[conspire] When to get a covid test, brains, and a weird case, and a cardiology vs. immunology joke

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Elise Scher (elise.scher01 at gmail.com):

> So Ruben, why don't you believe it?

I'm curious, too.  This was a peer-reviewed study in _The Lancet_, which
(for any who really don't know) has been one of the most respected
medical journals in the world, for just short of 200 years.

That doesn't make them infallible:  In 1998, it published a paper by
Andrew Wakefield and 11 co-authors suggesting the MMR vaccine is
implicated in children's autism and colitis.  The paper was later proven
to be fraudulent, although (predictably) it's still to this day cited by
antivaxers as if it were credible.

_The Lancet_ formally retracted Wakefield & co.'s paper in 2010, and all
of the other co-authors other than Wakefield (whois a crank, and the real
source of the problem) have disavowed it and demanded that their names
be removed from it.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/lancet-retracts-wakefield-article/

So:  The peer review process is not infallible, and _The Lancet's_
editors can be fooled once in a blue moon.  And yet...  _And yet_, if I
voiced the view 'Don't believe that full study published in _The Lancet_', 
I would expect people to need & require from me some really strong
evidence.

And so, just posting a drive-by 'Don't believe it' seems pretty
eyebrow-raising.

But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for thoughtful and measured
commentary.  See also:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#second-idiot
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#compromise
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect


There's a set of articles, as the author puts it 'a series on media,
accountability, and the public sphere' that I'd like to call to people's
attention, particularly the articles in that series by Danah Boyd, one
of the sharpest minds I know of.  She has a lot to say about the modern
Internet user's tendency to DoS their own minds with confirmation bias
while 'doing research', decide that information sources that fails to
confirm their priors is 'fake news', and a lot more.

  Anxious about the widespread consumption and spread of propaganda and
  fake news during this year’s election cycle, many progressives are
  calling for an increased commitment to media literacy programs. Others
  are clamoring for solutions that focus on expert fact-checking and
  labeling. Both of these approaches are likely to fail — not because they
  are bad ideas, but because they fail to take into consideration the
  cultural context of information consumption that we’ve created over the
  last thirty years. The problem on our hands is a lot bigger than most
  folks appreciate.
  [...]

And no, Boyd doesn't have a finger-wagging solution.  Best to just read
the series.

https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d
https://points.datasociety.net/why-america-is-self-segregating-d881a39273ab
https://points.datasociety.net/when-good-intentions-backfire-786fb0dead03