Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I've read other stuff related to this issue. It seems to me our current system exists in a social reality for which our metrics of authenticity were not designed and it harms both credentialization -- which is recognized as a problem -- and also serious science in ways that are not readily acknowledged as a problem.

Mendel, father of genetics, failed to become an accredited teacher. His work on genetics would likely get no recognition in this environment of credentialism is king.

Some guy who knows enough about genetics he created his own home pill to deliver genes into his gut to fix his lactose intolerance is being ignored by the world. Someone recently told me on HN that his video sounds like a scam video of a sort that is common (probably in a redacted comment).

I have a genetic disorder, which fails to pass the credentialism test. For that and other reasons, I didn't bother to say anything like "Sorry you don't know enough about genetics to follow it."

The individual wanted to know where the "studies" and "papers" were. And they likely don't exist and will never exist because there's no profit in it for someone else to try to build on his work.

I don't know how we fix this, but the world has changed and it's valuing the facade of scientific work more than actual scientific work and it makes me want to scream.

> Some guy who knows enough about genetics he created his own home pill to deliver genes into his gut to fix his lactose intolerance is being ignored by the world. Someone recently told me on HN that his video sounds like a scam video of a sort that is common (probably in a redacted comment).

To be honest, I know nothing other than your description and it 100% sounds like either a scam or there are some variables that are not being controlled for. I’m a little shocked that you seem to have fallen for it, unless there is just a lot more to the story…

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a17804128/sc...

I don't know why you would be "shocked" that I "fell for it." Most of the world thinks I'm a nutter who imagines I'm getting well from my genetic disorder and dismisses my progress as "placebo effect" -- which would give me a mind more powerful than Darth Vader -- or just deluded bullshit.

So either I understand genetics and medical stuff better than average, or I'm absolutely the kind of fool who falls for bullshit scams on the internet.

My comment was assuming you’re the average person. I don’t know you or your reputation at all and I think it’s unfair to assume some random HN poster like me should. But if most of the world thinks that, who am I to disagree?

Somewhat related anecdote: I’m reminded of a good friend who is preeminent in their field. No one would know them outside of their area of expertise, but anyone within that area of expertise (or who has learned that area of expertise from their college textbooks) knows their name. I got dinner with them over the holidays last year and they lamented that, I’m guessing based on name recognition, they receive a steady stream of communications (letters, email, etc) from laypeople who always think they have done something amazing previously thought impossible, or they have a new insight that everyone else ever has missed. Invariably my friend no longer spends time going through these because in every single of the hundreds of comms they’ve read, there’s always some confound factor or something basic the writer missed that invalidates everything. I am not an academic, but my impression is that while laypeople like you and me can brute force things and have amazing insights, mostly we’re just wrong for some reason that a trained scientist or academic would have spotted immediately.

I don’t know you or your reputation at all and I think it’s unfair to assume some random HN poster like me should.

I've been on HN nearly 14 years. A fair number of people know something about me, though certainly not everyone.

But if most of the world thinks that, who am I to disagree?

That's a personal attack, which is a violation of HN rules.

Your entire comment is about me and a justification for dismissing me and not pertinent to the point I'm making.

I provided a source. It's got a nearly 20 minute video. You are welcome to watch it and explain to me what is wrong with it and why it's a scam and I shouldn't believe any of it.

I can’t even imagine giving so much credence to every conspiracy theory or supposed breakthrough that only appears on YouTube that I spend time watching everything. There are only so many hours in the day, time is precious, and the onus is on the person making the claim to support them, not the other way around. It’s like someone telling me to watch everything on YouTube about copper bracelets taking bad energy and putting the onus on me to disprove it, but that’s not how science works.

I will share though that I have heuristics that help me gut check new claims. None of them are infallible but they can give a good indication that saves me watching every layperson video making outrageous claims. Those heuristics include things like getting published in major journals, getting peer reviewed, having large and well thought out studies controlling for confounding variables, having leaders in a field support or coauthor the studies, and more. There are also heuristics in the opposite way, which I won’t get into, but suffice to say that the position of “everyone thinks I’m a ‘nutter’ but this one thing happened to me in one case and it has never been repeated but I believe it and the establishment/BIG GENETICS is trying to keep the research under wraps but here’s a video you can watch that proves everything” is not only not compelling to me, but in fact ticks a lot of the anti heuristic boxes. ;)

That's not what's going on here.

You are dismissing a specific source out of hand, apparently without so much as clicking the link provided since he's not a lay person, he's a scientist with a degree in biology.

You aren't required to check out anything at all, but your ugly dismissal without bothering to check the source isn't any kind of meaningful rebuttal of anything.

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