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Comment by desine | Hacker News Reader

>Good luck! I look forward to your references to peer-reviewed, reproduced, double-blind studies upending decades of well established medical science.

Why is my burden of proof higher than yours? I at least linked one study in my sibling comment.

I haven't seen that from anyone, studying anything, in years. Around 2018 there were actually a ton of articles and discussions right here on HN about the reproducibility problem in science, and that there's no funding for reproducing studies anymore. Everything is just cite and move on. We were actually making significant progress in reforming our ideas of science, and the effects that scientific funding sources have on our knowledge, as a species (hint if it's not profitable we probably aren't studying it).

That all got thrown by the wayside as "trust the science" became the political rallying cry of half the population over the last year.

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There are a ton of Ivermectin studies: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...

... which if analysed properly, result in the inevitable conclustion that it works as an anti-parasitic and improves outcomes, especially in nations where parasites are common.

To say anything else about it strictly puts the burden of proof on you. If you say it cures COVID, you need to demonstrate this. You also need to demonstrate how this effect isn't the well-demonstrated anti-parasitic benefit that the drug provides.

Look.

This is like saying that plaster casts are pain killers and we should all start eating plaster, despite the well-known use and benefit of plaster casts to physically stabilise broken bones. Moving broken bones hurt. Plaster casts stop the movement. Hence... plaster is a pain killer and should be taken orally to stop any pain -- oh wait -- no, it's only useful for broken bones! Because duh!. To say otherwise makes you look like a lunatic.

I mean... sure... there's a teeny tiny chance that plaster of paris somehow -- magically -- has a pain killing effect. But you'd have to have awfully good evidence that this is so, otherwise people are right to ignore you. Not to mention that ranting and raving and pointing to the studies done on patient pain before and after having been put into casts won't get you anywhere if those studies were done on motor vehicle crash victims only.

Get it?

You didn't link a "peer reviewed, reproduced, double blind study". You linked a meta-analysis of other studies. One that admits near it's conclusion

"[...]the trends really are in ivermectin’s favor, but once you eliminate all the questionable studies there are too few studies left to have enough statistical power to reach significance."

Maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's something. So again, why is your burden of proof less than mine? I don't have any studies of my own, I assume you don't either, nor the resources to conduct them. All I hinted at that there was a seeming connection between an off-patent drug that had gotten an exceptional amount of hubbub. It's interesting how aggressively this argument is fought, considering there's a lot of drugs/medicines that are similar in structure and have similar but notably different effect. If this drug is just ivermectin designed more accurately for the coronavirus's protein structures, that should be lauded! It's a family of drugs with a safe track record! But instead it ignites a fiery debate filled with spite-filled comments.

Get it?

Oh no don't try to throw in "reproducibility crisis" here. The fact that some studies in some areas are hard to reproduce (which is not news to anyone) does not suddenly mean that we should go back to cheap armchair philosophy as the main source of "knowledge". This is the equivalent of saying that the fossil record is slightly incomplete therefore Christian creationism.

"Science" in general is one of those things that you can safely rally behind, because there is nothing more accurate by definition.

>The reproducibility crisis is real and affects more than "some studies in some areas".

>"Peer review" rarely means more than "JSTOR search for something that supports my claim, quick skim for obvious errors, cite and publish"

>"Science" is only "accurate by definition" when it's done correctly. Buying scientists is cheaper than buying politicians, in practice.

>Buying scientists is cheaper than buying politicians, in practice.

Heads up I'm not gonna be able to cite a peer reviewed journal on that so you should just [flag] me now <3

And obviously all this means we should fallback to armchair philosophy.

(fyi jstor does not even fully cover one single area of knowledge)

If it means we can start applying critical thinking again, maybe

And of course by that you mean your critical thinking which is pure and thoughtful and sublime, while their critical thinking is biased and full of crisis and smells foul because it contradicts you.

Because that is what armchair discussions actually are. No real critical thinking, just scratching one's own ass.

By definition, critical thinking is questioning what you are told. I am questioning what I am told, by assessing

* Who is telling me this information?

Pfizer, the FDA

* Who stands to benefit from this?

Pfizer, the maker of the drug, and the downstream finances from them - namely the FDA (who gets most of their funding from drug makers), lobbied politicians in DC, as well as the nightly news, which sure does seem to show a lot of ads for Pfizer products.

So, from those questions, I have become skeptical. I am completely open to other lines of critical thinking, but so far I have just met resistance for questioning things at all.

So who is doing critical thikning? Am I actually denigrating someone elses critical thinking? Because there seems to be relatively little of it in this thread.

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