searine · HackerTrans

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

Its not just what makes the news. There is a cooling effect happening in recruiting international talent.

Science is heavily international, and if people feel like they won't get funding/wont be safe here, they won't come.

searine

vor 4 Tagendiscuss

As an 'at home' science project? Totally do-able, but very expensive. I did it as part of epidemiological field with a backpack of materials, so you can definitly do it at home.

As a useful genome? Marginal. ONT will need a couple runs to get complete human genome coverage and the substitution error rate is still high compared to short reads. For a fraction of the price and effort you can get your DNA resequenced at 10 times the quality.

I guess if you are super-ultra paranoid you can do it all yourself at home, but honestly. You're not that special, and if someone really actually wanted your genome that bad they'd just take it from a used coffee cup.

searine

vor 19 Tagendiscuss

>The government is going to suck at funding the right things.

The government is actually really really good at funding the right things. The grant process has been extremely successful in directing funding efficiently towards cutting edge ideas. It does this by handing off the decision making to experts who review proposals rather than having political/profit driven kingmakers.

In contrast corporate/VC money mostly only funds the latest shiny bauble that may result in exit liquidity in a few years. The minority investments in things like fusion are still only applied work and are built on decades of unprofitable basic science.

In other words. Government funding has basically funded every science/tech breakthrough of the last 80 years.

searine

letzten Monatdiscuss

Simple, excellent data. Thanks.

searine

vor 2 Monatendiscuss

Is it excessive? Expensive, certainly, but if I wanted cheap I'd go live in shack in the mountains.

searine

vor 3 Monatendiscuss

Thats not true at all. If anything, they will read the figures and skip the introduction.

If it is your field, you don't need an intro, and don't want to hear whatever yarn they are spinning in the abstract/discussion. You jump straight to the figures / table to review the data yourself.

searine

vor 4 Monatendiscuss

Agreed. Seeing million dollar sequencers on ebay for a few thousand bucks makes me want to reach for my wallet, but the I realize there are no reagents for it anyway.

searine

vor 6 Monatendiscuss

Short of plopping a million dollars on the table, you could not.

searine

vor 6 Monatendiscuss

[flagged]

searine

vor 6 Monatendiscuss

This entire demo is just a surveillance state dog-whistle.

"It's used for car theft!" except the intended use is obviously target government buyers for tracking citizens.

searine

vor 6 Monatendiscuss

Which led to the discovery of a marijuana grow operation below the factory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/nyregion/secret-marijuana...

searine

vor 8 Monatendiscuss

I do not want some working on my body unlicensed and educated by chatgpt.

searine

vor 8 Monatendiscuss

Technically neat, artistically uncanny.

There's been vector based tweening and animation software for a bit an it always comes out looking strange.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Prevention is cheaper than treatment.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

There has been a lot of talk the last several years about the risks of screening, but in my opinion people have taken this as an opportunity to swing in the opposite extreme. The message shouldn't be "get screened" in the same way the message shouldn't be "if you get screened you're more likely to die".

Not all screening is equal. MRIs for low-back pain often lead to diagnoses of disease followed by unnecessary surgery with high risks. This has led to a reluctancy to prescribe MRIs or other imaging. However, with something like cancer, timing is everything. Months/weeks/days matter and catching a cancer early via a broad screen can be the difference between life and death.

In the case of the galleri test, risk is low and many of the errors can be caught with a re-testing or other non-invasive screen. If my test came back positive I wouldn't be jumping straight into chemo, but would probably get a bunch of bloodwork and some imaging.

At the end of the day, I would much much much rather go through some unnecessary scans due to a false positive than miss a easy to treat cancer because I was scared of the screening risk.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Hyperbole.

I am not going to avoid any reasonable treatment/screen because of it. It was intended to catch asymptomatic cancer. Additional invasive screenings are voluntary and like all treatments they carry risk. I weigh all treatments based on their risks at the time.

For everyday people increased screening of all types has risks, but overall the benefits massively outweigh the risks. If I was a frail 80yo, I might see the risk profile differently.

In my career I've encountered many people who "don't want to know" about medical tests of any kind. I'm not one of those people. Minimally invasive screens early and often please.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

I did this recently. Paid out of pocket, but it was worth it for the peace of mind.

It's not perfect but it's easy/fast and a good way to screen for big problems.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

This research was primarily done at John's Hopkins in Baltimore and funded by NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

> My claim is that there is a gap between how science is done and how it is presented to the public.

There is a gap between how software is written and how it is used by the public.

Clearly computers are flawed and need a complete rework.

>Please do share opinions about software. We have no professional organization. People argue with ideas.

Software is a illuminati scam perpetrated by bitter typesetters forced to get funding in a system they don't believe in. Anyone who says otherwise is in on it.

>Funding these organizations is not an absolute public good.

Are they flawless, no. Have they done more public good than any organization in history (or at least top 3)? yes.

And your response is to poo-poo the whole system because you had a bad time in your PhD. Sad.

searine

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

I think our impasse is for some reason you have this idea that PI's hate their work / are gaming the system. I just don't understand where you are coming from. Maybe that's true sometimes, but most all PIs I have worked with are not gaming the system. They are just working on a decades-long line of inquiry.

>I am aware of researchers who use a technique where they get funding for a project that is basically finished, and use the funds for more speculative research. Their sources of funding expect more predictability than they can realistically provide. Wouldn't you say that represents a gap in the public's visibility?

Their grant is public record. Their oversight during that grant is public record. Their regulatory approvals are public record. Their publications are public record.

"Basically finished" is not finished. It is not finished unless it has been published. Your statement is like saying "its wrong for a baker to buy an oven if he already has the flour and sugar. The cake is basically finished. He is just putting future costs into this current cake".

Most grant applications include prior work, current work, and future work. A program officer will make site visits and assess current work and upcoming work. Funding of a grant is not "do X thing and publish, end of project and money:. It is the pursuit of an idea. If task 1 is "basically finished" the PO will push for publication of that and moving on to the next aim.

In many cases having an aim "basically finished" is a good thing. It shows that prior work is successful and future work can produce similar success. Most grants have multiple aims and several sub-aims. If one aim is finished, they move on to the next. If all the aims are complete, the grant usually indicates next steps. The PI and PO will have discussed the next steps long before they are carried out.

If the PI chooses use some funds from a grant to carry out speculative research. Good. GOOD. That is what scientific inquiry is meant for. Not all research can be speculative. Not at research can be mainstream. It is a mix, based on opportunity and expertise.

This is grants 101. Please, again, I'm not lecturing you on software development, because it is not my expertise. Please understand scientific funding before lecturing me about it.

>Name calling doesn't sound intellectual to me. I choose not to reciprocate.

Its not name calling to call out your anti-intellectualism. You are contributing to the decline of American science, and I will not stand for it.

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