Astral Codex Ten

Buzzfeed

10 min read

Buzzfeed

Article

Buzzfeed is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between July 23, 2021 and February 09, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “I read the Buzzfeed piece claiming that the Michigan governor kidnapping plot”; “fraud accusation (primarily described in this Buzzfeed article”; “where Buzzfeed just doesn’t know that sometimes studies happen”. It most often appears alongside Argentina, COVID, Israel.

Metadata

  • Category: Publications
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: July 23, 2021
  • Last seen: February 09, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Links For July
July 23, 2021 · Original source
23: Like everyone else, I read the Buzzfeed piece claiming that the Michigan governor kidnapping plot was, let’s say, “helped along” by the FBI an inappropriate amount. I came out of it thinking that these were some pretty scary dudes who were the type of people who might kidnap governors, but that it seemed possible they would never have gotten around to starting any particular governor-kidnapping operation if not for FBI entrapment. I’m not sure what to think about that - as a liberal, I want to protect the norm of not punishing people for crimes unless they definitely actually came up with the plan to commit them themselves. But I have trouble feeling as outraged as I’d like to about a plan to get potential-governor-kidnappers off the streets faster by convincing them to commit to an actual governor-kidnapping on some specific date that the FBI can arrest them for. And I think about things like how many people get their bikes stolen in the Bay Area, and how police never do anything about it, and how one of the proposals is to plant honeypot bikes in easily-watchable areas and arrest the people who steal them until maybe eventually San Franciscans get the message that bike-stealing can have negative consequences - and this has a lot to recommend it over just letting bikes get stolen (or governors get kidnapped) every so often. Anyway, my favorite part of the article was reading about how much all the governor-kidnapper militia people cared about making sure nobody thought they were racist, even while they were plotting domestic terrorism. This definitely feels like a metaphor for life.
Inline links: the Buzzfeed piece claiming
Response To Alexandros Contra Me On Ivermectin
February 01, 2023 · Original source
Alexandros doesn’t dispute that one of Cadegiani’s trial had some impossible-seeming statistics, but says we shouldn’t jump to allegations of fraud, shouldn’t let this unduly influence our opinion of Cadegiani’s other trials, and also accuses Kyle Sheldrick, the person who discovered the discrepancy, of doing other bad things. My responses: Alexandros’ Point 1 is fair-ish. Since this person appears to be commiting pretty substantial fraud and doing some strange things, I thought it was useful to highlight the ways in which he is weird and suspicious, rather than the ways he is prestigious and impressive. But probably I went too far in this. His Point 2/3 is completely fair, and I’m sorry for getting this wrong. I may have unthinkingly copied it from forbetterscience.com, which made this mistake before me, or I might have just failed at reading comprehension on this translated Portugese-language article I linked. In either case, I apologize to Cadegiani. This is already on my Mistakes page as of June 2022 when Alexandros wrote his original article. His Point 4 is correct, although based on information that came out after I wrote my article. All that was available in English when I wrote was that the Brazilian government was considering accusing Cadegiani of crimes against humanity. I think I did an okay job noting that I was guessing at their reasoning (rather than reporting a known fact), and as written I did make clear that I thought he was innocent of the specific charge. Still, I appreciate the clarification. His Point 5 is - I do feel like Alexandros is having a sort of missing mood on the fact that one of Cadegiani’s big pro-ivermectin studies contains impossible data. While this is not proof of fraud or incompetence, it is some Bayesian evidence for both. And while fraud or incompetence in one of your studies supporting ivermectin is not proof that your other studies supporting ivermectin are also fraudulent/incompetent, it is, again, Bayesian evidence. Alexandros makes a big deal of there being four corrections in the BMJ article attacking Cadegiani, as if now the BMJ has admitted they were wrong all along, whereas these were mostly on unrelated details and the BMJ definitely did not correct the quotes about how his study was “an ethical cesspool of violations” or how “in the entire history of the National Health Council, there has never been such disrespect for ethical standards and research participants in the country”1. I feel like if his Science Olympiad medals are an important part of the story, these kinds of things are an important part too. Still, several of Alexandros’ points were entirely correct, and I appreciate the corrections. Babalola et al (still disagree with Alexandros) OE Babalola (I incorrectly wrote this name as “Babaloba” in the original) did a Nigerian study which found that ivermectin decreased the amount of time it took before people tested negative for COVID. I described this study as: This was a Nigerian RCT comparing 21 patients on low-dose ivermectin, 21 patients on high-dose ivermectin, and 20 patients on a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, a combination antiviral which later studies found not to work for COVID and which might as well be considered a placebo. Primary outcome, as usual, was days until a negative PCR test. High dose ivermectin was 4.65 days, low dose was 6 days, control was 9.15, p = 0.035. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, part of the team that detects fraud in ivermectin papers, is not a fan of this one. He doesn’t say there what means, but elsewhere he tweets [this figure highlighting how the study has “Numerous impossible numbers”] I think his point is that if you have 21 people, it’s impossible to have 50% of them have headache, because that would be 10.5. If 10 people have a headache, it would be 47.6%; if 11, 52%. So something is clearly wrong here. Seems like a relatively minor mistake, and Meyerowitz-Katz stops short of calling fraud, but it’s not a good look. I’m going to be slightly uncomfortable with this study without rejecting it entirely, and move on. Alexandros calls this The Sullying Of Babalola Et Al, and says I “followed Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz off a cliff” by unfairly “lambasting” the innocent Babalola. I “[made] a mountain out of a molehill”. Alexandros quotes a commenter who found that the most likely explanation for the “impossible numbers” in Babaloba was missing data, and notes that usually-anti-ivermectin researcher Kyle Sheldrick had evaluated the raw data and found no fraud. Alexandros concludes: As far as I can tell, Scott discarded a good study here, and besmirched the reputation of the researchers by amplifying flimsy allegations that were known to be off-base at the time that the article was written. I don’t think I did anything especially wrong here. There was a chart that didn’t make sense. It turned out not to make sense because some data was missing. I said “[this] seems like a relatively minor mistake, and Meyerowitz-Katz stops short of calling fraud, but it’s not a good look. I’m going to be slightly uncomfortable with this study without rejecting it entirely, and move on.” I was right that it was a minor mistake, I was right that it wasn’t fraud, and I was right not to reject the study. I didn’t have the exact explanation (missing data), so I did not mention it, but I think I made the correct guess about the sort of explanation it was. I don’t understand why Alexandros acts like I said the study wasn’t worth keeping, or that there was no innocent explanation, or that I was accusing the researchers of fraud, when in fact I said the opposite of all those things, pretty explicitly.2 Carvallo et al (Alexandros 25% right) This was an Argentine study. I described it as: This one has all the disadvantages of Espitia-Hernandez, plus it’s completely unreadable. It’s hard to figure out how many patients there were, whether it was an RCT or not, etc. It looks like maybe there were 42 experimentals and 14 controls, and the controls were about 10x more likely to die than the experimentals. Seems pretty bad. On the other hand, another Carvallo paper was retracted because of fraud: apparently the hospital where the study supposedly took place said it never happened there. I can’t tell if this is a different version of that study, a pilot study for that study, or a different study by the same guy. Anyway, it’s too confusing to interpret, shows implausible results, and is by a known fraudster, so I feel okay about ignoring this one. Alexandros responds here. Attempting to summarize his points: He agrees this study is extremely confusing.
Inline links: forbetterscience.com, this translated Portugese-language article, 1, not a fan of this one, this figure, The Sullying Of Babalola Et Al, 2, another Carvallo paper was retracted, here
The fraud accusation (primarily described in this Buzzfeed article, which Alexandros believes is unfair) was for a study done in four hospitals. One of the hospitals denied knowing anything about it or authorizing it. But the main hospital said they did know about it and authorize it, it (according to Carvallo) it is considered okay in Argentina to let hospital staff enroll in trials without telling the hospital.3
Inline links: this Buzzfeed article, 3
The study does have a lot of data collection issues and Alexandros agrees we shouldn’t take it seriously, he just disagrees with calling it fraud. This is a good place to note that I very poor memory of what I was thinking two years ago, and am having to reconstruct my arguments as I go. Still, reading the BuzzFeed article, I notice things like: Different sources about the study contradict each other (or gave seemingly impossible numbers for) when the study happened, how many patients were involved, and how old they were.
Links For February 2023
February 09, 2023 · Original source
Source: Buzzfeed, but I won’t link it. Remember, It’s Bad On Purpose To Make You Click. I bring this up because we’ve talked here before about billionaire philanthropy. People have superficial objections to it - what if the billionaires are trying to defuse anger at their business empires? What if they donate to overly political or weird speculative causes normal people don’t like? What if they exploit their employees harder to get the donation money? But whenever you whack-a-mole one of these objections, another one seems to pop up.
Inline links: It’s Bad On Purpose To Make You Click, we’ve talked here before about billionaire philanthropy