CharonY

But just look at its cute little spidey-eyes!

I feel the anger of arachnologists rising.

I read the paper, which is interesting but the linked article is mostly fluff, unfortunately. I assumed that is what you are getting at, but reading the sentence compelled me to at least mention that, as it is the exact terminology (rather than a simplification of a term, if that makes sense).

Well, DNA proofreading basically just refers to 3'-5' exonuclease activity, where enzymes (usually polymerases) can excise mismatches during errors in elongation. This basically just reduces overall error rates. I am sure folks might misuse the term, though.

No, this sounds at best like a simplified them vs us narrative. They do have highly advanced health care systems and significantly higher life expectancy than the US for example. They clearly care very much about not dying. Edit: listen, if you really want a simplified, inaccurate narrative, how about this: In Western countries there is a bigger emphasize that health is something that can fixed by some cure or treatment. In at least some cultures in Asia, there are some schools of thoughts that are more holistic, focusing on wellness and maintenance of health (including more care for balanced diets). But again, this is very simplified and anecdotal.

Regardless of country, Universities are generally the main place of research and they are funding by governments. As percentage of GDP countries with the highest investment in research are Israel, South Korea and then the US (but it also has the largest economy). May I add that although I have been participating, I have absolutely no idea where this thread is going?

And it does not necessarily mean lobbying. Some agencies might see it as a good opportunity for investment, as companies obviously have a track record of putting things to the market. The whole pathway from pre-clinical research to product development is complex and gets more expensive every step. Countries with fewer pharmaceutical companies in the cancer market obviously will not invest in developing things. And many companies are multinationals. Roche, for example is a Swiss company, but invests a lot in the US market. There are far more University hospitals to work with, plus the aforementioned opportunities with funding. They would not be able to make that much money if all their research was limited to Switzerland. Edit: With regard to OP, I also wanted to add that at scale, new treatment options are not the only (or even the most important) thing to influence survival rates. More important are prevention, access to healthcare, early detection and affordability. Arguably, reducing tobacco smoking and air pollution will prevent more deaths than a lung cancer drug.

Also, the practical line between capitalism and communism has mostly eroded. Heck, folks nowadays are getting confused that Nazis had "socialist" in their name. The distinction is mostly to establish ideological lines, it seems to me, with very little practical impact. While xenophobia being an unsurprising aspect, it seems that gender roles plays a surprisingly high role of far-right pro Russia sentiments (and which also shows in the gender gap in voters). Just to getting back to OP: in Thuringia the AfD won 38% of the male voters, but only 27% of the female voters. This 11% gap is more than double of the next largest gap (4%, then 2%). It feels strange as intuitively it does not seem to be such a big thing, but it is something that starts to be persistent in multiple countries (we see similar trends with Trump voters). For the US it was assumed that overturning Roe v Wade was a critical point, but the trend was already there before, and it does not apply to Germany (and other countries).

Well, there are multiple reasons for it, and quite a few a very good. One being the recognition that folks are getting older, and more treatments are needed. Some of the initiatives, e.g. the Cancer Moonshot, were initiated by the White House and I think at that time it was one of the big initiatives of then Vice President Biden. I am sure he had advisors who might also have been lobbyists, but among researchers it is certainly a prime target (for a long time). Universities generally do not lobby such things they are very different from companies on the research front (initiatives are led by researchers, and, when you are lucky, your university might support you). That being said, some of the investment is to promote translating pre-clinical findings into clinicals. That is very expensive and companies do not like to do that unless they can see the money coming out of it. The US has been shouldering quite a bit of these burdens (as they had for COVID-19 vaccine development).

As I mentioned before, the USA has established a number of cancer research programs, which funneled quite a bit of money into this area, to some chagrin of other health researchers, who were looking at fundamental or non-cancer related health aspects. I don't have the exact split, however. But the claim I was most hung up on was South Korea has a higher proportion of R&D in health (0.21% 2016) compared to the average of high income countries (0.19%). But overall I think it is fair to say that the US is among the highest R&D spenders in the world, especially compared to e.g. their neighbor Canada. I am a bit surprised that the difference in cancer specifically is that high, suggesting that other countries spend more on other health research. There is a reason for that, though. I remember that there was a paper about 10 years back suggesting that the return of interest is dismal in cancer research for a number of reasons (including lack of consolidation and piecemeal approaches).

Well, they do not pretend to be communist anymore. It is now a happy authoritarian family.

I don't think that this is true. The US had some big initiatives on cancer, including trials which could skew results a bit, but especially if you talk about health research in general, China and Japan is certainly investing a fair bit into it. I am not sure why you would think that it is the case in the first place.

Nope, it glorifies European culture, is anti-Muslim but not explicitly Christian (other than claiming that Europeans, and Christians are suppressed). However, due to their past, East Europe is generally very atheist.

For the first time since the good old days, a far-right Nazi-affiliated party has won a state election. Both states are located in the East. The party is buoyed by anti-EU and foreigner sentiments (though, as per usual, in these areas the percentage of foreigners is very low). Also, they are pro-Russia, as it is often the case in European far-right parties. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/01/europe/far-right-germany-regional-election-win-intl-latam/index.html Surveys suggest that especially young people are voting for the extremes and about half of the voters indicated that they did not vote for them out of protest but out of ideological agreement. Considering that they, similar to Trump as an example, provide a bizarre view on society, which is disconnected with reality (e.g in terms of crime rates), it does not bode very well for traditional parties. I suspect that there is a big role for social media to be uncovered, and as it turns out, the young ones might be more likely to be susceptible to disinformation.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, this is the perfect counterpoint to what OP is questioning.

Except, they are. If you are unaware that people can be homosexual, you might create laws that only allow for marriages for people of opposite gender. At which point would you draw the boundary between superficial and non-superficial differences? I should add that distinction-based research has been instrumental in uncovering the hidden cost of inequity. So while in theory it would be great if our differences didn't matter, but in the real world, they still do. Ignoring them while we are still trying to understand and fix this issue is a bit premature. The following quote from Ginsburg comes to mind Also visible was not meant literally, perhaps noticeable is the better term. For example, folks generally have nothing against the occasional foreigner. But if there are more in one place causing a perceived change (e.g. hearing a foreign language), quite a few get upset (with different tolerances in different countries).

I think you misunderstand my point. In the past non-normative elements were considered to be offensive or even a crime. Being homosexual is such an example. Even if tolerated, there is the expectation that it the differences should not be visible otherwise they would be sanctioned. We see variants still exist where folks complain that people force them to a homosexual agenda (or similar themes). Yet if they are so superficial, why would it be a problem to incorporate perspectives that arise from them? In America there is clearly a Christian Nationalist group working towards limiting Women's right. Likewise, there are fundamentalist religious groups in the Middle East (and elsewhere), doing the same. Should we not call them religious now?

Uh-oh.

I think it is an error that adversarial attitudes (I am sure there is a better term, but I it eludes me right now) exist because there are categories and that they would vanish if we remove said categories. These attitudes stand on their own and would create arbitrary new ones, to satisfy their urge for hierarchies. Conversely, identifying useful categories and embed them in an inclusive worldview is what makes a pluralistic society possible. Gay people are able to marry, not because we abolished the notion of homosexuality, but rather by embracing it as yet another aspect of society. Conversely, abolishing the idea of homosexuality (which some societies try) does clearly lead to an "us" that affords everyone the same rights to marry someone they love.

That is not the way it is generally assessed. Mental health is a continuum, and a disorder starts when it interferes with daily functioning. Everyone faces element of stress, distress etc. but if manageable, it generally does not rise to the level of a disorder. This is a weird way to look at things. If one approaches this situation from a lens of inclusiveness, the result should be a pluralistic perspective, no? It is not a zero-sum game where we can only have one or the other. That is exactly the point. If we do not recognize folks that are different from us and going as far as denying their individuality, we are not really trying get to the "us". In the past, the "us" would be a demand to become invisible to the majority, as to not upset them. A demand that ultimately is not feasible, puts an unfair pressure on those who cannot assimilate, and ultimately still led to to fission, as the demand was usually done in bad faith (being one of the good ones is often the best many could hope for). If we move from this viewpoint and accept a broader definition of "us", wouldn't that be the way forward? Edit: Also to pre-empt potential arguments: I am not referring to things like HR-EDI thingies, which were developed in the business world- I am thinking of intersectional research efforts aiming at creating more detailed, holistic views of society. Similar as in biology we do not view humans separate from the animal world, for example.

I think the critical bit is finding the correct differences, be it sex or gender on its impact on health. There are complicated overlays at the intersection (and gets really complicated when we talk about health in practice, as sexism and racism has a surprisingly high impact there). As I mentioned before, assuming differences without sufficient evidence is as damaging as ignoring real differences. Unfortunately, medical training is only slowly starting to get rid of the bad parts and introducing new good parts (with good an bad refering to the level of available evidence). Edit, I just remembered some seminars that I took years back, there were a lot of examples provided for assumed differences and stereotypes, predominantly in women, that led to worse health outcomes.

A quickish read on the topic that might help to organize ideas https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/

This is not helpful. In many areas of health, but especially in public health there is increasing recognition that we need more fine-grained approaches to address pervasive equity challenges. To do so, one needs data with more resolution, not less. Aggregating information removes the ability to develop targeted counter-strategies. You might as well say that everything is biological so we should address all issues, mental, infectious diseases, aging, and so on just under the banner of biology. Especially, when it comes to mental health, men and women have different types of challenges and barriers and there is a cultural overlay that needs to recognized while trying to deliver care. Ignoring all that really doesn't do anything helpful and can be harmful. One prominent example in a different health area, is the high mortality of black mothers in the USA, something that would not have been noticeably if one collected data while ignoring racial backgrounds. On thing that has to be mentioned is that in the past (and to a lesser degree currently), folks have divided information along lines that were not well established and/or were colored by stereotypes. Certain types of mental health issues were disproportionately attributed to some groups, but without sufficient data to establish that this is actually the case, for example. In other words, we need more data to figure figure out where the lines really are. Which is additional work, for sure. But the benefit for figuring that out is the ability to develop new approaches to deal with challenges rather than trying (and failing) with one-size-fits all attempts.

1. As I mentioned, the premise is a bit flawed. There is really only a negative selection on virulence if it fundamentally inhibits spread. This is not always the case. And in case of mpox, we see that the current strain is ha higher lethality, specifically because the original outbreak was not stamped out. It is also not accurate to assume that more deadly strains have to arrive from elsewhere. The infected population are the reservoirs (plus non-humans, in case of zoonotic diseases) so it does not really matter if a lot of people are infected within or outside of a country. I think you use lockdown as in shutting down borders, rather than confining folks to their homes (the latter would eliminate spread as households would be isolated). 2. I am still not sure what you mean here. I also think you might confuse "infectivity" with "virulence", when you say virulence. A more virulent form, by definition, causes more harm, which can include death. I think you mean to say that if folks are infected with more harmless strains they would also develop immunity, which is generally true and has always been a part of what happened to COVID-19. The issue is at the beginning of COVID-19 and also for mpox is that this form of immunity simply does not exist in the population. And now that a deadlier variant is circulating, hoping for natural immunity will have a higher death toll. This is why vaccination programs are getting more important now. 3. Again, as above the opposite is happening. Mpox is circulating and resulted in a deadlier strain, which clearly refutes your premise. Reduction of virulence (and again, more virulence means more harm) is generally only expected if death rates are high enough to curtail spread. Which basically means that many people have to die before we see more harmless variants see a reproductive benefit. And even that might not happen if a) its virulence is tied to its ability to infect or b) it is able to maximize its success in infections before the host dies (e.g. if it is infectious for long period of time before symptoms become severe). Syphilis is such a bug, which causes a very slow death. The safest way still remain vaccines, which is the equivalent of being infected with a harmless strain, but without (or at least much less) the uncertainty of other sequelae.

Science in itself is a essentially a methodologies that are used to create an understanding of certain phenomena. Any value judgement to be made would need to be contextualized. While not advanced, they clearly have created an understanding on some level of their world and figured out consistent elements and taught them to the next generation. Some animals show similar abilities. One could argue what level of systematic application some form of empiricism have to have in order to call it a science, and I am sure, opinions will differ. Regardless how we want to call it, I am still unsure why folks would need to accept that axiom that science is good by itself. You might believe it, or not. It has no impact on science itself. I should specify: I am not in which context you intend to use term "axiom" (and what point you wanted to make). I presume in an epistemological sense, but a) there are different forms and b) I don't really see how your example fits any of them. The closest is probably a pragmatist approach, but then it would probably more accurate to state that "science works". Rather than trying to shoehorn a judgement into it. But Eise and others will be better in dissecting this kind of argument.