Image of the day

Did Jeff Bezos crash land the female astronauts (including his fiance Lauren Sánchez)? What kind of a cheap and cheesy publicity stunt was that anyway this all women space flight!

Over 165 million Nigerians need treatment for Neglected Tropical Diseases - Study. Really!

This article was featured in today's Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Global Health NOW newsletter!

It is a typical sensationalism, alarmism and hysteria type of article! Or was it written to attract funding from gullible donors?

I was not able to quickly find the study about Nigeria!

What is the total population of Nigeria? About 214 million. So either the so called Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) are generally fairly harmless or e.g. some serious overcounting most likely took place.

"... The study which was commissioned by the END Fund and conducted by Deloitte Nigeria, said the Nigerian economy stands to reap $18.9 billion from its citizens and increased productivity if elimination of NTDs is achieved by 2030. ..."

Over 165 million Nigerians need treatment for Neglected Tropical Diseases - Study | The ICIR OVER 165 million Nigerians, representing 84 per cent of the country’s population, currently need treatment for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), according to Nigeria’s NTDs Economic Impact Study.

The Impact Of Neglected Tropical Diseases Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are a group of parasitic and bacterial infectious diseases that affect more than 1.7 billion people, including more than 1 billion children. Over 40% of the global NTD burden is concentrated in Africa, where the END Fund focuses the majority of our work.

WHO Global report on neglected tropical diseases 2023

After Antarctica, Israeli ultramarathoner trains for Chile

The human urge for extremes and ultra experiences and exploration! Or is it fame and sensationalism? Not sure this is much fun?

What will they come up next? Deep diving in the oceans?

"... Shimoni, 58, anticipates becoming the third Israeli ever to finish the series, covering a total of 1,000 kilometers.
Having completed 250k (155-mile) treks in Antarctica’s White Desert, in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and in the Red Desert of Namibia, he’s training for the final race in Chile’s Atacama Desert next September. ..."

After Antarctica, Israeli ultramarathoner trains for Chile - ISRAEL21c Eyal Shimoni was the sole Israeli competitor in the recent Antarctica segment of the Racing the Planet 4 Deserts Ultramarathon Series.

Covid cases in China touch 900 million - study - BBC News. Really!

The Covid-19 numbers reported out of China are becoming larger and larger almost by the hour! What are these journalists smoking!

These ridiculous numbers outcompete any price inflation by far! At this rate, we will see news purporting 1.5 billion cases in about two months! 😊

Who helps spreading this nonsense: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Global Health NOW

Covid cases in China touch 900 million - study - BBC News Some 900 million people in China have been infected with the coronavirus as of 11 January, according to a study by Peking University.

‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why. Really!

I think, this study has more to do with hype, sensationalism and spurious methods then with anything else. I don't have the time to investigate more, but I have some strong hunches. This appears to be more hot air than serious research!

How is disruptive science defined anyway? 

Exponential growth in research papers is not necessarily indicative of a growth of high quality science. Maybe it is more publish or perish! More scientists more publications etc.

How about the simple explanation that as of today so many things have been already discovered and invented that it has become more challenging to make new  major discoveries. I call it the low hanging fruit hypothesis.

How about the saturation/fatigue hypothesis: There have been so many significant discoveries and innovations lately that disruptive becomes a very relative term.

As we enter the age of AI, machine learning, robotics, autonomous air, land, and water vehicles, drones, genetic editing and so on, we are already witnessing tons of disruptions!

"For example, there are now many more researchers than in the 1940s, which has created a more competitive environment and raised the stakes to publish research and seek patents." 

"Other research has suggested that scientific innovation has slowed in recent decades" A dubious claim in my view!

Citation data and its interpretation can be misleading. This is a very strong assumption and to derive a single measure of disruptiveness from citation data is dubious:

"The authors reasoned that if a study was highly disruptive, subsequent research would be less likely to cite the study’s references, and instead would cite the study itself."

The authors also analyzed changes in the language used in research papers. This can be very misleading as well:

"... The authors also analysed the most common verbs used in manuscripts and found that whereas research in the 1950s was more likely to use words evoking creation or discovery such as ‘produce’ or ‘determine’, that done in the 2010s was more likely to refer to incremental progress, using terms such as ‘improve’ or ‘enhance’. ..."

"Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with mid-twentieth-century research, that done in the 2000s was much more likely to push science forward incrementally than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend."

From the abstract:

"Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields. Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric—the CD index—that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields and is robust across multiple different citation- and text-based metrics. Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the ‘shoulders of giants’ view. We find that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology."

‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why

Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time (open access)

Artificial Intelligence Bot Wrote Scientific Paper in 2 Hours hype

Such claims are still more hype than reality! The actual paper itself is a hypothetical (see link at the bottom).

Even today's best large language models can not really do the job! What about the usual accompanying tables and charts just to give one example!

Subject experts would also still be able to discern the novelty of any parts of the content of the paper.

After an AI bot wrote a scientific paper on itself, the researcher behind the experiment says she hopes she didn't open a 'Pandora's box'

We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published  An artificially intelligent first author presents many ethical questions—and could upend the publishing process

Can GPT-3 write an academic paper on itself, with minimal human input?

Too Many Hit Pieces By MIT Technology Review

Posted: 5/10/2019  Updated: 5/26/2019

Update Of 5/26/2019

Here is another ridiculous headline pushed by MIT Technology Review today (5/26/2018) on their Facebook page:

The underlying article with same headline, again is quite old: China Publishes More Scientific Articles Than the U.S. (published 1/18/2018). Why the MIT Technology Review pushes old articles on their Facebook page and most of the times without indicating the age of the underlying article is another major annoyance!

My comment: Quantity is not quality! Communists like to produce quantity no matter what the quality!

Original Post

Just saw this latest, mostly meritless hit piece by MIT Technology Review: People are calling for Zuckerberg’s resignation. Here are just five of the reasons why. Facebook has been beset by scandals over the last year and many believe that nothing will change until its founder and CEO is gone. I received this hit piece courtesy of MIT TR daily newsletter (the articles promoted in this newsletter are not always current).

It is very appalling that a once prestigious media outlet publishes/engages in such crap! I certainly do not sympathize with everything that Facebook does!

I do not have the time to refute or dispute all the claims made in the above hit piece, but I am very confident that they do not hold up to scrutiny or a more balanced evaluation!

These “reasons” were carefully selected with bias, are extremely exaggerated and overblown. Yes, there were hacks, privacy issues, unprecedented access to user data etc. However, social media is very new form of business that did not even exist before the turn of the century! Of course, mistakes are made etc.

Low and behold, there was another hit piece in same newsletter:

The economic argument behind the Green New Deal Economist Mariana Mazzucato explains how rethinking industrial policy could be key to tackling climate change.

In short, the argument is in favor of socialist central planning! The indoctrination with climate religion and Global Warming hoax continues!