the other two approaches.

No, you are right, the volume is generally adjusted for the expected application and provided in a range that is generally convenient to apply. However, some drugs might have a narrower safe range than others. So the impact of e.g. not having enough time between treatments or accidental misdosing can have different effects. That being said, I am not sure where fentanyl sits in terms of relative safety. I think I have read somewhere that switch of medication has to be done more carefully as the effects can be initially stronger than anticipated (at equivalent dosages).

I think there are different stages where the system influences addiction rates and generally speaking, a centralized and well-maintained system makes it easier to track and crack down on abuse. What you might refer to is if folks already are addicted. It depends on use, often patches are used with rather precise delivery parameters. If used via injection (i.e. manual dosing) human error is going to be a factor, for sure.

Though I think it is less about the patient's wishes, but rather financial incentives for the MD.

I think a great quote is: And a nice article to go with it How the ‘Color-Blind Constitution’ Got Weaponized - The Atlantic. In Europe folks take pride in color-blindness and quite a bit of discrimination gets ignored because of that (for a long time the official line in Germany is that there is no racism).

The opposite is also true. Folks have historically assumed ethnic differences and many things in practice turned out to be harmful. Some of them are clear biases (such as assumption that black folks are more pain resistant), others are more insidious. What it boils down to in medical sciences is that many minorities are underrepresented in research and the treatment is therefore biased towards where the data is. And this happens to be white and male. One way trying to address this is to encourage researchers to specifically seek out minority cohorts, as opposed to the past (meaning perhaps 10 years ago) where white men were considered the gold standard. It also points to structural issues, as many cohorts are recruited in universities, in which few ethnicity make up most of the student body. Again, a blind approach only works if the system in which it works does not lead to a sorting of outcomes (which it still does). There is also a feedback issue here. Folks treat certain minorities (especially First Nations, Pacific Islanders and black folks) sub-optimally, so they have worse health outcomes. But then biomarkers from the unhealthier groups are used to establish the "healthy" baseline, so that folks thought that e.g. kidneys from black folks have more effective function that those from white folks. These has then resulted in delayed kidney transplantation for black folks, which is only been addressed somewhat recently. There was the hope that algorithms that are considered unbiased (i.e. no racism) could address that. But again, the systemic issues counteract that. For example, algorithms widely used in healthcare provide risk scores to patients. Original paper https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax2342 The tricky bit is that it is not always obvious, as machine learning (or AI) is often a bit of a black box and you do not necessarily know how they weigh things. So in a colorblind approach, where the outcomes are not investigated along racial lines, these effects would have been missed (and currently keep being missed, though in the last few years racial biases in algorithms are widely discussed). Going away from the medical field, I believe there is a growing consensus that colorblind policies as a whole perpetuate racism (as even the dissenter in the Supreme court decision Plessy v. Ferguson assumed) that are inbaked into the system (something that has been mentioned plenty of times already).

Funnily the right did that and then made folks afraid of the vaccine. And only one that was deliberate false information.

The obvious thing is that there is always a mix. There are well-informed voters who do somewhat rational decisions, but they are likely a smaller segment and a bit more concentrated in the more educated segment. But ultimately, they too are not really unbiased. On the other end, there is a solid proportion of grievance voters (perhaps around 20%?). The advantage of tapping into those is that you can do that independent of actual policies, as it is mostly perception-based. And apparently angry people do turn up to vote. I will also say that the angry segment is getting supercharged by social media and the increasing distrust of mainstream media, politicians and often just facts. It has never been easier to make folks afraid of something.

In my mind it actually shows thar the system is so broken that even (or perhaps especially) an inept person could create that mess. It was always ready to break out, but establishment had a tempering effect. But just find someone who does not give a darn (National Rally in France, AfD, PiS, and so on) and they have a path to power, regardless of their political abilities. I mean, this neither unique for the US, nor history. Find a more capable and temperate, things may improve for a while,but come inflation, or recession or pandemic and folks start looking for a strongman again and the jackpots come out again.

And it is the same trend in Europe, independent of Trump. He really is just the symptom, not the cause. Grievance politics was always a fallback position, especially when the situation is either bad or perceived as such, often with little or no connection to reality (which makes them so powerful). You just need to make people think that something is threatening their lifestyle (e.g. crime, housing cost, etc.) and then find some convenient scapegoats (ideally powerless ones, such as minorities, immigrants or if you run out of ideas for some reasons Jews are a favorite group). Just keep things nebulous enough and you can make folks to do virtually anything, even against their interest, in order to combat that nebulous "foe". One would think that after so many historic examples folks would eventually learn, but if anything recent history has shown that well, we don't. And I do think it is a convenient distraction to blame folks like Trump, as it implies that if he is gone, things will change for the better. But this is clearly only an illusion.

Yes, quite a few. Genetic analyses found that mutations leading to straighter or wavy (ass opposed to curly) hair arose later in outside of Africa. However, even without genetic data, looking at the likeliest scenario of the current dominance of curly hair in Africa, is that it is the original phenotype.

I actually think that German is a bit more categorical, but because of that I often feel a bit more precision and nuance due to word choice, whereas in English I often feel that things a slightly more muddled. I suspect in the latter there is more implicit meaning that I sometimes miss. It is definitely shorter to write.

That is an interesting thought. It would depend a fair bit how the term is being used in the relevant circles, I suspect. In English folks would talk about the "Laws" of Mendelian inheritance, in German they are called rules ("Regeln"). I also suspect that within a language there might be shifts in word usage over time.

I think we have fundamental misunderstanding here. As you point out yourself, the system is built on power imbalance between the castes, not the fact that there are castes to begin with. If Dalits had the same influence as Brahmins, for example, there would not be a hierarchy to begin with. I.e. if we take power imbalances out of the equation folks would, on average not suffer differently. If you were right, white folks would on average suffer similarly as black folks, but they don't. Why is that? As a last attempt for an example, do you think that a white supremacist would be able to cause a similar racial impact if he was confined to a trailer in the middle of nowhere, compared to a developer who builds a toxic waste dumps in the cheapest available locations, but because of all the systemic issues, these locations also happen to be where mostly black folks live. Does the latter situation create less racialized impact, just because there were no racist intentions behind it? Does it not cause disproportionate harm to a racialized group, just because there were no racist tendencies in enacting these developments? As long as your proposals do not explain or predict these real situations, it is not much of an explanation, is it? Anyway, I think we are circling the same issue repeatedly without coming to an understanding. I will just end with mentioning that while these issues are still under investigation, consensus has started to form maybe in the last one or two decades or so. Accordingly, there is a large body of studies to look into and I while just leave a magazine article here as a starting point: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/

But let's take the caste system as an example. Imagine the system is horizontal as in all castes had the same rights, same benefits and same power, yet folks get sorted into them. Do you think the issues would be the same as in the hierarchical system where some enjoy power and others do not?

I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Do you think that folks first had discriminatory attitudes and without any power imbalance, some decided to get put into lower caste and this is what created the imbalance? Or do you think that the caste system was implemented because the British left? Can you explain what you mean?

No, power imbalance alone creates differential outcomes. That is the very definition of it. It is the mechanism through which it works. On which levels these outcomes are affected, depends on things like racism (which can but does not have to create differential racialized outcomes), class, gender etc. Ask yourself this, do you think minorities and non-white folks are inherently less racist? If not why are the outcomes better for white folks than e.g. black folks. If racism was the dominant factor, the rest would not matter, would it? The reality is it does, and there is tons of lit on it. Denying it simply would not further the discussion as it simply be separate from reality. Like discussing a spherical cow in vacuum to explain basic physiology. Also, perhaps worse, it is not actionable. Racism won't be eliminated. As we have seen through history, what really happens is people keep redefining racism in order to avoid accountability. This is where the real semantic part of the discussion is. Folks (including folks on the progressive side) pat themselves on their shoulders by not saying the N-word and call it a day. The realization that these measures do virtually nothing has created the notion of anti-racism (e.g. trying to level out the playing field actively) as opposed to just pretend to be non-racist or color-blind and then hope that for the first time in history things will work out better without any effort (same mindset that has been prevalent in terms of fighting global warming, btw.). It is basically like saying, oh in order to reduce poverty and hunger, we should just be nicer to each other. There, problem solved.

While I am repeating myself here, I just want to illustrate again why power differentials are integral to the discussion here. Assume two populations (A and B) with similar composition and access to power, money etc. Also introduce racism (or bigotry or whatever form of discrimination) against each other. Under this scenario, individuals may suffer from local discrimination, for example if an A has a discriminating B as boss and vice versa. However, while the society as a whole may be problematic, on average the population of A would have a similar outcome as B. This is because there would be a similar likelihood of a an A being a boss (having power) over an B as the reverse. This could result in segregated populations, but as long as power, access to resources etc. remains the same, the outcome (wealth, health etc.) between the populations would be similar. But this is not how most forms of segregation are in history. Rather, almost always there is a group with power over the other, enforcing the segregation. In that scenario, the group with more power and resources can create a segregated system that can isolate the other group from access to the same. So in other words, only if we have an imbalance in power between populations do we expect differential outcomes on the population level due to discrimination (again, it is not about the individual as such). In other words the claims that these are only semantics and/or that racism is the issue and not the system basically misses a key element that actually causes injustice and inequality. Conversely, it is not discrimination or racism as such that causes (large scale) inequalities, it is the interphase with power that causes it (i.e. when they create a system of sorts that can create this outcome).

Actually, light sensing arose way before skin was developed. The earliest organisms with light sensing capabilities and phototaxis were bacteria.

I have heard of the study way back and it might be taught in neurophys classes. However, if it was called a law because it is because it challenged some rather long-held assumptions. Yet with better technology and data we know that we have a larger cellular diversity than previously appreciated. The fact that they are not interchangeable is not something that I (think at least) nowadays would be surprised about. I may be wrong, but I think it has become more of a historic aspect rather than a law that sees any application in research or even teaching. I actually do not think that I even heard of it in neurology classes when I was studying (but then maybe I just forgot). Edit: Actually, while I have read the seminal paper back then, I do not recall that the conclusions were ever called a law. It may be just my ignorance, but I am wondering where the notion of it being called a law may come from. The wiki article does not really say.