| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 5/23 |
| 2008/7/24-28 [Health/Disease/General] UID:50678 Activity:moderate |
7/24 Apparently, the founder of Conservapedia failed basic statistics
http://conservapedia.com/Talk:Mystery:Young_Hollywood_Breast_Cancer_Victims
He's also an epic douchebag
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair
\_ Damn you, I wasted 30 minutes this morning reading this
and laughing like a hyena. Good stuff.
\_ One population had a random mutation at some point. He is able
to duplicate the evolutionary process by growing the population from
the frozen population he has. No other population mutates in
this way. So the claim is that a random mutation occured at
generation 20,000? I don't really see this as evolution. It's
just a mutation. Why is this more significant?
this way. What I don't understand is why the mutation happens
again if it's random. Or is the claim that the mutation happens
much earlier? If that's the case then why not go farther back
in time to find the moment in actually occurs? Is that what he
did at 20,000 generation?
\_ Congrats, you misunderstood the study in the same way that
Andy "Douchebag" Schlafly did!
\_ So please educate me as to the significance. |
| 5/23 |
|
| conservapedia.com/Talk:Mystery:Young_Hollywood_Breast_Cancer_Victims There may be a solution to this, the average age for being diagnosed with breast cancer is 64, but this doesn't mean that people cannot get breast cancer until they are 64. You have named five cases where breast cancer has been contracted at a younger age, out of a pool of possibly tens of thousands of subjects (noting that you have expanded the definition of Hollywood to include relatively minor Australian celebrities and musicians). This is well in check with broader society, sadly many people do suffer from breast cancer at a young age. Unless the proportion of young people in general suffering breast cancer is different to the proportion of young "Hollywoodians" suffering breast cancer then there really isn't a mystery here to solve. The only way that anyone will be able to demonstrate the possibility that Hollywood promotes breast cancer is by using statistics which show that the average age of breast cancer in Hollywood is significantly lower than that of society in general. StatsMsn 22:18, 3 May 2008 (EDT) Medline, one of the largest databases relating to medical articles, returned just two articles for a search of ""Breast Neoplasms (exp)" and "Hollywood". One of these only referenced Hollywood because to establish a timeframe (it was translated from Japanese, and used the term "Hollywood syndrome" in its title) whereas the other referred to the geographic location of a clinic. I think this establishes that there is no medical evidence supporting the claim that Hollywood somehow increases the likelihood of breast cancer. If you have alternative search terms or databases you want me to use post them here and I will. Aschlafly 23:19, 3 May 2008 (EDT) Medline reports from almost all major medical journals, it does not discriminate based on political ideology. All you have done is listed a few cases and suggested that being famous and connected to Hollywood somehow increases the risk of breast cancer. You have not provided any evidence that the average age of breast cancer amongst stars is any less than the broader average. It is an unfortunate fact that young people do get breast cancer, but there is nothing to suggest that rate of young people in Hollywood being diagnosed with breast cancer is any different to the rate of young people in broader society. Until you refute this point you cannot claim that there is a mystery. StatsMsn 23:26, 3 May 2008 (EDT) Mr Schlafly, as I can see it, you seem to be a fan of false causality. X happened to this person and that person meets Y criteria therefore the event X is related to the criteria Y If 5 people with brown hair contracts testicular cancer, does that mean that having brown hair predisposes you to testicular cancer? Just because someone meets one criteria and also fits another criteria does not mean they are related. That is exactly why medical studies are done, to establish if there is repeated and explainable links between any two things. Individuals can claim anything they want, it is only statistics and studies that can help justify them. AndrasK 23:40, 3 May 2008 (EDT) A Demonstration It is suggested that Belinda Emmett being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 24 shows that Hollywood increases the risk of breast cancer. There are around 20 million people in Australia, it's safe to assume that 10 million of those will be female. Using the statistics on the page 1 in 19,608 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer by the time they're 25, this is approximately 00051%. At this rate about 510 Australia women will have been diagnosed with breast cancer by the time they're 25. Belinda Emmett is one person out of 510 who has been diagnosed with Breast cancer, this is a rate of about 02%. Assuming that camerawomen and writers have also been diagnosed with breast cancer then I see no reason why the rate of women connected with "Hollywood" and who have been diagnosed with breast cancer is any lower than that of the broader population. The reason Hollywood seems to have so many young stars being diagnosed with breast cancer is because these cases are very well publicised, but the sad truth is that many young women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and that their cases are largely forgotten. There is no mystery here, and there won't be until someone shows that the average age of breast cancer amongst Hollywood stars is any different to the rest of society. StatsMsn 23:37, 3 May 2008 (EDT) Good sir, we don't repeat readily known facts here! This is a crusade, good sir, and we're here to EXPOSE the FACT that HOLLYWOOD causes BREAST cancer IN starlets! IndianaJ 00:55, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Questions When are you going to realise that you cannot base statistical conclusions upon a non-random sample? You are selecting a category of people who are by definition, far, far younger than the normal population (actresses and pop stars being typically in an age range from 18-45). Therefore, any incidences of breast cancer you find within that population will of course appear to trend younger. Please, take Statistics 101 before jumping to such ludicrous conclusions - you're simply making a fool of yourself. Aschlafly 14:35, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Sure it can be compared Andy, but you haven't done that. If you compare the number of young Hollywood breast cancer victims (of course you might want to define what you mean by that first) to the rest of the population in the same age group, fine. You might also want to clarify where you got your 500 from - clearly an estimate, but based on what? Hollywood types under age 35 or so who would admit to having breast cancer due to performance demands or openness is a reasonable estimate within a factor of 2 or so. You're free to make suggestions on improving the accuracy. Aschlafly 18:29, 4 May 2008 (EDT) MrSchalfly, actually, I am a professional statistician with both graduate and post-graduate degrees in the subject, and also a 34 year professional career as a statistician working for the official statistics bureau of a major nation. Now, of course you can compare the 'Hollywood' 18-45 population to the general 18-45 population, but first you have to define that population. Is it that they are living in "Hollywood" - in which case it might be interesting to examine geographical factors upon the incidence of disease? No - as I see you are including Australians who live in the UK, people born in six different countries, and it seems none of the members of your data set are actually from the geographical region of Hollywood, and in fact many of them do not even live there either. Bongabill, we don't fall for the unproven claims of credentials here. Aschlafly 15:13, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Secondly, I note that your article does not compare your data set to the general 18-45 population, but instead compares it to the general population of 'all ages', quoting an average age of diagnosis of 64 - which is clearly outside your terms of reference. I'm afraid there's absolutely nothing correct here with any of your reasoning, which not only fails Statistics 101, but fails it in the first semester. Aschlafly 15:13, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Just to point out, Mr Schlafly, you fell back on your "record" of statistical courses as evidence to your statistical competency. Aschlafly 18:20, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Actually ASchalfly, it was indeed you who first raised the issue of credentials in this thread - your comment "I doubt you've taken half the statistics courses I have" came after Bongabill's first and only comment on Conservapedia, and which never mentioned his or her credentials. StatsFan 18:52, 4 May 2008 (EDT) All right Andy, I'll make a couple of suggestions. I suggest clarifying the basis of the estimate that there are 500 Hollywood women under 35 who would admit to having breast cancer. I don't understand where the number comes from - what was the method or source used to come up with 500? If that's a good estimate, your comparison is potentially legitimate. Then, I would suggest you do an actual statistical test to determine whether the numbers are significantly different. Murray 18:48, 4 May 2008 (EDT) Female rock stars likely to admit to breast cancer (eg, due to a perfor... |
| rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair At one point, one of the populations demonstrated a dramatic change, and evolved to become capable of utilizing citrate, a carbon source in their flasks that E coli cannot normally use. edit Correspondence Do not edit, format, or add links to the letters in the article as they are copies of the original documents and should be preserved "as is". edit First letter, June 13 2008 Dear Professor Lenski, Skepticism has been expressed on Conservapedia about your claims, and the significance of your claims, that E Coli bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study. Specifically, we wonder about the data supporting your claim that one of your colonies of E Coli developed the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild E Coli, at around 31,500 generations. In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000. html Submission guidelines for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science state that "(viii) Materials and Data Availability. To allow others to replicate and build on work published in PNAS, authors must make materials, data, and associated protocols available to readers. Authors must disclose upon submission of the manuscript any restrictions on the availability of materials or information." Also, your work was apparently funded by taxpayers, providing further reason for making the data publicly available. Please post the data supporting your remarkable claims so that we can review it, and note where in the data you find justification for your conclusions. edit First reply, June 13 2008 Dear Mr Schlafly: I suggest you might want to read our paper itself, which is available for download at most university libraries and is also posted as publication #180 on my website. Here's a brief summary that addresses your three points. your claims, that E Coli bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study." We (my group and scientific collaborators) have already published several papers that document beneficial mutations in our long-term experiment. These papers provide exact details on the identity of the mutations, as well as genetic constructions where we have produced genotypes that differ by single mutations, then compete them, demonstrating that the mutations confer an advantage under the environmental conditions of the experiment. See papers # 122, 140, 155, 166, and 178 referenced on my website. In the latest paper, you will see that we make no claim to having identified the genetic basis of the mutations observed in this study. However, we have found a number of mutant clones that have heritable differences in behavior (growth on citrate), and which confer a clear advantage in the environment where they evolved, which contains citrate. Our future work will seek to identify the responsible mutations. You will find all the relevant methods and data supporting this claim in our paper. We also establish in our paper, through various phenotypic and genetic markers, that the Cit+ mutant was indeed a descendant of the original strain used in our experiments. " We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. We do show that what we call a "potentiated" genotype had evolved by generation 20,000 that had a greater propensity to produce Cit+ mutants. We also show that the dynamics of appearance of Cit+ mutants in the potentiated genotypes are highly suggestive of the requirement for two additional mutations to yield the resulting Cit+ trait. Moreover, we found that Cit+ mutants, when they first appeared, were often rather weak at using citrate. At least the main Cit+ line that we studied underwent an additional mutation (or mutations) that refined that ability and led to a large improvement in growth on citrate. All these issues and the supporting methods and data are covered in our paper. Lenski, This is my second request for your data underlying your recent paper, "Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli," published in PNAS (June 10, 2008) and reported in New Scientist ("Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in lab," June 9, 2008). html Your work was taxpayer-funded, and PNAS represents that its authors will make underlying data available. I'd like to review the data myself and ensure availability for others, including experts and my students. Others have expressed interest in access to the data in addition to myself, and your website seems well-suited for public release of these data. If the data are voluminous, then I particularly request access to the data that was made available to the peer reviewers of your paper, and to the data relating to the period during which the bacterial colony supposedly developed Cit+. As before, I'm requesting the organized data themselves, not the graphs and summaries set forth in the paper and referenced in your first reply to me. Note that several times your paper expressly states, "data not shown." Given that this is my second request for the data, a clear answer is requested as to whether you will make the key underlying data available for independent review. Your response, or lack thereof, will be posted due to the public interest in this issue. edit Second reply, June 23 2008 Dear Mr Schlafly: I tried to be polite, civil and respectful in my reply to your first email, despite its rude tone and uninformed content. Given the continued rudeness of your second email, and the willfully ignorant and slanderous content on your website, my second response will be less polite. if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels. I offer this lengthy reply because I am an educator as well as a scientist. It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this exchange, even if you do not. First, it seems that reading might not be your strongest suit given your initial letter, which showed that you had not read our paper, and given subsequent conversations with your followers, in which you wrote that you still had not bothered to read our paper. " If you have not even read the original paper, how do you have any basis of understanding from which to question, much less criticize, the data that are presented therein? Second, your capacity to misinterpret and/or misrepresent facts is plain in the third request in your first letter, where you said: "In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000." That statement was followed by a link to a news article from NewScientist that briefly reported on our work. I assumed you had simply misunderstood that article, because there is not even a mention of proteins anywhere in the news article. As I replied, "We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. He started his EColi project in 1988 and has been running the project for 20 years now; The New Scientist article is not very technical but the paper at PNAS is. The change was based on one of his colonies developing the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild EColi. This occurred around 31,500 generations and is based on the development of 3 proteins in the EColi genome. What his future work will be is to look at what caused the development of these 3 proteins around generation 20,000 of that particular colony." did clarify that his claims are not as strong as some evolutionists have insisted." But no competent biologist would, after reading our paper with any care, insist (or even suggest) that "3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000" or any similar nonsense. It is only in your letter, and in your acolyte's confused interpretation of our paper, that I have ever seen such a claim. Am I or the reporter for NewScientist somehow responsible for the confusion that reflects your own laziness and apparent inability to distinguish between a scientific paper, a news article, and a confused summary posted by an acolyte on your own website? Third, it is apparent to me, and many others who have followed this exchange and your on-line discussions of how t... |