Why you can't trust drug claims, and what that says about the ability to trust in general
theredquest.substack.com
This is an even nerdier piece than usual, and it's fundamentally about trust, verification, and science... try reading the Peaches saga for something fun, sexy, and actionable... Game is an open field: it has few definite answers and doing it poorly has few short-term consequences. Drug development is different: it has more definite answers, although the answers happen amid a lot of noise, and has many important short and long-term consequences. Politics is closer to game than to drug development, but it's not a perfect overlap, since failing or succeeding at game has a strong impact on a given individual... while most political opinions are meant to signal tribal allegiance, and being wrong has little impact on the individual. In the last three+ months there have been lots of dumb claims about how hydroxychloroquine "obviously" works.. and yet we're still looking for that evidence, which seems less and less likely to exist. The more interesting preliminary commentary was out there, best summed by Derek Lowe...
Why you can't trust drug claims, and what that says about the ability to trust in general
Why you can't trust drug claims, and what…
Why you can't trust drug claims, and what that says about the ability to trust in general
This is an even nerdier piece than usual, and it's fundamentally about trust, verification, and science... try reading the Peaches saga for something fun, sexy, and actionable... Game is an open field: it has few definite answers and doing it poorly has few short-term consequences. Drug development is different: it has more definite answers, although the answers happen amid a lot of noise, and has many important short and long-term consequences. Politics is closer to game than to drug development, but it's not a perfect overlap, since failing or succeeding at game has a strong impact on a given individual... while most political opinions are meant to signal tribal allegiance, and being wrong has little impact on the individual. In the last three+ months there have been lots of dumb claims about how hydroxychloroquine "obviously" works.. and yet we're still looking for that evidence, which seems less and less likely to exist. The more interesting preliminary commentary was out there, best summed by Derek Lowe...