I agree there are some red flags here to me. One is the priority claim "As far as we know, no one seems to have done this kind of stimulation before - even in animals." The other is the definitive conclusion based on weak experimental design and documentation, "Can ultrasound make you smell things that aren’t there? Turns out, yes!"
These are big scientific claims, but the work is clearly too premature to make those conclusions, and it lacks the connection to prior work and peer review needed for making priority claims. It's really great hacker-tinkering work though, and it could turn into solid science if they take more care with it.
If this effect is real and truly novel, my cynical expectation is that someone already established in focused ultrasound will read this, apply a more rigorous approach, and get the recognition that they are hoping for through more establish channels.
I wonder where they got their equipment and research space. A charitable explanation is that they purchased it out of their own pockets, but otherwise, they really should acknowledge their support if it's from a university, federal grant, foundation award, etc. In my opinion as someone with domain experience, they don't show any novel solutions to accomplish this, it's mostly just that they have the time and resources to experiment try out, so it's especially important to acknowledge who enabled it.
An experiment is essentially a way to question ones own beliefs by probing how well they align with reality. There are some theoretical scientists, who don't experiment, but I think they also benefit from counterfactual reasoning to do their work.
Questioning is great, but to generate scientific knowledge, we need a few more steps, roughly speaking:
1. Ask a question
2. Form a hypothesis
3. Experiment to test it
4. Analyze results
5. Draw conclusions
6. Repeat
The MAHA folks essentially disregard this as a valid process for gathering knowledge. They occasionally talk about experiments and studies, but they are selectively chosen to support their conclusions in a posthoc way, ignoring both evidence to the contrary and basic methodological issues. When people describe them as "anti-science," I believe this is the kind of thing they have in mind.
I think there’s an argument that the pandemic era caused a lot of resentment in tech executives. They didn’t like employees having better negotiating power, resenting the pay increases and also things like support for BLM or trans rights, and stuff like RTO factored into that showing people who’s the boss. There was also a successful outreach attempt which went under the radar until Semafor published this:
It's especially hard given that big tech companies and their leaders are working closely with government and explicitly supporting certain political missions, there are few truly apolitical corners of tech now.
This has been my reasoning for years and it has been great for that. If I have to leave in the middle of the workday for errand or appointment it’s with me in the Logitech folio case and I have connected computing power in my hands in a form factor that is roughly the size of a moleskine.
Thanks for mentioning the non-secure backup in the UK, I missed the memo on that, and fyi, for any one else who did: https://support.apple.com/en-us/122234
It would be great to have a similar analysis for elementary school-aged children. Many schools are using "crisis simulation" of active shooter events in an effort to prepare for them (and presumably reduce the risk of death). While good natured, I think it's ultimately just needlessly traumatizing children, since school shootings account for <0.1% of deaths. While school shootings are devastating and sadly on the rise, the media greatly exaggerates the risks in people's minds. By the numbers, the biggest mortality risks for children are drowning and automobile injuries while unbuckled, both of which can be trained without inflicting psychological harm.
Nobody wants to hear the kids are dead because the moron parents forgot to lock their own pool gate or because they got wasted behind the wheel. They want to hear the evil inanimate objects or drug dealers did it, someone other than the parents.
You always try to react to high-probability, high-impact events (traffic accidents at pickup) with rules, controls and people. You may have rules to high-probability, low-impact events (running in the hallway). Low probability, high-impact events are important as well because the stakes are high. Shooter drills and fire drills fall into that category.
As a society, the United States has decided that the value of allowing easy access to firearms is such that risk of marginal people using them to murder children is ok. We've accepted that by default. Depending on how you count, there are several dozen to several hundred school shooting incidents every year.
It would be irresponsible not to have a protocol to protect the lives of children in school, and tbh, the kids accept it as part of life. Those of us who remember a more innocent time are more horrified.
We of course should prepare and have protocols to protect children in these scenarios, but there are better and worse ways to go about it. I essentially believe it's okay to leave young children blissfully ignorant of low probability / high impact harms (there are many that are equally likely to school shootings that we ignore). Lockdown protocols and training seem fine to me, if they are sufficiently abstract, but there is an emerging trend of "crisis simulations" which involve people posing as shooters, simulating gunfire sounds, and staff / students posing as shooting victims, etc. I think adults can handle this kind of realism, but there is evidence for harm in young children.
Fair point and I agree with you 100%. I wasn't aware that people are this bonkers.
I haven't followed this issue super closely, and based my previous statements on our experience - I have school-aged children and our lockdown drills are not anything like this and are very child focused. It's really about understanding what the staff and children need to do.
A summary from the Everytown report "The Impact of Active Shooter Drills in Schools"
"Active shooter drills in schools are associated with increases in depression (39%), stress and anxiety (42%), and physiological health problems (23%) overall, including children from as young as five years old up to high schoolers, their parents, and teachers. Concerns over death increased by 22 percent, with words like blood, pain, clinics, and pills becoming a consistent feature of social media posts in school communities in the 90 days after a school drill. "
I dug into it more and found the lab who conducted the study at Georgia Tech published their results in a reputable journal with peer review (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00993-6). The analysis seems fairly evidence-based, consisting of "54 million social media posts, both pre- and post-drills in 114 schools spanning 33 states."
I've heard of school districts doing simulated shootings with BB guns, masked men going through the halls to shout at the students, etc. That seems like needlessly frightening theater for no real gain (and might confuse the students ,at that )
These are big scientific claims, but the work is clearly too premature to make those conclusions, and it lacks the connection to prior work and peer review needed for making priority claims. It's really great hacker-tinkering work though, and it could turn into solid science if they take more care with it.
If this effect is real and truly novel, my cynical expectation is that someone already established in focused ultrasound will read this, apply a more rigorous approach, and get the recognition that they are hoping for through more establish channels.
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