I’m glad you can walk away, I have a harder time initiating that. I’m curious though about the direction of the inferential distance you see—do you have a biology background?
The dissidents point to a rather surprising pile of evidence that the serological HIV tests are based on rather general, cross-reactive antibodies, and this is essentially a fundamental flaw in HIV science which has never been corrected. Now it may be that the orthodoxy has a really good counter to this, but if they do I have yet to find it. The orthodox position on this, from papers linked to wikipedia, points to studies which measure the sensitivity of various HIV antibody tests by comparing them to . . other HIV antibody tests.
The few large double-blind meta-studies that compare the different antibody tests to PCR tests show terrible sensitivity and specificity between the two, and I haven’t seen the orthodox counter to this. So something is wrong with the antibody tests, the PCR tests, or the whole thing. I imagine it’s a little bit of both—the antibody tests are cross-reactive (hence many dogs test positive), and PCR tests are difficult and subject to experimenter bias.
Perhaps the orthodox counter is that there are a whole big host of HIV related viruses, and the antibody tests are cross-reactive across these related species. This seems to then just beg more questions than it answers, and doesn’t circumvent some of the specific non-viral cross-reactions the dissidents point to.
My paraphrase of Mullis’s argument may actually be a mix of other dissident positions. I just rechecked that part of his book and he covers the difficulty of PCR and the confirmation bias but largely in regards to the OJ trial. On HIV he mainly rehashes Deusberg’s argument.
I’m curious though about the direction of the inferential distance you see—do you have a biology background?
None at all. (I expect the inferential distance would be even greater if I did. If I had personal experience of working with retroviruses, for instance, I reckon my prior probabilities for claims like “HIV can not be isolated” or “HIV doesn’t exist” would be far, far less than they are. And they are already very low.)
I’m glad you can walk away, I have a harder time initiating that. I’m curious though about the direction of the inferential distance you see—do you have a biology background?
The dissidents point to a rather surprising pile of evidence that the serological HIV tests are based on rather general, cross-reactive antibodies, and this is essentially a fundamental flaw in HIV science which has never been corrected. Now it may be that the orthodoxy has a really good counter to this, but if they do I have yet to find it. The orthodox position on this, from papers linked to wikipedia, points to studies which measure the sensitivity of various HIV antibody tests by comparing them to . . other HIV antibody tests.
The few large double-blind meta-studies that compare the different antibody tests to PCR tests show terrible sensitivity and specificity between the two, and I haven’t seen the orthodox counter to this. So something is wrong with the antibody tests, the PCR tests, or the whole thing. I imagine it’s a little bit of both—the antibody tests are cross-reactive (hence many dogs test positive), and PCR tests are difficult and subject to experimenter bias.
Perhaps the orthodox counter is that there are a whole big host of HIV related viruses, and the antibody tests are cross-reactive across these related species. This seems to then just beg more questions than it answers, and doesn’t circumvent some of the specific non-viral cross-reactions the dissidents point to.
My paraphrase of Mullis’s argument may actually be a mix of other dissident positions. I just rechecked that part of his book and he covers the difficulty of PCR and the confirmation bias but largely in regards to the OJ trial. On HIV he mainly rehashes Deusberg’s argument.
All right, enough.
None at all. (I expect the inferential distance would be even greater if I did. If I had personal experience of working with retroviruses, for instance, I reckon my prior probabilities for claims like “HIV can not be isolated” or “HIV doesn’t exist” would be far, far less than they are. And they are already very low.)