CharonY

A leaked draft of the majority opinion shows that in SCOTUS is set to overturn Row vs. Wade, which was a landmark decision which effectively allowed abortions. Effectively conservative states are poised to make abortions impossible, which is like going to cause a significant public health problem.

Well, as it turns out there are "First amendment" folks in Canada, but I suspect it is the 20% rule. As in, get any group together and 20% of them are likely to be idiots. The trick is figuring out if you are one of them. I will also say that also in Canada folks are thinking about the issues and connotations with POCs and coloured folks. Mostly as in the past it all non-white were kind of merged and in part because there was some solidarity among those who are officially termed "visible minorities". But differences in experiences, trajectories and increasing desire for individual recognition have soured those terms, independently on whether folks are using it as a slur or not. It is just the way language works. A new generation sees things slightly different (or wants it to be) and one point or another it is reflected in language. Social media. Not sure if it is true, but I am getting old and I increasingly want to blame someone. Can't blame immigrants, so social media it is.

Well, don't forgot to fill out the field trip approval and the risk assessment form. After all, the Uni wants to be covered in case the search ends up with some very satiated bears.

Nope, there were in the post, including the quote. However, while the urls is give, the second link actually seems broken. I am willing to explain the methodology in those papers, provided you are willing to read. If it is going to be a handwaving session again I am honestly not inclined to waste more time. The reason is that even without actually reading the methodology you are already assuming an faulty methodology, whereas you are also assuming to be right without having any data to support your assertion. I.e. you seem to demand work from others which you yourself are unwilling to provide. I.e. I see no value to continue unless you are willing to enter a discussion in good faith. Meanwhile here is the abstract to the second paper.

Fundamentally he starts of with an assumption (weight/power is important for jockey performance) and arrives at the conclusion that therefore male jockeys must have an advantage, without first establishing whether the premise is true. The issue with the approach is quite apparent. I could for example stipulate that having testicles clearly put riders at an disadvantage as certain postures and situations can result in pain. In a sport where every advantage counts clearly this is an issue. Therefore, any study that does not take testicular discomfort into consideration is clearly flawed. I also like that looking at extreme marathon runners we now suddenly are only allowed to look at the single top performers when we talk about gender differences, as clearly only the guy on the top is really representative of male physiology (the others obviously somehow don't count). It baffles me that the issue with that is not immediately evident. I wonder if we used that approach to any other question that does not involve gender would be equally accepted as fact.

Huh? Did you read the papers? They showed that gender did not influence performance in jockeys. If men had a similar benefit as in running for example, this clearly should show, wouldn't it? So strangely men running faster is evidence for a physiological advantage, which I agree with. But now lack of a performance benefit is suddenly no evidence. If that is not a biased way to approach data I don’t know what is. I also note that you counter analyses of data with merely your opinion. If you have data demonstrating how your power ratio effect improves jockey performance you are free to show it. Yes following data is super scary.

No, I do not have a link. However, if you knew me even a little you would know that I have references. No, only if the ratio actually impact the outcome we are investigating. Otherwise you are biasing the analysis by assuming an advantage (after all this is the very question we want to establish in the first place). Especially if other factors, like, say the horse may be more important factors. So what you need to do before assuming that the advantage plays a role, you'll have to look whether the effect is present in the first place and also whether other, potentially more influential confounding factors are present. In other words, you are doing the exact mistake that many are criticizing. Without first establishing whether your factor has an actual effect you just assume it in all and demand that it has to be incorporated into the research design. And again, this is would be a classic example of bias in the study design. Rather, you would need to first figure out what factors influence race horse performance and then look whether gender is among those and how strong it really is, relative to the system we created around this assumption. For example if we have a huge gender difference, just looking at number of wins really only tells us about how many of each gender are participating, and not that whether is a physiological effect. If experience is a huge contributor and for whatever reason one gender does not stick around for the sport, it does not mean that there is a physiological reason either, and so on. So the challenge here is of course that a perfect data set would have exactly the same race conditions (including same horses) just with the gender swapped (and having an otherwise comparable cohort) in exactly the same races . Since there is not such a data set, one way to one needs to adjust external variables (i.e. physiology independent parameters) that may affect for example the likelihood of receiving higher rated mount (or being able to race at all). When adjusting for these factors the conclusion was that https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1527002520975839 Now there are other papers out there looking at the performance of the horse and the impact of the jockey. After all, the horse does the running. And here a fairly recent study suggest that the gender does of the rider does not seem to impact horse performance. In the same paper they also just calculated winning ratios based on UK and Australian data and here they found that in the UK the winning-rate (again, adjusted for the fact that fewer women are competing) to be not significantly different between men and women. In Australia there was a difference but which vanished if one considers the money spots (i.e. top three positions) in the races. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1341860/v1 So if the numbers do not immediately show a strong gender-based difference in outcome if one adjusts for the system (in contrast to sprinting, for example) why would one start off with the assumption of a difference and then try to frame the study from a flawed position? And this exactly is the issue with many of these assumptions. We know there are gender differences, but then we immediately jump to the conclusion they must be pervasive in everything we are looking for. And if we look with these blinders on, unsurprisingly we miss other aspects. This is one of the big reasons why there have been so many studies claiming to show that for some reasons folks with darker skin colour are less intellectual or that in general we only find the effects we are looking for (see the replication crisis) or why we have pervasive myths in the medical field. I.e. we first need to establish that there is an effect, then eliminate potential sources until we find the determining factors. In other words, we need to apply the scientific method also for those questions and should not start with a strong preconceptions.

But to be fair, the Trumps and Epsteins are not the folks who are more likely to end up in jail. Also the link between crime and poverty is quite strong.

I want to highlight that as a society we do decide what is evil and how harsh we want to punish someone. The US has demonstrated that we can racialize these decisions, e.g. by punishing crack harsher than cocaine or investigate and jail black drug users more frequently than white. In fact, certain behaviours (such as drug addiction) might be treated better with health intervention strategies than criminalization. I suspect that this is not actually the direction of your argument, but I thought I might want to bring that up, if only to illustrate that things are tricky.

Again, I do not see evidence anyone thinking of the processes as bigoted aside from political opponents. And in fact, being a bigot was actually shown to be a great driver of votes. I may repeat myself but there is increasing understanding that hiring and evaluation systems are not neutral and also not as meritocratic as we often assumed them to be. Assessing something as suitable or a good fit depends on a lot of parameter, not the least of experiences of the hiring committee. Rather obviously folks in the committee are most comfortable evaluating CVs and experiences that track with their own. As such, a committee might all provide similar evaluations and it might appear like a fair and meritocratic process, yet folks with non-standard trajectories might be at a severe disadvantage. This in part can lead to a self-reinforcing "leaky pipeline" issue where certain folks do not get into a spot of power where they can influence hiring and retention and therefore will continue to have a harder time advancing. There is no clear solution to the whole thing and all the EDI/diversity training and other measures really are able to do is pointing out biases that one might want to monitor. But as of yet I have not seen a better way than to have at least one potential contrarian voice (assuming everyone acts in good faith). One gamble that some folks are doing (and again, we are not there yet to have enough data to see whether it works) is to deliberate increase diversity (among suitable candidates) and hope that it sorts out some of the issues on its own. I am not sure whether that will work, either, but considering that it initiates some movement (rather than trying something that clearly has not worked but at least appeared "proper" to some folks) it will at least provide some data.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that, except that most folks involved in hiring know that if one wants to hire from a smaller pool (i.e. black woman) it is necessary to do focused searches. Entirely open searches simply favour the status quo. In that regard the process would not be more honest as it means that you suggest an open search, but are not actually using that process.

Somewhat related to that, it should also be noted that sports is obviously not free from systemic biases. For example, in horse racing one would probably expect that jockeys should be smaller and lighter, which would, in theory, benefit women. However, in contrast to other equestrian sports, women are vastly underrepresented. There apparently is the perception that men for a given weight are stronger and therefore drive their horse harder (somehow, I am not really sure about the mechanism). Accordingly, the vast majority of jockeys are men, and obviously the top jockeys are therefore also men. However, systematic analyses indicate that there a no significant advantages of men over women and the over-representation of men are driven by these biases. As a lot of money is involved folks hire whoever they think might win and looking at past winners (men) the obvious choice seems to hire men, which creates a self-reinforcing system. In other words, the way we look at and promote performance (as in hiring, training and promoting certain athletes) can actually distort at least some gender-based effects. That being said, much of sports were designed for men to compete so quite a lot of it will benefit male physiology. But then we are in getting better in quantitative physiology and might be able to create sports-specifics cut-offs that are less crude.

Well, I mostly meant folks that are very concerned about transgender involvement.

It is so weird. Folks agree that there should be a women's league as there are physically different and therefore have disadvantages in many sports. Yet if one wants to target those differences as a criterion to create different leagues, suddenly it is impossible to classify those differences. Apparently only the classifiers used in the past, are the only ones we can use forever. Well, it would explain why Americans still use imperial units, I assume.

It is also relevant to note that specifically the context defines meaning. For example, if one announces that one will look for the best candidate, evidence suggests that this means a white male (in the US). Just because race is not used, it does not mean it is not racialized.

With the exception of an Polish attempt all assassination attempts on Hitler were IIRC conducted by Germans and in the later years increasingly as an attempt to save Germany. The big issue is of course that alternative history speculations are just that. It is unclear what the result would be. One might even speculate on wildly successful eugenics (and genocide) plans throughout the world (which were heavily promoted and were very popular in the USA and Canada) without the horrors of the holocaust laid bare. Hitler wasn't an outlier, he just happened to be the one getting into power. As Phi mentioned, what if nazis in the US became more influential? America First was coined by US Nazis, afterwards, who rapidly lost influence once the US entered the war.

A few things here. I think as a whole society has lost the ability (not sure how much there was before, but now it is definitely less) to discuss nuance. The example you mentioned is pretty bad to make your point though, as the 12 year discussion has far more nuance at least in academia and left-leaning areas than on the right wing. Just to make sure we are on the same page, the 12 year deadline was part of an IPCC special report and it was not referring to the demise of the human species, but it was referring to the limiting global warming to 1.5 C which was a seen as a critical factor. In the report we will find quotes such as This is what is part of the discussion in academia and policy and you will note that not even very left leaning governments at any point mentioned death within a decade. I am actually not sure where your claim of a 12 year death deadline came from, but it really sounds like distortion from right wing pundits. Even in left- I am not saying that the left is free from those mistakes, but the example you picked out does not really help your point. But to get back to my earlier point, it is true that outside (and sometimes also within) academia these things are almost never discussed with the necessary detail , and it is quite obvious why. Folks do not want to think. I get that, though in the past there was at least some level of perceived accountability with regard to falsehoods. But also folks were not as easily distracted by social media. We also see it with things which have immediate impact or are just simple facts (Sandy Hook shootings, COVID-19 pandemic) where folks increasingly just design their own reality. Of course this changes the whole discourse as we now have a whole generation of kids growing up with cell phones and social media, and many of those will be in the positions were said nuance would have been important. Yet modern politics demonstrated that facts don't matter, so why shouldn't they choose the easier road?

So I got some bad news for you there... But in earnest, studies are only starting to look at the non catastrophic events (e.g. long-COVID, changes in immune responses etc) and it will take a while to figure out the overall health burden of the pandemic.

I strongly disagree. The only thing that is remotely as deluded might be black Hebrew Israelites, from what I understand. I will also note that the killer of the Australian women was originally sentenced for 12.5 years in prison (later overturned to 4.5 years). Many startled police officers who shot folks, especially, but not exclusively of black men, got off free. When the black panthers were formed black folks were still being lynched and police brutality was way more rampant. Seeing even a remote symmetry in these examples is quite a bit of a stretch.

It could be HK specific, the studies I remember were all from mainland. Another thing I remember is that in China elderly are less likely to see a doctor when ill. Likely as going regularly to a medical professional was not a thing back in the days.

From what I read that does not seem to be the case. Roughly speaking, surveys consistently found lower hesitancy in China compared to much of Europe or North America, though similar to the West, it increased over time. Many of the concerns are similar and are often related to perceived vaccine safety, convenience and knowledge regarding COVID-19. One additional aspect is the relative success of the early measures in China, resulting much lower transmission and deaths than elsewhere. This has increase complacency especially among the most vulnerable as over time they rated the dangers of COVID-19 lower than at the beginning, and thereby assessed the risk of vaccinations higher. Another aspect is that in China there are less interactions with doctors, (presumably due to differences in the health system) and as result in China individuals on average get less recommendations to get vaccinated compared to the West.

Yepp that is indeed the question. Also similar to radiation, the long-term effects can be tricky to assess as it depends on how much you ingest, but also how fast you can eliminate it. Especially chemicals that accumulate in adipose tissue and are resistant to biological modification/degradation (including PFOA, PFOA and other "forever chemicals") continually accumulate over one's lifetime. At the beginning, coinciding with the development of more sensitive instruments, the hazards of acrylamide appear to be overestimated. But at the same time, it might pose a cumulative risk with all the other exposures we have. In that regard certain chemicals, such as alcohol, are a higher risk, due to the much higher level of consumption.

I just want to point out that the effect of the policy is disputed (and there were other, potentially more effective policies prior to one child. One interesting read: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0220170

The other thing to consider is once the nominee was announced, the usual support was given. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/17/more-support-than-oppose-jacksons-supreme-court-nomination-with-many-not-sure/ So fundamentally there was more handwringing at the front (shall we call it virtue signaling or something?) but with very little actual follow-up impact.

While the criticism might be valid, I will have to say that the dat on lockdown effectiveness is a bit limited, and seems fairly region and population specific. Measuring such effects can be challenging, as we do not really have many areas with differing mandates that we could directly compare. It also depends when lockdowns are initiated. Otoh there are also studies that show that given high compliance to health mandates and effective contact tracing, the outcome might better or equal to full lockdowns. But again, what works in one country or city might not work elsewhere. That being said, there are some studies that suggest that early lockdown followed by slow opening can actively reduce infections during the previous wave. Otoh, in the US rapid lockdowns with rapid re-openings were less effective (https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11606-020-06345-5). A study in Italy found that after tight lockdowns transmission were controlled, but less rigid ones did not control movemen sufficiently (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100457). There are other areas which had no lockdowns and no worse outcomes, but such comparisons are very difficult to make as a lot of other factors play into reduction of transmissions. Even just imposing mandates without lockdown can be effective, provided the population takes it seriously. Conversely, and what we see now in many jurisdictions, lifting of mandates regardless of infection levels in a region, sends the signal to the population that more careless interactions are not only allowed, but perhaps even encouraged. Here, we see that the wave is getting prolonged compared to areas where mandates (not even full lockdowns) were implemented. I might also disagree with the use of mortality as the sole endpoint, as it would ignore a lot of studies looking at transmission. However, for public health limiting spread of the disease (which lockdowns and other measures intend to curb) is one of the more critical and actionable measured and one the which most epidemiological papers investigating lockdowns are focused on (rather than the economics ones).