What *experts* are saying about the Patriots during their bye week

[primetime]

We know so little about the workings of the human body that it's remarkable we've stumbled into a lot of the miraculous cures and treatments we have now. I think of general anesthesia, which shouldn't even work based on what we know - the fact you come back as you after general anesthesia is literally inexplicable based on what we know of the human brain and the self. And of course some small percentage of people don't, even perfectly healthy people, and we don't know why that happens either. (It's also a risk on a population level but the risk on an individual level is probably lower than dying in a hurricane if you live in Boston. Certainly substantially less risky than driving.)

We know even less about nutrition, and the science there is often very crappy and paradigms change year to year. Part of that is industry's meddling, part of that is that it's just hard to do those kind of studies. And the things that get trumpeted on the front page of the Times - red wine is good! - are usually small samples, etc.

Science writing is a problem. I think of the phenomenon where geriatric pregnancy is said to increase risk of autism, for example. But the studies themselves only look at first pregnancies, and women with older first pregnancies may be categorically different in some way than those with younger first pregnancies. And even a statistically meaningful and sizable increase in risk ratio may be effectively meaningless in terms of overall incidence for individuals. Say the risk ratio is 1 in 10,000 and increases to 1 in 8,000. That's a big change... on a population level. It effectively makes no difference to individuals. But science journalism will often report it as percent difference (an increase of 20%!) rather than in those magnitudes. Always be suspicious when you're reading about percent changes in probabilities, because big numbers are usually signs that something odd is at play.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

I think of general anesthesia, which shouldn't even work based on what we know - the fact you come back as you after general anesthesia is literally inexplicable based on what we know of the human brain and the self. And of course some small percentage of people don't, even perfectly healthy people, and we don't know why that happens either.

That’s one of the scariest things about medicine to me.

I remember an article a few years ago where they are talking to an anesthesia researcher and he was saying that it appears anesthesia imposes a strong, uniform, simple electrical wave over everything, preventing the parts of the brain from communicating with each other, and so consciousness falls apart (but are you still sensing pain in some way but are unable to remember it? Who knows!) And then when the anesthesia wears off and the wave goes away they can see bits of the brain here and there sparking up and trying to re-establish communications. As he put it (and to me that’s the scary part), searching through configuration space for some configuration to re-enable consciousness. And as you say, no guarantee (as far as we can tell) that the brain will arrive at something close to the previous configuration.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

We know so little about the workings of the human body that it's remarkable we've stumbled into a lot of the miraculous cures and treatments we have now. I think of general anesthesia, which shouldn't even work based on what we know - the fact you come back as you after general anesthesia is literally inexplicable based on what we know of the human brain and the self. And of course some small percentage of people don't, even perfectly healthy people, and we don't know why that happens either. (It's also a risk on a population level but the risk on an individual level is probably lower than dying in a hurricane if you live in Boston. Certainly substantially less risky than driving.)

We know even less about nutrition, and the science there is often very crappy and paradigms change year to year. Part of that is industry's meddling, part of that is that it's just hard to do those kind of studies. And the things that get trumpeted on the front page of the Times - red wine is good! - are usually small samples, etc.

Science writing is a problem. I think of the phenomenon where geriatric pregnancy is said to increase risk of autism, for example. But the studies themselves only look at first pregnancies, and women with older first pregnancies may be categorically different in some way than those with younger first pregnancies. And even a statistically meaningful and sizable increase in risk ratio may be effectively meaningless in terms of overall incidence for individuals. Say the risk ratio is 1 in 10,000 and increases to 1 in 8,000. That's a big change... on a population level. It effectively makes no difference to individuals. But science journalism will often report it as percent difference (an increase of 20%!) rather than in those magnitudes. Always be suspicious when you're reading about percent changes in probabilities, because big numbers are usually signs that something odd is at play.

Accurate science writing, "dumbed down" as much as possible, is a humbling experience to write, and a joy to behold when it's done well.

Part of the problem is that we mask inaccurate claims with unnecessarily confusing language. Another part (in medicine) is that people get easily confused by claims that the body is "just a machine." We expect very deterministic results from all actions.

Maybe my next career should be medical writing.

"You have C.A.D. We don't know everything, but right now most of the medical community says that smoking is especially dangerous to you. It is also generally dangerous, because smoking is risky for everybody. But for you, now we know that you have C.A.D., it's a really bad idea to smoke, and we know it. You had C.A.D. before the heart attack too, we just didn't know. Smoking was no better of an idea then than now, but now you should quit yesterday. Since you cannot do so by the rules in the theories of special and general relativity, the next best course of action is to quit today.

The flip side is, all of our advice works across large populations. While we try to know as much as possible about you in particular, even if we know everything we possibly can about you, you might still die of this tomorrow no matter what you do.

Of course, this was true the day before your heart attack as well.

By the way, don't stress about it - stress is bad for the old ticker!"

 

[maust]

But science journalism will often report it as percent difference (an increase of 20%!) rather than in those magnitudes. Always be suspicious when you're reading about percent changes in probabilities, because big numbers are usually signs that something odd is at play.

Couldn't agree more and we are not alone in that line of thinking. There's a reason for the staying power of the old saying, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.'

 

[patriot1136]

I work in healthcare and while I enjoy learning new things, it can get tricky and frustrating when things change, especially things that we've known and practiced for a while.

 

[Observer]

This is what they are saying about the Patriots these days? . This forum never disappoints my curiosity for general knowledge.