HN tries to fix the process of science. Bonus: covid conspiracies

Yes, the masks didn't work. Now everybody should know it. First of all, they were using paper mouth shields or adidas branded useless cloths, not masks. But even the dumb fcks using real n95 mask, i see people everywhere touching the mask from outside (where the viruses should be stopped if the mask works) and then touching everything else. And when coughing opening the mask and coughing inside the palm...

this is the part of the scientific method where you invent an extremely stupid person and then get mad at their stupidity. peer review, they call it

The async thing means papers can be published without waiting for a gov agency to do its review. FDA takes the opposite approach. Generally, reading a paper is much less risky to a person's health than taking a drug so the differences in review process add up meaningfully.

my two favorite things! potentially dangerous medical research being done without any oversight at all, and the resulting quackery being pushed directly to my phone by my mom, who read a headline on real-fda.blogspot.com and got scared

it’s also incredibly rich of y combinator’s science understander team to try and fix science while in the same breath taking issue with the wording of the title of a scientific article they did not read:

I mean, fair that "plagued by" is a very vague term that has no quantifiable meaning. But appeals to emotion to cast doubt on all studies is frustrating. "Healthy skepticism in the face of bad studies" would be a great headline and is accurate. But too much of the skepticism we are exposed to on a regular basis is not healthy.

edit: holy fuck I got to the part where someone recommends fucking RFK’s book and nobody pushes back on it!

edit2 because I’m still mad: this is what hacker fucking news considers a reliable source

burn it all to the ground