Kirsch did engage in good original thinking. Even if you don’t count the optical mouse because that’s not medicine, the proposal to run fund studies for all generics that top coronavirus researchers consider to be promising was a good original idea and if it would have been persued with more funds there’s a good chance that it would have ended the pandemic sooner.
When talking about math cranks we usually don’t talk about people who had teams of scientific advisors of the relevant domain.
I do think his early pandemic response warrents treating Kirsch as a person worth listening to.
Therefore it’s wise to be willing to identify cranks (or at least persons of questionable credibility) and mostly ignore them.
If you use a term like questionable credibility, you can start by removing all people who are lab leak denailists. Then you can remove everyone who spoke early in the pandemic against masks. You might also remove everyone employed by company with a history of being fined for illegally engaging in making misleading statements.
The problem is that this doesn’t leave you with that many people.
Given the lack of good sources it makes sense to listen to people with a diversity of opinions and reason about their claims.
The results from your own survey on this don’t seem to support your “nearly half” assertion, even though you asked only for side effects
My own survey didn’t ask anybody to report whether or not they are ill the next day. There are people who comment on the post for reasons besides answering my survey question but I see no reason why you would want to draw such conclusion from it. To me that sounds like you aren’t thinking well about how falsifying hypothesis works.
As to why I’m using that number, I got it initially from a German blog by an MD. I did ask the doctor that vaccinated me about the number and he said it’s reasonable for that many people not going to work the next day. It also plausible given what people I know well experienced.
As far as the link to the Canadian data source goes, vaccine side effect reporting systems historically report much less side effects then the studies for vaccine approval. While I do think that those systems were improved over the last year, which likely partly resulted in the increase VEARS numbers, I don’t think that they register all side effects.
Kirsch did engage in good original thinking. Even if you don’t count the optical mouse
Even if Kirsch deserves the credit for that (rather than Stephen B. Jackson or Richard Lyon), I think cranks are somewhat scoped, so for example Linus Pauling was a crank when if came to Vitamin C, but not necessarily a crank on other topics. Even so, when evaluating Linus Pauling from a position of ignorance, I would absolutely not take him at his word regarding other topics once he is clearly shown to be a Vitamin C crank. Since people compartmentalize, it’s possible that he’s a non-crank on other topics, but by no means guaranteed. Certainly poor epistemics have the potential to significantly affect other “compartments”. Again, reputation is earned and deserved.
Regardless, this reasoning doesn’t work in reverse. It does not follow from “Kirsch is not an optical mouse crank” that “Kirsch is not a vaccine crank”. Even if you were to show that Kirsch isn’t a repurposed-drugs crank, that still wouldn’t imply he’s not a vaccine crank. (To show that, you’d have to show that he doesn’t make original false claims about vaccines that he won’t take corrections on. Edit: on second thought, Kirsch himself doesn’t seem to compartmentalize between vaccines & repurposed drugs, so crankiness can be expected for both.)
Edit: Now, it should be noted that reputation from other topics can create a prior on reasonableness. I don’t know anyone for whom this is more true than for Linus Pauling, who, I gather, rightly earned an excellent reputation before he became obsessed with Vitamin C. Also, while Pauling is dead and won’t care what I say about him, calling him a “crank” may have been unfair of me, because all my information about him comes to me secondhand from sources that could have exaggerated his crank-ness.
You might also remove everyone employed by company with a history of being fined for illegally engaging in making misleading statements. The problem is that this doesn’t leave you with that many people.
I think you want to equate the reputation of a company with every single employee in an effort to make sure “this doesn’t leave you with that many people”. Which isn’t reasonable. Not that the lab leak hypothesis is proven or anything, but if we remove lab leak “denailists” and “early anti-maskers”, we’ll have tons of people left after that.
But before removing all those people, consider that someone saying “Covid is natural! I heard experts saying so!” or “Conservatives are dumb for believing lab leak!” is in no way original so they don’t meet my definition of crank.
Crank doesn’t mean “someone reads an article that contains errors, reaches wrong conclusion from that, and shares wrong conclusion with others”, it’s more like “someone reaches new and original wrong conclusions, writes an article promoting them, makes a big effort to publicize them and won’t accept corrections”. But you knew that.
As far as the link to the Canadian data source goes, vaccine side effect reporting systems historically report much less side effects then the studies for vaccine approval.
I see no reason here to disregard the Canadian data in favor of an unspecified blog and doctor.
Even if Kirsch deserves the credit for that (rather than Stephen B. Jackson or Richard Lyon), I think cranks are somewhat scoped, so for example Linus Pauling was a crank when if came to Vitamin C, but not necessarily a crank on other topics. Even so, when evaluating Linus Pauling from a position of ignorance, I would absolutely not take him at his word regarding other topics once he is clearly shown to be a Vitamin C crank.
Taking anybody at his word instead of thinking critically about what they are saying is no good idea. That’s nothing that I practice or advocate.
I generally do think we would have less of a Great Stagnation if we would would listen as a society more to people like Linus Pauling.
I see no reason here to disregard the Canadian data in favor of an unspecified blog and doctor.
I see no reason why I should do work here to shift your belief, I was just open about why I argue the way I do. If you would however be interested in having accurate beliefs, then understanding how data is produced instead of just taking it at face value is generally good.
What’s to understand? The government ran a survey and routinely asked people getting vaccinated if they would like to take it (privately, link sent by email). I took it. I saw the survey questions, I saw the results. If it were up to me the questions would have been more specific, but the results are what they are.
If the government runs a survey, not everyone is going to tell the government about what goes on with them. It’s really not any different in the kind of error that someone who takes the VAERS death numbers on face value makes instead of trying to understand what those numbers actually mean.
Right. They have significant side effects but lie on the survey because...? Or maybe you’re saying they refuse to do the survey at all.
But then, why didn’t they lie or refuse in the unnamed information sources you advocated?
Of course I could tell a story where people who don’t have side effects forget about the survey and don’t bother to report their absence of side effects, but you’re going to like your story better, so that makes your story the true one. And also the size of the bias you’re assuming exists would have to be enormous, but whatever.
Kirsch did engage in good original thinking. Even if you don’t count the optical mouse because that’s not medicine, the proposal to run fund studies for all generics that top coronavirus researchers consider to be promising was a good original idea and if it would have been persued with more funds there’s a good chance that it would have ended the pandemic sooner.
When talking about math cranks we usually don’t talk about people who had teams of scientific advisors of the relevant domain.
I do think his early pandemic response warrents treating Kirsch as a person worth listening to.
If you use a term like questionable credibility, you can start by removing all people who are lab leak denailists. Then you can remove everyone who spoke early in the pandemic against masks. You might also remove everyone employed by company with a history of being fined for illegally engaging in making misleading statements.
The problem is that this doesn’t leave you with that many people.
Given the lack of good sources it makes sense to listen to people with a diversity of opinions and reason about their claims.
My own survey didn’t ask anybody to report whether or not they are ill the next day. There are people who comment on the post for reasons besides answering my survey question but I see no reason why you would want to draw such conclusion from it. To me that sounds like you aren’t thinking well about how falsifying hypothesis works.
As to why I’m using that number, I got it initially from a German blog by an MD. I did ask the doctor that vaccinated me about the number and he said it’s reasonable for that many people not going to work the next day. It also plausible given what people I know well experienced.
As far as the link to the Canadian data source goes, vaccine side effect reporting systems historically report much less side effects then the studies for vaccine approval. While I do think that those systems were improved over the last year, which likely partly resulted in the increase VEARS numbers, I don’t think that they register all side effects.
Even if Kirsch deserves the credit for that (rather than Stephen B. Jackson or Richard Lyon), I think cranks are somewhat scoped, so for example Linus Pauling was a crank when if came to Vitamin C, but not necessarily a crank on other topics. Even so, when evaluating Linus Pauling from a position of ignorance, I would absolutely not take him at his word regarding other topics once he is clearly shown to be a Vitamin C crank. Since people compartmentalize, it’s possible that he’s a non-crank on other topics, but by no means guaranteed. Certainly poor epistemics have the potential to significantly affect other “compartments”. Again, reputation is earned and deserved.
Regardless, this reasoning doesn’t work in reverse. It does not follow from “Kirsch is not an optical mouse crank” that “Kirsch is not a vaccine crank”. Even if you were to show that Kirsch isn’t a repurposed-drugs crank, that still wouldn’t imply he’s not a vaccine crank. (To show that, you’d have to show that he doesn’t make original false claims about vaccines that he won’t take corrections on. Edit: on second thought, Kirsch himself doesn’t seem to compartmentalize between vaccines & repurposed drugs, so crankiness can be expected for both.)
Edit: Now, it should be noted that reputation from other topics can create a prior on reasonableness. I don’t know anyone for whom this is more true than for Linus Pauling, who, I gather, rightly earned an excellent reputation before he became obsessed with Vitamin C. Also, while Pauling is dead and won’t care what I say about him, calling him a “crank” may have been unfair of me, because all my information about him comes to me secondhand from sources that could have exaggerated his crank-ness.
I think you want to equate the reputation of a company with every single employee in an effort to make sure “this doesn’t leave you with that many people”. Which isn’t reasonable. Not that the lab leak hypothesis is proven or anything, but if we remove lab leak “denailists” and “early anti-maskers”, we’ll have tons of people left after that.
But before removing all those people, consider that someone saying “Covid is natural! I heard experts saying so!” or “Conservatives are dumb for believing lab leak!” is in no way original so they don’t meet my definition of crank.
Crank doesn’t mean “someone reads an article that contains errors, reaches wrong conclusion from that, and shares wrong conclusion with others”, it’s more like “someone reaches new and original wrong conclusions, writes an article promoting them, makes a big effort to publicize them and won’t accept corrections”. But you knew that.
I see no reason here to disregard the Canadian data in favor of an unspecified blog and doctor.
Taking anybody at his word instead of thinking critically about what they are saying is no good idea. That’s nothing that I practice or advocate.
I generally do think we would have less of a Great Stagnation if we would would listen as a society more to people like Linus Pauling.
I see no reason why I should do work here to shift your belief, I was just open about why I argue the way I do. If you would however be interested in having accurate beliefs, then understanding how data is produced instead of just taking it at face value is generally good.
What’s to understand? The government ran a survey and routinely asked people getting vaccinated if they would like to take it (privately, link sent by email). I took it. I saw the survey questions, I saw the results. If it were up to me the questions would have been more specific, but the results are what they are.
If the government runs a survey, not everyone is going to tell the government about what goes on with them. It’s really not any different in the kind of error that someone who takes the VAERS death numbers on face value makes instead of trying to understand what those numbers actually mean.
Right. They have significant side effects but lie on the survey because...? Or maybe you’re saying they refuse to do the survey at all.
But then, why didn’t they lie or refuse in the unnamed information sources you advocated?
Of course I could tell a story where people who don’t have side effects forget about the survey and don’t bother to report their absence of side effects, but you’re going to like your story better, so that makes your story the true one. And also the size of the bias you’re assuming exists would have to be enormous, but whatever.