All of James Smith's Comments + Replies

The link above no longer works but is available here

FYI Audenz is not egg-based - it's made in cells: https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/audenz-avian-influenza-vaccine

Thanks a lot for the response - can I just ask what WAW stands for? Google is only showing me  writing about writing, which doesn't seem likely to be it...

And how often does RP decide to go ahead with publishing academia? 

I'm not sure this meets the 'spends the money effectively' criterion - it might, but we don't really know that yet. 

What kinds of research questions do you think are better answered in an organisation like RP vs. in academia, and vice versa? 

Is there any particular reason why biosecurity isn't a major focus? As far as I can see from the list, no staff work on it, which surprises me a little. 

Thanks for posting this.

Just a quick note that it confused me a little to see the statement "And differences of 1030 are almost impossible" until I realised it is meant to be 10^30. It might be worth editing the post to make that clear. 

Glad that you enjoyed it. 

You are right on both counts. This is quite an easy overview of meta-research if you want a starting point: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005468 

I'd also be happy to have a look at anyone's ideas etc and have a decent idea (I think) of what TED-Ed might like. Just send me a message if I might be helpful. 

Do you have any example costs per time for campuspa.com? I couldn't see any on their website. 

Great, thanks for the response.

Thanks a lot, this is useful context. I work in academia so the large lead times are relevant, particularly because other 'traditional' funders would require applications well in advance. It would  be useful to know whether it was necessary to pursue those other funding routes as a 'career hedge' or not, for example, via a commitment to funding. 

I am interested to hear if anyone from LTFF agrees/disagrees with Max's assessment in these circumstances. 

Is it possible to apply for a grant when the date you would want the funds is quite far in advance (say, for example, one year)? 

A couple of other new publication models that might be worth looking at are  discussed here (Octopus and hypergraph, both of which are modular).  Also this recent article about 'publomics' might have interesting ideas.  Happy to talk about any of this if you are thinking about doing something in the space. 

A system somewhat similar to what you are talking about exists. Pubpeer, for example, is a place where post-publication peer reviews of papers are posted publicly (https://pubpeer.com/static/about). I'm not sure at this stage how much it is used, but in principle it allows you to see criticism on any article. 

Scite.ai is also relevant - it uses AI to try and say whether citations of an article are positive or negative. I don't know about its accuracy. 

Neither of these address the problem of what happens if a study fails to replicate - often what ... (read more)

That view seems reasonable to me and I agree that a clearer analysis would be useful. 

An additional and very minor point I missed out from my comment is that I'm sceptical that the relationship between impact factor and retraction (original paper here) is causal. It seems very likely to me that something like "number of views of articles" would be a confounder, and it is not adjusted for as far as I can tell. I'm not totally sure that is the part of the article that you were referring to when citing this, so apologies if not!

Thanks a lot for writing this post. I'm interested in these topics and was just thinking the other day that a write up of this sort would be valuable. 

A relevant and fairly detailed write-up (not mine) of this problem area and how meta-research might help  is available here: https://lets-fund.org/better-science/ (I didn't see it cited but may have missed it).

In terms of the content of the post, a couple of things that I might push back on a little: 

1. Peer review: I’m not sure that poor peer review (of papers) is a major cause of ineffective va

Thanks a lot for sharing this. I need to update the post to add this and other research that has been pointed out to me. 

For future searching, where/how did you come across that paper? 

Good find - thanks for sharing that paper which I hadn't included.  If I update the post I'll add that. 

I haven't thought much about this so can't add anything useful at the moment. If I think of / come across anything I'll reply again. 

Good point. This is similar to what I was trying to get at when talking about lack of willingness to engage in probabilistic reasoning. 

Thanks a lot for the  comment. I was a bit nervous to put my first post up so some positive feedback is very much appreciated.

Thanks a lot for the comment. I do think that what your gesturing at makes sense: if I understand correctly you are saying that certain physical interventions can have more predictable effects that ‘biological’ ones because we have a decent idea of exactly how they work. In some cases this is definitely true: as an extreme example, we don’t need RCTs of aeroplane safety as we have a very good understanding of the physical processes and are able to model them well. If we have an airborne pathogen, it’s hardly necessary to run an RCT to see whether or not th... (read more)

I like this perspective. I've never really understood why people find the repugnant conclusion repugnant! 

Thanks a lot for this response. I would probably donate through EA funds, so yes that should work. It seems like doing that with GiftAid will be a better bet than GAYE in my case then. The tip about HMRC is really useful to know - I have a friend who is giving regularly through GAYE and paying the 4% fee who is in a higher tax bracket, so I've recommended that he try this instead.