I’ve only skimmed it, but the MAPPs phase III trial of MDMA was recently released and looks promising. While only a small number of people (at 104 total) it shows some pretty solid results that therapy is good and therapy with MDMA is better.
The MDMA group seems to have had a few more traumatic events than the placebo group but continued on while the two serious traumatic events in the placebo group caused them to leave the study. Also none of the participants sought out MDMA or similar drugs during the study and those that had been previously on SSRIs did slightly better than others.
I saw this meme today it was shared by a tiedye guy whose tie dye work Inreally like. I imagine most of y’all will see the problem.
As most of y’all know I’m a published microbiologist, and I find this meme questionable although questioning science is indeed how scientists advance science.
The problem is that lay people don’t know enough about the field in order to ask good questions, generally the questions they asked have long since been answered by experts or are flawed in some way.
I’m not a lay person for microbiology (and very close biology disciplines like cell bio) but I am for all the sciences that I didn’t spend years developing expertise in.
Learning how to read a science paper is very similar to learning a foreign language. There is necessarily lots of jargon that can be esoteric.
For subjects that arent the kind of biology I know, I trust the consensus of experts.
Generally the people questioning science are like creationists questioning evolution.
“Because you came to discussion on 400 level topics without knowing the alphabet we’re using. Bring yourself up to speed somewhere else. We owe you none of our time.”
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
... Generally the people questioning science are like creationists questioning evolution.
Quite. Just as "Buy a cake" is the most anti-baking thing you can say. You will never bake any cakes if all you do is go out and buy them. But it isn't the most anti-cake thing. Quite the opposite.
IOW the flaw in the implicit argument is the hidden premise that "Trust the science" is advice intended for scientists doing their science.
The research, published in the journal Nature, reports on the excavation of well-preserved wood at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dating back at least 476,000 years and predating the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.
Expert analysis of stone tool cut-marks on the wood show that these early humans shaped and joined two large logs to make a structure, probably the foundation of a platform or part of a dwelling.
Osiris-Rex, the spacecraft, launched from Earth in 2016 and reached asteroid Bennu 2 years later, then after another two years of scanning* landed and grabbed a sample on 20 Oct 2020.
Now it's back and send the sample down in a capsule which landed in Utah today.
The spacecraft itself is now heading off to another asteroid, Apophis. So ... a few kilograms at a time, we'll eventually have all the material of the asteroid belt on Earth?
This was quite interesting, he doesn't just illustrate what it might look like for the earth to have rings from space, but also what it might have looked like from different latitudes as well as how it might have affected the seasons.
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"Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?""
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
It reminds me of the odd question, on Average what planet is closest to Earth? and on Average what planet is closest to Jupiter?
The answer to both is Mercury.
Which seems strange at first, until you realize that the closest object to any object in the solar system is the sun, and thus the closest planet to the sun will also be the closest planet to all other planets.
Actually, if you read it again, the statement is factual.
Yup. Simple Math, really.
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs
A beautiful example of "two wrongs make a right".
I think it's more an example of misdirection.
If you asked people for the individual facts (people who learned something at school and have not forgotten all of it, so not most people on the internet) - without the misleading scale words (and the possibly misleading picture) - they would probably get the right answers.
How many hydrogen atoms are there in a single molecule of water? OK right that's H2O yes, so ... 2?
How many stars are there in the entire Solar System? Well, just the Sun surely, so ... 1.
Is 2 more than 1? Are you fucking with me right now?
It reminds me of the odd question, on Average what planet is closest to Earth? and on Average what planet is closest to Jupiter?
The answer to both is Mercury.
Which seems strange at first, until you realize that the closest object to any object in the solar system is the sun, and thus the closest planet to the sun will also be the closest planet to all other planets.
This on the other hand required new mathematics to answer.
i think on average earth is closer to earth than mercury is
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
[...] First, the spots in the featured picture are not background stars but suspended ice and snow. Next, two prominent ice halos are visible: the 22-degree halo and the 46-degree halo. Multiple arcs are also visible, including, from top to bottom, antisolar (subsun), circumzenithal, Parry, tangent, and parhelic (horizontal). Finally, the balloon shaped curve connecting the top arc to the Sun is the rarest of all: it is the heliac arc, created by reflection from the sides of hexagonally shaped ice crystals suspended in a horizontal orientation.
The Setup, a long twisted pair of wires branches at a Y, on one end the wires are connected, on the other they're unconnected. Along the way oscilloscope connections are made and all fed in to the computer which graphs the readings along the wire as a battery is connected to the pair.
The question, what does the electricity do? How does the electricity 'know' that to flow in a circuit it needs to take the right path instead of the left, and what happens in the left unconnected wires.
My one complaint is that he anthropomorphizes things a bit much.
I grew up in a family of Electrical/Electronic engineering types.
I have never before seen someone dig so deeply into such a simple circuit, before. The enthusiasm this guy shows was fuckin' inspiring.
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“Logic is a defined process for going wrong with Confidence and certainty.” —CF Kettering
Re: Drive by science
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Linear Mode
