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Dilbert loses newspapers, publishers, distributor, and possibly its website
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Zero999:

--- Quote from: Buriedcode on March 13, 2023, 08:37:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: james_s on March 13, 2023, 04:53:06 pm ---The more times a theory holds up to being tested, the more confident we can be that the theory is truth, but it's never really 100% proven. Science encourages continuous testing and questioning of everything, and occasionally things long believed to be true turn out to be incorrect.

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Just to add, often people will constantly raise the bar for "proof" if they don't believe in a finding, or lower the bar to ridiculousness if they want something to be true.  Because you cannot really prove a negative, cognitive bias skews peoples views on what constitutes evidence so if a study is negative - it just wasn't precise enough, or wasn't large enough.  If its positive - no matter how small or poorly designed - it must prove my theory right!   Case in point the whole silly hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin debacle - where people are still quoting obviously fake studies.
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Face masks are another one. The evidence now points in the direction they're completely ineffective, yet many still hold onto bad studies which state otherwise. Heck I was one of those who thought they were effective, yet my opinion has changed, in light of new evidence.


--- Quote ---Add that relying solely on placebo controlled double blind studies - without looking at important things like, you know, plausbility, or whether theres even a possible mechanism at work - means that the biases/flaws that can never be removed from said studies end up creating false positives.  For example P<0.05 thresholds - 5% of studies will be "positive" by pure chance, but are seen as showing something meaningful if one only considers the results from the test and nothing else like context.

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I don't see your point about placebo controlled studies. If there's sufficient randomisation in the participants and the study is large enough, there shouldn't be any bias. Interestingly many interventions lack a plausible mechanism, or one was presumed, yet later turned out to be false: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is a classic example.
james_s:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on March 13, 2023, 10:01:11 pm ---Face masks are another one. The evidence now points in the direction they're completely ineffective, yet many still hold onto bad studies which state otherwise. Heck I was one of those who thought they were effective, yet my opinion has changed, in light of new evidence.

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N95 masks? Or cloth masks? Or both?

I never really understood why wearing one or not was such a big politicized deal, but I'd be surprised if properly worn N95 masks were not effective, especially at capturing particiles if you are infected. Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 11, 2023, 09:36:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: nctnico on March 11, 2023, 08:35:03 pm ---
--- Quote from: Kim Christensen on March 11, 2023, 04:01:15 pm ---But Trump's opinion is not equal, not even close, to that of an expert in the field of study being questioned.

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It kind of is. Science is truth by majority.

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No. Science is not truth, science is a method.
The second you start defining science as an "accepted truth", you completely miss what science is.

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Maybe truth isn't the right word here and my wording could be better. So excuse the semantics. Still for all intends and purposes, the broadly accepted (scientifically established) theory that explains a certain phenomenon is treated as being true / the truth until the theory has been disproven c.q. replaced by a new, better theory. 'Truth of the day' could be a better term.
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: james_s on March 13, 2023, 10:07:04 pm ---Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.

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Yes, but they were never meant to block viruses. It's usually even marked clearly on the boxes.
coppice:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 13, 2023, 10:26:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: james_s on March 13, 2023, 10:07:04 pm ---Doctors and other staff have worn masks in operating rooms and such for many decades and it's not for decoration.

--- End quote ---
Yes, but they were never meant to block viruses. It's usually even marked clearly on the boxes.

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Most simple masks catch aerosol spray from the mouth of the wearer quite well. That has always been the goal. Droplets of a surgeon's saliva on a wound could be devastating. They do little for something truly airborne. So, you need to see if your virus of interest mostly floats freely in the air, or is mostly carried in water droplets. Even N95 masks aren't much good against free floating virii.
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