(5:18) Has there been progress in verifying your theory of mitochondrial DNA damage?
There’s been some progress in confirming this theory. One of the most heretical – or unorthodox – components of my proposal back in 1997, was that mitochondrial destruction, that happens automatically, ongoingly in cells, is actually a selective process where certain mitochondria are destroyed and other ones are not. Whereas, most people used to think that is was a random process where mitochondria are chosen completely without any, any particular criteria. And, it’s now known that I was right, that this process is selective. Furthermore, the mechanism of that selectivity is now looking as though probably it’s due to changes, chemical changes to the membranes of mitochondria, which again is what I proposed back in 1997. So things are looking good for this theory.
This piece gives off a bad vibe. My BS alarm bells are ringing. It uses words like verifying and confirming instead of falsifying and testing. It proclaims how he was right all along, long before his theory was tested. Even for a sales pitch, this is pushing it a bit.
Biostatistician with undergraduate degree in biochemistry here. The mere fact that words like “verify” and “confirm” are being used ought not to set off BS alarms in this context—biologists talk like this all the time*. I can also tell you that the proposed theory (that mitochondria are targeted for recycling based on signals present in their membranes) is pretty plausible a priori—in fact, more plausible than the theory that mitochondria are recycled without biological discrimination. (Notice that the theory is a massive disjunction, since it doesn’t specify the signaling molecules.) A claim like this ought to be evaluated on its merits, not on the word choice of its proponents.
To me, the BS seems like it might actually be in calling this theory “heretical” or “unorthodox”—this seems like a post facto play for outsider status. Were mainstream biologists definitively against the theory for substantive reasons, or was the mainstream position merely “there’s no evidence justifying that claim”?
* Biologists are lousy at statistical thinking when it’s required, i.e., when data are noisy. They are very sharp about what causal inferences are warranted by data with high signal-to-noise—that’s what they’re trained to do.
This piece gives off a bad vibe. My BS alarm bells are ringing. It uses words like verifying and confirming instead of falsifying and testing. It proclaims how he was right all along, long before his theory was tested. Even for a sales pitch, this is pushing it a bit.
Well, in popular writings they use what they like. In formal writing the standard is rather neutral, something like “A Standard Model Higgs boson is excluded at the 95% confidence level in the mass ranges from 110.0 GeV to 117.5 GeV” or “the signal level in our experiment was “The most significant excess of events is observed around 126 GeV with a local significance of 2.5sigma. The global probability for such an excess to occur in the full searched mass range is approximately 30%.” (from the current arxiv.org/hep-ex).
This piece gives off a bad vibe. My BS alarm bells are ringing. It uses words like verifying and confirming instead of falsifying and testing. It proclaims how he was right all along, long before his theory was tested. Even for a sales pitch, this is pushing it a bit.
Biostatistician with undergraduate degree in biochemistry here. The mere fact that words like “verify” and “confirm” are being used ought not to set off BS alarms in this context—biologists talk like this all the time*. I can also tell you that the proposed theory (that mitochondria are targeted for recycling based on signals present in their membranes) is pretty plausible a priori—in fact, more plausible than the theory that mitochondria are recycled without biological discrimination. (Notice that the theory is a massive disjunction, since it doesn’t specify the signaling molecules.) A claim like this ought to be evaluated on its merits, not on the word choice of its proponents.
To me, the BS seems like it might actually be in calling this theory “heretical” or “unorthodox”—this seems like a post facto play for outsider status. Were mainstream biologists definitively against the theory for substantive reasons, or was the mainstream position merely “there’s no evidence justifying that claim”?
* Biologists are lousy at statistical thinking when it’s required, i.e., when data are noisy. They are very sharp about what causal inferences are warranted by data with high signal-to-noise—that’s what they’re trained to do.
Do physicists really speak differently?
Not sure what you mean.
You’re a physicist, right? Do physicists use different terms (“falsifying” and “testing” vs “verifying” and “confirming”) than de Grey?
Well, in popular writings they use what they like. In formal writing the standard is rather neutral, something like “A Standard Model Higgs boson is excluded at the 95% confidence level in the mass ranges from 110.0 GeV to 117.5 GeV” or “the signal level in our experiment was “The most significant excess of events is observed around 126 GeV with a local significance of 2.5sigma. The global probability for such an excess to occur in the full searched mass range is approximately 30%.” (from the current arxiv.org/hep-ex).