niucllos

@niucllos@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the next steps for Americans to help prevent the worsening of genocide in Palestine?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Be billionaire and outbid Netanyahu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any, any takeaways at all from the next 4 years that's about to happen?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most countries have deep economic ties to most wealthy countries, we’re in a global economy. Even subsistence farmers in subsaharan Africa buy more of their seeds than you can imagine from Chinese companies that do the bulk of their R&D in the US and western Europe, if US policy becomes extremely isolationist that will affect them.

  Also, the US is one of the biggest climate emitors, if that ramps up instead of decreasing the whole world will feel that too.

  Best of luck!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, there will be examples of problems in any field that has hundreds of thousands to millions of humans working in it. That doesn’t mean there’s a broad crisis, and it doesn’t mean that most research is faked or fallible. In your 2004 example, all of the data wasn’t faked, some images for publication were doctored. There’s been potential links between alzheimer’s and aBeta amyloids since at least 1991 (1), long before this paper that posited a specific aB variant as a causal target. Additionally, other Alzheimer’s causes and treatments are also under investigation, including gut microbiome studies since at leasg 2017 (2). Finally, drugs targeting aB proteins to remove brain plaques work in preclinical trials, indicating that the 2004 paper was at least on the right track even if they cheated to get their paper published. This showcases science working well: bad-faith actors behaved unethically, but the core parts of their work were replicated and found to be effective, so some groups followed that to clinical trials which are still ongoing, and others followed other leads for a more holistic understanding of the disease.

  Also, I’d very much argue that human neurological diseases are both bleeding edge and niche, which inherently means that recognizing problems in studies will take more time than something that is cheaper or faster to test and validate, but problems will eventually be recognized as this one was.

  1. Cras P, Kawai M, Lowery D, Gonzalez-DeWhitt P, Greenberg B, Perry G. Senile plaque neurites in Alzheimer disease accumulate amyloid precursor protein. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1991;88:7552–6.
  2. Cattaneo, A. et al. Association of brain amyloidosis with pro-inflammatory gut bacterial taxa and peripheral inflammation markers in cognitively impaired elderly. Neurobiol. Aging 49, 60–68 (2017).
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨...⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t call it a broad crisis, and it isn’t universal. More theoretical sciences or social sciences are more prone to it because the experiments are more expensive and you can’t really control the environment the way you can with e.g. mice or specific chemicals. But most biology, chemistry, etc that isn’t bleeding edge or incredibly niche will be validated dozens to hundreds of times as people build on the work and true retractions are rare

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A pride flag pin is not political swag but also correlates very strongly to voting blue, and far-right nutjobs could run with that

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it applies equally, the fallen victims will be held up and honored no matter what they had done, the shooter will be an evil antifa devil no matter who he was, and Trump will be the barely escaped Messiah no matter if this was a lone wolf attempt or a conspiracy

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Says AI Could Break Reality⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but so do a lot of other things that aren’t as costly. If NFTs were the first secure way to authenticate things online we wouldn’t have had online banking until very recently

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[May 29] Introducing the new Framework Laptop 13 with Intel Core Ultra Series 1 processors⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In addition to what Blisterex said, the open-source hardware ethos is very similar to the Linux open-source software ethos, so it attracts a similar crowd

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anthropomorphic⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just sounds like the first episode of community with less context and more soapboxing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seedless Catholics Against Watermelons?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Funny thing is they aren’t even GMOs, they’re hybrids between tetraploid and diploid watermelon cultivars. You could do it yourself in your backyard if you can find tetraploid seed for sale, or make it yourself with colchicine

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Seedless Catholics Against Watermelons?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not to brag a dead horse but do you know how we get/got novel variation in crops before targeted DNA technology? It mostly wasn’t wild germpasm unless you happen to work with a crop with large amounts of historically documented pools, e.g. corn and wheat. No, most historical breeding programs use mutagens, either chemical or sometimes radioactive, to cause novel variation, grow the seed, see what looks interesting and not too weird, and cross it back into your gene pool. GMOs are significantly less mad science-y than what they replace.