CharonY

A bit of sidetracking here, but I would like to add that addiction rates are typically not estimated by a singular method (such as wastewater surveillance), but typically incorporates other measures from multiple sources (e.g. injection site uses, surveys in homeless shelters, general interviews and so on). Wastewater analyses are generally robust to look for trends and relative changes. Using population estimates such as caffeine (but increasingly other biomarkers are getting more popular) some level of prevalence can be estimated but there are indeed challenges, depending on the type and size of the sewer system (some areas might have way longer residence times than others), biological activity. temperature, variability in flow and so on. That being said, any measure of drug use has its issues and ultimately the idea is to combine various independent approaches to provide the most accurate picture. An advantage of wastewater analyses is that it tends to be a good indicator of overall trend in a population and can be a good estimator for modeling purposes.

I have concerns. Most high quality products follow a similar process. But cheaper ones do take shortcuts in time. Bacterial activities, us where the flavor comes from, and many inferior products simply are not aged as much.

I think that disqualifies you from calling yourself an Italian. BTW, I do think that the protection has the benefit from preserving the old process over industrialized shortcuts that tend be more easy to find. In Europe, much of the protected stuff is actually reasonably cheap, too.

Though in is case folks had to misinterpret a perhaps suboptimal study and create a fake title to make it extremely woke, no? There are issues with case studies in general (medical case studies share some of them) but the title of the article illustrates how to make folks focus on the wrong thing. The refusal of the commentary is, if anything, an issue, though I would have liked to see the reviews.

That would be fine if we were a social sciences forum, I guess.

I think we have established that this is not what it is about. I think it is worthwhile to iterate that everyone has implicit biases (or whatever we call them). That in itself is not the issue, folks will be arseholes regardless of the situation. But what the paper is about (and the broader discussion) is the surrounding system in which these implicit biases create issues. In the US (but also elsewhere) there are explicit as well as unintentional system that result in unequal outcomes, depending on race (and gender), even if each group has the same amount (or lack of ) implicit bias. These structures are often invisible and it is a bit what the paper (if clumsily) seems to want to address. I.e. they claim that in their observational mini-cohort, due to the cultural background in which it happens, the different folks (Hispanic, White, Middle Eastern, men and women) behave differently within that structure. Again, the case study does not allow conclusion in itself, but it is something that they want to try to observe.

It is not on par as a typical study, but case studies are often like that. For example for unusual manifestations of diseases you might have descriptions of what is happening with a single patient. Most of the time they do not allow any valid conclusions (e.g. in terms of treatment efficacy), but the value is really that if someone sees something similar one can start thinking about the need of conducting a full (or pilot) study. I have seen studies in the social sciences which are fairly well designed, but ultimately, the higher the complexity of the question, the more difficult it becomes to control for all parameters. Interestingly, behavioral biology is undergoing a change where folks realized that some of the rigors common in behavioral animal studies might actually be detrimental to the science, as it dismisses individuality that increasingly is recognized in animals (and already assumed in social sciences). I would agree that the explanatory power of an average social science study is lower than that of natural sciences, and it generally takes many years until some sort of consensus can be formed. As a consequence they often lag behind (rapid) societal shifts.

With regards to racist, the issue is indeed that folks assume that folks with racist worldviews are incorrigible. It is, ironically something engraved in typically conservative worldview (things are a certain way because it is how it is supposed to be or natural or something on that line) and some progressives have taken a similar mindset (someone with racist mindsets are incorrigible). Unfortunately this results in a situation where folks o both sides of the issue think that racism is terminal. As such many uneducated progressives attack rather than educate, whereas folks on the right then just try to define it in a way that would absolve them from that label, regardless how obviously vile that may be (now Nazis are OK...?). Even worse, in the US the gop now actively try to abo.ish such education, which actually would have shifted the discussion from personal failure to system issues. These, in theory are much easier to discuss dispassionately. Instead now Rosa Parks was just a random bus passenger who complained too much.

I don't think that I ever came across a proposal to make teaching non-hierarchical, and I do not think it was brought up as an issue, well anywhere I looked, at least. Generally the research is about what formal or informal hierarchies are formed which are considered normal, but remain invisible. For example, a teacher student relationship is generally known to be hierarchical. There, one could e.g. explore cultural differences in teaching and learning, but also how e.g. students perceive authority coming from a male vs female teacher (and there is a lot to say here). But that is not what the area the paper tries to explore (successfully or not). It is about group learning (i.e. a bunch of equally clueless peers) and how they spontaneously build power structures. Generally speaking these small group observational studies have little to no explanatory power by themselves. However, there is the general idea that cultural norms create these power structures and because they are considered normal, folks engaging in them do not realize what they do. Moreover, often non-normative behavior can often create issues. So in gender-based power structures, a female student taking lead is more likely to be perceived negatively as an equally uninformed male student. Conversely, a male student engaged in very collaborative knowledge formation, will more likely to be perceived as weak or not knowledgeable. And there are cultural dimensions on top. The journal is an education journal, not a physics science paper. From the looks of it, you submit e.g. suggestions of doing classes, it does include simple experiment to teach concepts but also discussions on how to lead classes etc. I'll have a few minutes of time and will check out the article. Edit: so based on the article, which is rather thin on details the issue that the editors brought up was that the comment was: I.e. it seems that the argument was (if valid) that the comment was actually discussing something entirely different then what the paper was actually describing, similar to what we are doing here. In order to figure whether that was justified, I would now need to read the comment in question, but that takes time. I will again note that what is emblematic for this whole discussion that folks do not actually provide full context and that folks are ready to chime in without reading the underlying papers in detail. I think the paper has obvious methodological issues (if it really was about determining the dynamics) to draw scientific conclusions and I would not be surprised if the comment authors heavily picked up on that. I would not consider the paper to be valuable other than a think piece to consider dynamics in class rooms, for example (and the framework seems questionable, but then I have not well read enough to comment on whether that is true or not). Putting the comment issues aside, I do not blame folks that they are unwilling, unable (as research might not be intelligible) or just plain do not have the time to read those things, but I wished that folks would then refrain from engaging, before they do. I blame twitter for these bit-sized discussions that seem to mostly generate outrage but no real discourse (I note that the editor noted harassment, which seems to be the norm nowadays). Edit2: Actually I may have done the paper a bit of an injustice, I thought that there was no effect of race as I only skimmed the whiteboard part, but there is a bit which the authors observe that while the Hispanic woman supported the (middle-Eastern) man, the white woman actually kept on challenging him. They suggest that there is some intersectionality at play here, where power dynamics are not only governed by gender (as I assumed) but also by race. I.e. when one wanted to study these dynamics in more detail than the paper, one should not only focus on one or the other. That part is actually interesting as a thought (though poor in data).

Except the observation was set up specifically without someone with more knowledge (i.e. teacher). It was a group of peers and the idea is that even under this condition a hierarchy forms.

Actually they acknowledge that race did not play a factor (only a female in the group was characterized as white). It was more that "whiteness" was used to describe the hierarchical structure (and again, I am not sure whether that is actually a thing in social sciences or whether that is the actual stretch). IMO it is a case where the use of language actually leads folks to misunderstand the situation. I am not versed in social sciences so cannot comment whether the authors actually used correct terminology to begin with, which could aggravate issues. Actually that is not the case, what I have read more about is the use of e.g. colonizers which is typically used specifically with regard to indigenous interaction and related to history of the colonial past (or present). Male dominance is pretty much ubiquitous and does intersect with most dominance structure, regardless of the area (i.e. race, social status, economic system etc). While social sciences are often on shakier ground, it is a bit problematic to dismiss them wholesale. We do not do that in natural sciences and we should not do that for other sciences, at least not without studying some foundations first. And that is again an overinterpretation base on the headlights. Rather the assumption (whether true or false) is that folks used to a social hierarchy are more likely organize knowledge transfer and presentation in a hierarchical manner. I.e. a person takes charges, structures information and creates a hierarchical flow. I.e. information presentation is then guided, rather than created collaboratively. A side aspect is that men are more likely to do that (though based on the glimpse I am not sure whether that was emphasized, I cannot remember and the paper was not interesting enough for me to read it again). Saying that this is indicative of white supremacism is, in my reading, rather missing the point (similar as the title of the article in OP). What it is saying is that we are used to a certain structure of information forming and that this mechanism is, in effect, invisible to the participants. That is because we are so used to it (as various folks mentioned). They could give it a different name (e.g. Western style learning or whatever rather than whiteness), but the basic idea I got from it is that we generally acquiesce to these structures without much thinking about it. And it might very well be the best way to form information. But ultimately the structures that creates them are invisible to us, and so are the issues that may arise from them. For example, we might (and we do) assign competence to the person who tends to direct most attention to themselves, rather than those that build critical knowledge, but remain in the background. If anything these types of thoughts help to think outside the box (or rather, identify potential boxes).

Unfortunately this falls under the more methodological questionable studies in sociology which is open to biased interpretation of observation. The main value is less in the conclusions as in natural sciences, nor even data collection but the opportunity to look at alternative perspectives. Steering a discussion rather than creating consensus is a hierarchical structure and it is the common form of knowledge generation in science, in part because it is time effective. Whether social sciences actually use whiteness is a term for that is unusual (I came across the concept of western learning as contrasted to certain forms of indigenous learning). Also if anything I found it more an exercise in male behavior, as men more commonly try to lead or dominate discussions regardless of their actual knowledge level. While Krauss' point may be fair the title seemed not to be.

It should also noted that the paper uses "whiteness" to refer to a organizational structure whereas race as itself is actually not a factor in the observation (it is only based on the observation of three students). The paper also seems to be in a fairly low impact journal focused on teaching science (rather than a science journal) so it looks to me that that the fuss is disproportionate.

So before folks focus too much on the "white" in whiteboard thingy (ragebait). I had a quick break and glimpsed at the paper under discussion. The paper is a bit convoluted and is more in social science lingo, which certainly does not endear it to natural scientists. As such I really only skimmed it. That being said, the whiteboard is not in there, because of the word white, it could have been any board, or a flip chart or similar. What the authors claimed is that in their observatory session certain persons were using the board as a dominance tool, to focus attention on themselves as opposed to a collaborative tool with equal access for everyone involved. They reframed it in a hierarchical system prevalent in white patriarchic societies. There is a bit of a stretch (IMO) that is not uncommon in social science papers in establishing these contexts, but it definitely reads different than saying whiteboards are racist. If someone said that they either have not read the paper or are stretching context in an arguably similar or worse way as they are accusing the authors of.

The title at least seems to be designed to facilitate ragebait clicks. Will have to read it later. But I have noticed natural scientists venturing out into the realm of social sciences without a lit of knowledge (though there is also a fair bit of questionable methodology among social scientists). Generally the more certain folks are (on either side of an issue) the more likely they are uninformed).

That is actually not quite true. There was the notion that fully differentiated adipose cells never die and since the total number of adipose tissues stays roughly constant, it was consensus until around 2005 that no new adipose cells are formed in adulthood (or more specifically that adipose cell progenitors do not proliferate anymore). However, a hallmark study by Cinti et al. showed evidence of dead fat cells in obese humans and rodents (https://doi.org/10.1194/jlr.M500294-JLR200). This suggested that there is some kind of cellular turnover to keep the cell number constant. Other important studies include a paper from the Karolinska institute ca. 2008 (the author eludes me) showed that there is a slow turnover of fat cells (cells die, get cleared and new cells are formed) but it is a tightly regulated process which maintains the total fat cell number constant, even after weight loss. In other words, it is a quasi-steady-state situation. That being said, I have no idea what the impact of liposuction is on this regulatory system. It is kind of an interesting question, actually.

An interesting bit that is especially apparent in language models is that they can make up responses, which is not based on the data. In various articles folks refer to it as hallucinations and there are a variety of reasons that could cause them, though it does not seem to be fully understood. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-has-a-hallucination-problem-thats-proving-tough-to-fix/ Data is data, it is only false or correct relative to a given context. Issues can arise on the collection level (are we measuring the correct variable for what we want to do?), as well as the selection level (which data set do we think should be added or omitted).

That sounds like increasing productivity.

Can I take coins out of the bags?

Well a lot of things (including lead, asbestos, PFAS ) have been used for a long time and it took a long time to figure out what damages they caused, so this is not a good argument. Working outside only would help, though. I am no chemist, but I would think that the organic solvent would dissolve most additives. Moreover, I don't think that viscosity would affect evaporation much. The latter should be mostly governed by volatility, but again, there are chemists here who have a better understanding of it. I am better informed in telling you about the biological effects of inhaling that stuff.

I have also read reports that HIV positive inmates were promised antivirals, if they enlist. So, not a huge surprised if they are used as cannonfodder, all things considered.

So the best advice is probably a don't do this. Methylene chloride is banned in many countries as it is rather harmful with a slew of issues including damage to the central nervous system, carbon monoxide intoxication (metabolization releases CO) and I believe there is also some level of cancer risk. If you use it inside a house, there is a high likelihood that you might reach potentially harmful levels pretty quickly. Basically, if you can smell it, it is already too high for safe work. Also, if it is very old paint, it is best to test it for lead. You do not want to inhale that, either.

The organization of the Wagner group is quite muddled and it appears that at least some speculate that it is in fact a branch of the Russian military. At least there are significant dependencies. Moreover, the group originally had a small core (a few thousands, most likely veterans) but reportedly are now being bolstered by convicts and contractors. That obviously is unlikely to happen if it was fully run as an independent company and makes it more likely that they are at least partially under governmental control. It is more than likely that the convicts at least are considered expendable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group

Your mistake is assuming that there is some magical energy rather than if there is one. We know that humming creates soundwaves. You kind of dismissed that. So now you believe that your humming has properties that are based on something that no one has ever documented. Which makes it indistinguishable from magic at this point.

I have got friends who are chefs and I worked in a couple. It is not a quite place. So magic. I think good chefs are magical so there is that (note: same level of evidence you provided so far).