It was Friday evening, Gawker writer Ryan Tate's wife was out of town, and he was whiling away the lonely hours by watching 30 Rock when an iPad commercial popped up that touted the new Apple gadget as nothing less than a revolution. Tate got annoyed, fired off an email, and soon found himself in an email fight with Steve Jobs himself. Apple's CEO is known to personally answer some of the emails that flood into the sjobs@apple.com address, and it seems that Tate's pointed message goaded the exec into action. Tate, who has long taken issue with Apple's tight rules on how apps can be written and what content is permissible, argued that the iPad couldn't be considered revolutionary because "revolutions are about freedom." Several hours later, Jobs fired back with his version of what the iPad offers: "Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom." And it was on. Tate got pretty heated in some of his messages to Jobs, but in the aftermath he stresses his respect for Jobs and his methods. As Tate writes in his blog post digesting the whole affair:
Rare is the CEO who ...
Non-Normalizable Probability Measures for Fun and Profit | Cosmic Variance
Here’s a fun logic puzzle (see also here; originally found here). There’s a family resemblance to the Monty Hall problem, but the basic ideas are pretty distinct.
An eccentric benefactor holds two envelopes, and explains to you that they each contain money; one has two times as much cash as the other one. You are encouraged to open one, and you find $4,000 inside. Now your benefactor — who is a bit eccentric, remember — offers you a deal: you can either keep the $4,000, or you can trade for the other envelope. Which do you choose?
If you’re a tiny bit mathematically inclined, but don’t think too hard about it, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that you should definitely switch. After all, there seems to be a 50% chance that the other envelope contains $2,000, and a 50% chance that it contains $8,000. So your expected value from switching is the average of what you will gain — ($2,000 + $8,000)/2 = $5,000 — minus the $4,000 you lose, for a net gain of $1,000. Pretty easy choice, right?
A moment’s reflection reveals a puzzle. The logic that convinces you to switch would have worked perfectly well no matter what had been in the first envelope you opened. But that original choice was complete arbitrary — you had an equal chance to choose either of the envelopes. So how could it always be right to switch after the choice was made, even though there is no Monty Hall figure who has given you new inside information?
Here’s where the non-normalizable measure comes in, as explained here and here. Think of it this way: imagine that we tweaked the setup by positing that one envelope had 100,000 times as much money as the other one. Then, upon opening the first one, you found $100,000 inside. Would you be tempted to switch?
I’m guessing you wouldn’t, for a simple reason: the two alternatives are that the other envelope contains $1 or $10,000,000,000, and they don’t seem equally likely. Eccentric or not, your benefactor is more likely to be risking one dollar as part of a crazy logic game than to be risking ten billion dollars. This seems like something of a extra-logical cop-out, but in fact it’s exactly the opposite; it takes the parameters of the problem very seriously.
The issue in this problem is that there couldn’t be a uniform distribution of probabilities for the amounts of money in the envelopes that stretches from zero to infinity. The total probability has to be normalized to one, which means that there can’t be an equal probability (no matter how small) for all possible initial values. Like it or not, you have to pick some initial probability distribution for how much money was in the envelopes — and if that distribution is finite (”normalizable”), you can extract yourself from the original puzzle.
We can make it more concrete. In the initial formulation of the problem, where one envelope has twice as much money as the other one, imagine that your assumed probability distribution is the following: it’s equally probable that the envelope with less money has any possible amount between $1 and $10,000. You see immediately that this changes the problem: namely, if you open the first envelope and find some amount between $10,001 and $20,000, you should absolutely not switch! Whereas, if you find $10,000 or less, there is a good argument for switching. But now it’s clear that you have indeed obtained new information by opening the first envelope; you can compare what was in that envelope to the assumed probability distribution. That particular probability distribution makes the point especially clear, but any well-defined choice will lead to a clear answer to the problem.
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Who are the creationists? (by the numbers) | Gene Expression
My post last week about Creationism by region set off a fair number of follow up questions. I’ve actually probed the GSS evolution related variables a lot in the past, but I thought I would put it together in one post in a simple fashion for new readers. I used the SCITEST4 variable since its sample size is the largest. The question asked was: ” Human beings developed from earlier species of animals.” It was asked between 1993 and 2000.
There are four answers, definitely true, probably true, probably not true, definitely not true. I put the frequencies in a table below, but I thought it would be useful to have one number to summarize the propensity toward creationism in a demographic. Therefore, I created a simple “index of creationism.” The formula to create it is pretty obvious:
Index of Creationism = (% “definitely not true”) X 3 + (% “probably not true”) X 2 + (% “probably true”) X 1
If the Index of Creationism for a demographic was zero, that means that everyone in the demographic accepted that evolution was definitely true. In contrast, if it was three, that means that everyone in the demographic believed that evolution was definitely not true. The bar chart below has the Indices of Creationism sorted. Below it is a table with the frequencies as well (unsorted, clustered by demographic kind).
HUMANS DEVELOPED FROM ANIMALS….
| Demographic | Definitely True | Probably True | Probably Not True | Definitely Not True | Creationism Index |
| Male | 19.3 | 33.4 | 15.8 | 31.5 | 1.6 |
| Female | 12.1 | 32 | 17.7 | 38.2 | 1.82 |
| White | 16.4 | 33.2 | 16.2 | 34.3 | 1.69 |
| Black | 9.8 | 29.2 | 19.8 | 41.3 | 1.93 |
| Non-College | 10.7 | 31.5 | 19 | 38.8 | 1.86 |
| College | 30.2 | 36.3 | 10.3 | 23.1 | 1.26 |
| Stupid | 9.6 | 31.9 | 22.6 | 35.8 | 1.85 |
| Average | 10.7 | 32.4 | 18 | 38.9 | 1.85 |
| Smart | 29.2 | 34.2 | 11.9 | 24.9 | 1.33 |
| Low SEI (17-37) | 11.9 | 32.5 | 19 | 36.6 | 1.8 |
| Middle SEI (38-67) | 15.2 | 32.1 | 16.7 | 36 | 1.74 |
| High SEI (68-97) | 26.1 | 33.2 | 12 | 28.7 | 1.43 |
| Atheist & Agnostic | 41.6 | 39.2 | 12.4 | 6.7 | 0.84 |
| Higher Power | 33 | 48.7 | 10.8 | 7.6 | 0.93 |
| Believe in God (Doubts) | 20.7 | 46.6 | 21.3 | 11.4 | 1.23 |
| Know God Exists | 9.7 | 25.2 | 16.8 | 48.9 | 2.06 |
| Protestant | 10.2 | 27.5 | 16.5 | 45.8 | 1.98 |
| Catholic | 18 | 41.3 | 18.9 | 21.8 | 1.45 |
| Jewish | 39.5 | 41.5 | 8.6 | 10.5 | 0.9 |
| No Religion | 31.7 | 40.3 | 13.5 | 14.5 | 1.11 |
| Southern Baptist | 6.5 | 23.9 | 11.7 | 57.9 | 2.21 |
| United Methodist | 14.2 | 39.8 | 18.6 | 27.4 | 1.59 |
| Bible Word of God | 6.1 | 20.8 | 16.9 | 56.2 | 2.23 |
| Bible Inspired Word of God | 13.3 | 36.9 | 19.5 | 30.4 | 1.67 |
| Bible Book of Fables | 35.7 | 44.4 | 13.4 | 6.5 | 0.91 |
| German American | 14.1 | 31.9 | 18.9 | 35.1 | 1.75 |
| Irish American | 20.1 | 33.1 | 14.4 | 32.4 | 1.59 |
| Italian American | 23.5 | 37 | 15.5 | 23.9 | 1.4 |
| English American | 17.5 | 31 | 10.4 | 41 | 1.75 |
| Scandinavian American | 15.4 | 31.5 | 18.6 | 34.5 | 1.72 |
| “American” | 5.8 | 27.9 | 31.6 | 34.5 | 1.95 |
| 18 to 40 | 17 | 34.7 | 17.8 | 30.5 | 1.62 |
| Over 40 | 14.1 | 30.9 | 16 | 39.1 | 1.8 |
| Liberal | 26.8 | 36.2 | 15 | 21.9 | 1.32 |
| Moderate | 11.4 | 35.8 | 19.5 | 33.2 | 1.74 |
| Conservative | 11.5 | 27.1 | 15.3 | 46 | 1.96 |
Update: I forgot to add the variables for the GSS query:
Row: sex race degree(r:0-2″Non-College”;3-4″College”) wordsum(r:0-4″stupid”;5-7″average”;8-10″smart”) sei(r:17-37″low”;38-67″middle”;68-97″high”) god(r:1-2″atheist & agnostic”;3″higher power”;4-5″Believe in god with doubts”;6″Know god exists”) relig bible age(r:18-40″18-40″;40-*”40+”) polviews(r:1-3″Liberal”;4″Moderate”;5-7″Conservative”)
Column: scitest4
Stealth NASA Spinoff Day on the Hill
Allocade to Participate in NASA Spinoff Day on the Hill
"Allocade, Inc., the developer of innovative healthcare software technology solutions, today announced that it would participate in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Spinoff Day on the Hill. ... Members of Congress and the NASA administrator, Charlie Bolden, will speak about the importance of bringing NASA technologies out into the public sector. In addition, NASA's new chief technologist, Dr. Bobby Braun and NASA's director of the Innovative Partnerships Program, Doug Comstock, will highlight the selected participating companies."
Keith's note: At a time (once again) when NASA ought to be focusing on what it does for taxpayers, the private sector, Congress etc. you would think that there would be a little more effort put into promoting an event such as this. Yum. All that juicy NASA spinoff goodness just waiting to be shared.
Alas, there is no mention of it on the NASA calendar at the NASA.gov media page. No mention at the NASA IPP webpage either - or at NASA Tech Briefs - or on Twitter at NASA_Spinoff. Nor is there any mention at the House Science and Technology Committee's web page (Rayburn 2325 is one of the hearing rooms they regularly use).
Only 2 working days left to get the word out. And when no one from the media or elsewhere shows up at non-promoted events such as this, NASA scratches its collective head and wonders why. Oh well.
Keith's update: I have learned (from someone@NASA) who saw this posting on NASA Watch that there is a flyer online for this event as a PDF here. The flyer lists Brett Silcox at Code L as the contact. Yet when I check the Code L web page - there is no link.
Schweickart to Nelson: [we] Are on a Dead End Road
"I write this letter, as an Apollo astronaut, to state my strong support for the proposed NASA space program as modified by President Obama in his April 15, 2010 speech in Florida. I, like many of my fellow astronauts, am greatly concerned that our nation's historic leadership in space exploration is eroding to the point where we will shortly lose that title. We Apollo-era people gave the United States everything we had to regain leadership in space from the Soviet Union back in the 60s and we hate like hell to see it drift away from us now.
With what I believe to be the coming loss of US leadership in human space exploration in mind, the question of how best to regain that leadership breaks into two fundamental elements; our current situation and our direction going forward. In terms of relative importance I weigh these at 80% and 20% respectively.
Our current situation is akin to being on a dead end road. Instead of being on a path toward the goal we all seek, i.e. to regain our leadership position in human space exploration, we must recognize that we are (and have been) on a path to nowhere. We are confronted with arguments to ignore the clear signs of this sad situation and even encouraged to accelerate along this futile path.
The alternative to this is support for the President's proposed plan. It recognizes and eliminates the waste of precious resources in the current program and heads us in a productive direction toward our desired destination. In other words, when you recognize you are on a dead end road, stop, turn around, and head in a direction more useful to your goal."
NASA Spacebook Upgrades Are Online
Major NASA Spacebook Upgrades Now Live
"What is Happening: NASA Spacebook (https://nasaspacebook.nasa.gov) has a new look and simplified navigation to make collaboration easier. These latest changes just went live. For those that responded to our email on April 26, thank you. This notice is to inform you of a major upgrade that includes enhancements based on user feedback. We want to hear what you think about these latest enhancements! Please take a moment to fill out this short survey so we can continue to enhance the site to meet your needs: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nasa_spacebook."
Whitesides Lands at Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic appoints its first Chief Executive
"Virgin Galactic, the US based and regulated Space Tourism Company, is delighted to announce the appointment of George T. Whitesides as its first Chief Executive Officer. Virgin Galactic, the US based and regulated Space Tourism Company, is delighted to announce the appointment of George T. Whitesides as its first Chief Executive Officer. In this role, Whitesides will guide the business through its transition from a development project to a commercially operational business."
NASAs International Space Station Program Wins Collier Trophy
The International Space Station Program received the 2009 Robert J. Collier Trophy "for the design, development and assembly of the of the world’s largest spacecraft, an orbiting laboratory that promises new discoveries for mankind and sets new standards for international cooperation in space." The National Aeronautic Association (NAA) bestows the award annually to recognize the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America. The Collier Trophy was formally presented at the Annual Collier Dinner on Thursday, May 13, in Arlington, Va."We had a remarkably strong list of candidates, one that visibly impressed the distinguished members of the Collier Trophy Selection Committee," stated NAA Chairman Walter Boyne. "I believe that the International Space Station is a wonderful example of what the Collier Trophy signifies: Accomplishment, vision and advancement in aerospace."
"We are honored to receive this prestigious award,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate. “We're proud of our past achievements to build and operate the space station, and we're excited about the future- there's a new era ahead of potential groundbreaking scientific research aboard the station."
The International Space Station is a joint project of five space agencies and 15 countries that is nearing completion and will mark the 10th anniversary of a continuous human presence in orbit later this year. The largest and most complicated spacecraft ever built, the space station is an international, technological and political achievement that represents the latest step in humankind’s quest to explore and live in space.
Designated as a national laboratory by Congress in the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, the space station provides a research platform that takes advantage of the microgravity conditions 220 miles above the Earth’s surface across a wide variety of fields, including human life sciences, biological science, human physiology, physical and materials science, and Earth and space science.
Upon completion of assembly later this year, the station’s crew and its U.S., European, Japanese and Russian laboratory facilities will expand the pace of space-based research to unprecedented levels. Nearly 150 experiments are currently under way on the station, and more than 400 experiments have been conducted since research began nine years ago. These experiments already are leading to advances in the fight against food poisoning, new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells and the development of more capable engines and materials for use on Earth and in space.
The international partner agencies – NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency – provide control centers and support teams that train and launch crews to the station, provide support for systems operations and coordinate the on-orbit research 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Now supporting a multicultural crew of six, the station has a mass of almost 800,000 pounds and a habitable volume of more than 12,000 cubic feet – approximately the size of a five-bedroom home, and uses state-of-the-art systems to generate solar electricity, recycle nearly 85 percent of its water and generate much of its own oxygen supply. Nearly 190 humans have visited the space station, which is now supporting its 22nd resident crew.
Boeing is the prime contractor, responsible for design, development, construction and integration of the ISS.
The award will be formally presented to the International Space Station Program team on May 13. The award is named for Robert J. Collier, a publisher who commissioned it in 1910 with the intent to encourage the U.S. aviation community to strive for excellence and achievement in aeronautic development. Past winners include the B-52 Program, the Surveyor Moon Landing Program, the Boeing 747 and the F-22. Other past honorees include the crews of Apollo 11 and Apollo 8, the Mercury 7.
More information can be found at:
http://www.naa.aero/html/awards/index.cfm?cmsid=62
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Earth Day 2010 with Bella Gaia
Earth Day 2010 with Bella Gaia
View my blog's last three great articles...
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Steven Chu Optimistic about Oil Leak as 20% is Siphoned Off
“BP is burying its head in the sand on these underwater threats,” said Democratic congressman Ed Markey. “These huge plumes of oil are like hidden mushroom clouds that indicate a larger spill than originally thought and portend more dangerous long-term fallout for the Gulf of Mexico’s wildlife and economy.”
Black waves of oil and brown whitecaps are seen last week in the Gulf of Mexico / Joe Griffin, AP
Finally, British Petroleum is siphoning off a small amount of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, (about 20%) onto a tanker. But the leak still needs to be stopped as soon as possible. The U.S. government, after over 3 weeks, has finally announced it is pulling out all the stops to find a way stop the leak. It’s hard to believe they left this mostly in BP’s hands this long. Obama is reportedly sending bomb experts and a MARS expert to try to fix the oil spill, according to Bloomberg. Up to 70,000 barrels of oil have been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico since the oil rig sank on April 20th. None of this fills me with much confidence, since we are now finding out the oil spill is huge and they are discovering enormous “oil plumes” under water. The story from Bloomberg is below.
“May 14 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.
Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.
Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.
“I don’t think there is a lot of confidence in BP in Washington right now,” David Pursell, a managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. LLC in Houston, said by phone. [Are you kidding me? It took them 3 weeks to get to this point?] . . . . Chu said he’s tasked his team to develop “plan B, C, D, E and F” in addition to finding a way to stop the oil leak.
“Things are looking up, and things are getting much more optimistic,” the Nobel-prize winning physicist said after meeting with the scientists and BP in Houston Wednesday.
BP CEO Meeting — The group convened at BP’s command center in Houston yesterday, where they met with BP leadership, including Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward, the Energy Department said. BP is using more than 500 specialists from almost 100 organizations and welcomes additional help, Jon Pack, [...]
Hottest Year Ever Will Not See Enough Renewable Energy Support
Wind turbines in southern Minnesota. Photo by Futurism Now.
There is a strange backlash against wind energy all across the country, which is why a lot of financial support for it in any climate bill needs to be there. In my area, which is quite “conservative” (by which I mean, anti-science and just flat-out obsessed with taxes) one nearby city has preemptively banned wind turbines. I wish that was a joke, but it’s not. The article about it in a local newspaper quoted city officials saying wind was banned because they were worried people would try to install wind turbines in the future. They have been preemptively banned because they were deemed “unsuitable” for an urban area (“urban” is not how I would describe this small city) and they might tip over. Yes, wind turbines have been banned in central Minnesota because some people are afraid they might tip over. By that logic we should ban oil rigs because they might blow up and sink. (Except wait — they actually do that.) (Here’s the story). It may not be a coincidence that this is Rep. Michele Bachmann’s district.
According to NASA and Climate Progress, it was the hottest April on record according to NASA data. They also predicted that this will be a record-setting year for heat.
More significantly, following fast on the heels of the hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record, it’s also the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record. . . . The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.
Most significantly, NASA’s March prediction has come true: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.?
What is Washington DC doing about this? Not nearly enough!
American Power Act Contains Little Direct Support for Renewables
Bill introduced by Sens. Kerry and Lieberman lacks a renewable portfolio standard.
Published: May 13, 2010
Washington, D.C., United States — On Wednesday, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) released the details of their energy and climate change legislation. The bill includes few provisions designed to directly support renewable energy. These provisions include a statement from Congress on the importance of large-scale deployment and accelerated progress in the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency, direction for how the allowances distributed to states and Indian tribes should be used for the purposes of promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, and a statement supporting voluntary renewable energy markets. Noticeably absent from the package was either a renewable portfolio standard, or renewable electricity standard, which the industry has been lobbying for over the course of the last year.
“The wind energy [...]
Acupuncture Delivers Some Pain Relief
(HealthDay News) -- Acupuncture does help treat pain, a new study shows.
German researchers tested pain responses in 24 healthy volunteers and found that acupuncture, which originated in China more than 2,000 years ago, increased pain thresholds by up to 50 percent. The effects occurred in both the treated leg and untreated (contralateral) leg.
The study also found that two types of nerve fibers -- "A delta" pain fibers and "C" pain fibers -- were altered by acupuncture.
The pain reduction effect of acupuncture in the healthy volunteers was modest, but the results provide the basis for future studies in people with chronic pain, where the beneficial effects of acupuncture may be more dramatic, the researchers said. Read more...
Death And Taxes: CMS to IRS
I hope this is a meme that sticks.
The American Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is not your friend any more than the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
CMS, like IRS, is charged with the grim duties of its office. They are not magic or Gods or evil or friendly. They are people with jobs. Jobs that they do. But know this: there is no civilian interaction with either CMS or IRS after which you’ll come home smiling.
Remember the movie “Meet Joe Black?” How did the screenplay writers depict Death himself? A noisy bully? A pedantic bureaucrat?
No. Death is already everywhere. He already knows everything. He has all the time and all the power in the universe, and he amuses himself by drifting about the highest pinacles of power in effortless bemusement punctuated by an occasional gesture of utter domination. (Except, arguably, over “the power of the human spirit,” —not that that’s going to make you any less dead or any less liable. Anthony Hopkins still died in that movie.)
CMS: The Death Office. Boring, boring, boring… BOOM! By the time you’re warned, it is too late, and in the meantime, Death had been watching you the entire time. You had simply chose to ignore Death because you had simply chose not to think about Death. Too scary. Yah, well now you’re too audited and too broke to do anything about it (or too dying and too broke to do anything about it, depending on your perspective).
Now, certain idiots in Silicon Valley think that 4chan “Internet is Serious Business” is a great big joke and that they can be invincible so long as they run around with their impossible powers like obnoxious children. Free! Free $44,000 from CMS! Just Sign Here!
Hey, this worked for Google, right? (no, but that’s what everybody thinks, so that’s what’s relevant)
The problem is that it’s not going to be the software vendors who will suffer the wrath of CMS. Or, they will, but the best nerds already expect to be kicked around —they basically build that into their business plans –you aren’t even a real Silicon Valley player until you can prove your creds by goading dumb jock powerful enough to kick at you. Meanwhile, the alpha nerds made their money, the bagmen kick down a few paper companies, and poof! Nerdswarm spores explode into the breeze —drift about, puff puff puff— until enough land in whatever new domain seems ripe enough for a whole new nerdswarm raiding party. These few hire their friends… The Great Nerd Cycle of Life begins anew. (that’s basically how I got to where I am, so yah, that’s basically how the technology industry works)
No, it’s not the guilty nerds who will suffer, its the most vulnerable doctors —and their patients— who don’t know yet not to blindly trust the alpha nerds and their blueshirt lackeys because, to doctors, they all look like harmless Best Buy kids with free cool toys and —oh hey! Free money from the government! Doctors can get behind “free money from the government” (especially when their own medical practice businesses are failing and their embarrassed to admit it)
Meanwhile, the real “muhaha’s” are left for the financier politocrats who don’t do the work and don’t care about the science but now have all the power because you idiots all bankrupted each other in a big “Who Is Most T Shirt Che Guevara” competition funded by increasingly “creative” loans and contracts gleefully doled out by Ambitious Young Men who also love to par-tay! and truly believe everything you do but who, regrettably *sad face*, had to include all that “boring legal boilerplate stuff” because otherwise their bosses would get all mad and, like, “Whatever, dude. Eat or be eaten… but not you. You’re a champ. A real go-getter.”
But – after I talked to an Apple employee, they informed me the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is one of the main reasons why Apple is trying to promote its platform for electronic medical record use – and one of the main reasons for the workshops.
Really? The best feature of the iPhone is that CMS is going to pay you to use it? That’s your pitch to doctors?
“Hey! Go Fuck with The Death Office! They’re giving out FREE MONEY! (sign here)”
Listen: most people already know that you can’t trust all doctors all the time. Why? Because you can’t trust all people all the time, and all doctors are people; therefore, you don’t double down any drug Whatever Clinic dumped into your purse to get you out the door because you saw it on television.
The same is true with technology. Use common sense! You are trusting these companies about which you know nothing with your most private and valuable information on the premise of what we already know to be a lie: Free $44k From CMS. Does it matter that from this lie that it doesn’t necessarily follow that the software vendor is untrustworthy? No, it does not follow necessarily, but then, neither does it necessarily follow that your ruin will be of Management Team Bagman at frothy Software Vendor Yesterday, or, much more likely but much less interesting, the simple bad business of giving away your only means of economically supporting your business to people you don’t know for free while meanwhile you refuse to address the most obvious flaws of your business including 1) you don’t understand technology 2) your business is utterly dependent on that technology 3) medical insurance stopped paying you and there’s nothing you can do about it (now).
Listen: if you make medical software, can’t you just made a reasonable product and sell it for regular money without all the gimmicks and stupid tricks? Is it really so hard to charge a fair price for a fair value? Come on. The iPhone itself is a great tool for a steal price because —with no additional “Applications”— it is already a cell phone and a pager that browses the web and downloads your email for a few hundred. Come on! That’s crazy voodoo magic. It’s wonderful! So, do you really have to also entertain these venture-funded campaigns to steal All The Medical Data in the World! (muhahaha) and then shuffle around all-bashful-like confused while they concoct troll-face excuses and Lawyer-To-The-Letter defenses to cover their own guilty-as-hell-but-too-smart-to-get-caught asses? Then what? Play or be played? Nerd rage on Twitter?
Go to hell.
There’s plenty of potential for great work in medicine without resorting to tricks. For example: you are going to die. So are all your friends! That sounds like a problem to me. Wouldn’t you like to credibly try and solve that problem rather than just blow about until you’re hired to push whatever stupid blueshirt tech fad you saw at the last bubblecon? I would. Hell, you can start all the back with “billing software” in medicine (yes, addition and subtraction) because —I can assure you from personal experience running an actual medical practice —doctors are not getting paid, and that’s bad —assuming you want anybody around in your country still in business who has dedicated their lives to understanding and healing the human body in a credible and responsible way? (Yes, you do.)
Yes, I think that DMV medicine is basically a given, but you people don’t have to exasperate it, and hey, maybe DMV medicine is not inevitable. Maybe I’m wrong, and the whole world will be singing koom-ba-yah because this “Free Universal Healthcare! (insurance)” thing actually worked out. Maybe Jesus will return to Earth and fix up the math of it with super Jew Plus Team America GO! chacha magic or whatever. And if I’m right and we (you) are all screwed, well, maybe now is the time to make friends with some private jet pilots (doctors) to discuss that other Plan B (your escape to the good private healthcare that’s going to be technically unlawful in a decade) because you’re not going to be able to do that so easily in twenty years standing in line to register your car and update your pharmacogenomic profile —especially if you’re already dead from hypertension complications or whatever because you thought this New Age stuff was the real deal and the DMV Clinic line was pretty long and it’s so boring and yah whatever smoking and drinking and fast food and soda really wasn’t that bad after all or at least you don’t care anymore so whatever.
Potential of genomic medicine, LOST
I was reading and often read Mark Henderson of the Times
The piece I just read about the "Potential of genomic medicine could be lost, say science think-tanks"
The piece basically comes down to one conclusion.
We have no proof that most of this stuff is useful in any form.
This is something that I have been shouting from the roof tops ever since some self deluded socialite from Mountain View decided to say "Genetic testing is for fun"
Seriously DTCG. You knew this day was coming. You tried to play yourself off as hip, cool, sexy/ Yet at the same time to avoid regulation you played, not serious, not clinical, and in essence, not valuable.
I was deeply concerned about precisely this issue. By putting yourselves out there as an invalid in the clinical world, you cheapened the field and some of the tests that you offered.
Because of this conglomeration of useless with useful, the field of medicine and healthcare as a whole needs to create systems to sift between marketing and PR spin/hype from truth and medical utility.
Luckily in the US we have such a system EGAPP. We also have things such as the CPMC ICOB. But in England, they have no such official system.
What is even more troublesome is the lack of clinical utility of such tests and lack of funding to evaluate the utility. The problem with this rush to market the next GWAS is emblematic of this over hype cycle that exists in medical science.
Why?
Medical scientific discovery can or cannot be useful in medicine.
That is all.
Saying something promotes "Health" rather than treats,cures, prevents or diagnoses disease to avoid regulation confuses the public and unsophisticated venture capital. Which really makes me wonder if that is what you had intended in the first place........
What should have been said is "These tests have not been proven to prevent/diagnose/treat disease nor have they been proven to aid in healthcare"
But that probably wouldn't have sold many kits......Thus the problem with medicine, you can't just "fake it" with Time Magazine.......
What your "faking it" has done is created a hornets nest on both sides of the pond with governments scrambling to decide what matters.
"Caroline Wright, head of science at the PHG Foundation, said: “The heart of the problem is that we do not have enough data on whether these tests actually help patient care. We desperately need the equivalent of clinical trials for diagnostics."
Further, the UK doesn't have a team equivalent to EGAPP over here. Which BTW, K.O. if you are listening, I would love to be a part of..."I'm just saying......"
We need to ask ourselves as Andrew Yates points out, what results can we expect when the average death percentage over time in this country or any others is 100%
Will a flashy test keep you alive longer? Not if it has no clinical data proving that it does.
No amount of blimps and SoHo parties will prevent death or disease. Sorry.
The Sherpa Says: The Quake paper was their best shot of integrating this into clinical care and they are arguing about whether or not to put him on a prophylactic statin? Which BTW has no evidence behind it........Personally I think that shot was misfired......
Response to “Genomic Medicine: Lost”
(in response to “Lost” by Steven Murphy)
I claim that you can’t expect results better than the ideal model by using that model.
I claim that it’s not enough to choose another ideal model that gives you answers that you like irrespective of reality. That method already exists; it’s called religion. Go to church.
I say that genomics is the best opportunity of which I’m aware to design and implement a better model of human medicine, but that the gravity and magnitude of this potential as it can be applied to each human individual to themselves has been so far squandered by people who —by all external appearances— had just wanted to throw parties for themselves.
My frustration is that the leaders of “genomics medicine” were unworthy —which I claim by evidence including:
- their lack of quantitative results as measured in unhealthy people made healthy
- their failure to lead their teams and companies over even a few years
- sometimes even outright abandonment or exile which I can only interpret as shear cowardice or perhaps weakness but nonetheless was at the expense of the domain and those invested in it
- demonstrable commercial gluttony of pricing the market for genomic tests and services far below the sustainable cost to provide them
- demonstrable civil gluttony of abusing permissive public health regulations and academic endorsement until law enforcement is forced to interviene (e.g. FDA)
- demonstrable intellectual gluttony of abusing academic endorsements including those by Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Google which were justified as “experimental” until the community was forced to publish work which has humiliated even the endorsement of the theoretical substance of these “experiments”
- demonstrable publicity gluttony of abusing the trust of media institutions including the New York Times and Time magazine to broadcast bombastic declarations of the future which were then held against them when they were found to be absurd which has substantially damaged both the credibility and the morale of these institutions —particularly regarding their participation in this domain
I claim that the continued entertainment of the residual sophistry propping the myth failed leader’s success and their obnoxious superstitions is an obstruction, a distraction, and an insult, and I think that the people at fault are not the majority of the domain leaders themselves who are probably all too acutely aware of their own failures, but the crowds of teaming enthusiastic groupies who had believed the original mythology on the cheap but now will not be constructively disabused otherwise for a reasonable expense because it is more difficult to unlearn an identity than it is to adopt a new identity and because of a residual interest by this leadership to not publicly flagellate itself at its own expense and pride. These people are largely worthless excluding their unconditional support or cooperation which will no longer be readily available due to the abuses I described. It is my advice that this mess be labeled “DTC Genomics,” publicly mocked, cast away, and then relaunched under some other label which actually is the same people in the same domain doing the same work but without the negative connotation of “whatever was bad about the last time” which will be labeled as “DTC.”
People fail, but fail honestly, accept responsibility, and learn from your mistakes. No yoga happy fun time go team A for Æffort bullshit is going to get code written or diseases cured. This isn’t China; but it’s not the Special Olympics either.
Dr. Steven Murphy expresses another frustration which is that he knows that the best of what is already available in medicine has not been already widely applied before new methods are being explored. I agree, but I don’t think that is relevant to exploratory genomic medical application like as in the Lancet paper because that was not the intent of the paper and that would not have changed its conclusions or relevance. I also think that Steve conflates his general frustration with the politics of the domain with his frustration of its substance, and that this weakness (ie he’s a shitty writer and a sloppy debater) makes his arguments read like incoherent rants when in demonstrable reality he knows more about the successful application of genomic medicine at an individual patient level appropriate to expect in common practice because he actually regularly achieves this in his daily work as opposed to merely publishing theories about such application with experience limited to practice within City Of God like enclaves of a world class medicine institution. Being a shitty writer and a sloppy debater is irrelevant to Steve’s excellence as a medical doctor and is unlikely to necessarily prevent him from improving these skills given practice and relevant corrective exposure.
Various Works by George Washington Thomas Lambert
These beautiful paintings were created by Australian artist George Washington Thomas Lambert. George Lambert known principally for portrait paintings and as a war artist during the First World War.
You can learn more about George Lambert through the following links:
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