Daniel Lemire's blog

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Science and Technology links (February 22nd 2020)

    1. In a large cohort study, the highest probability of reaching 90 years old was found for those drinking between 5g and 15 g of alcohol per day. This does not mean that if you are not drinking, you should start.
    2. The Earth is getting greener thanks to CO2. In turn, a greener Earth will mitigate global warming. (Source: Nature)
    3. In 2019, the carbon emissions in the US fell by 2.9%. They fell by 5% in the European Union. They also fell in Japan. (Source: Bailey)
    4. Robots can take blood samples and apparently do competent job, according to a clinical trial.
    5. We may soon get 80-terabyte disk drives.
    6. The age-adjusted cancer rate in the US is currently about at the same level as it was in 1930. We are not winning the war against cancer.
    7. You are better off cutting your food on wooden planks, they are more hygienic that plastic planks.
    8. Science is undergoing what some people call the “reproducibility crisis”: may important results reported in prestigious venues cannot be reproduced by other scientists, independently. Miyakawa suggests that the reproducibility crisis might be related to the fact that studies are frequently fabricated:

    (…) more than 97% of the 41 manuscripts did not present the raw data supporting their results when requested by an editor, suggesting a possibility that the raw data did not exist from the beginning.

    A few years ago, I was on the PhD committee of a student. I questioned the results. Ultimately, we asked for the software that produced that data. The student quickly reported that the software had been lost, deleted by the University. We declined to grant the PhD despite an extensive publication record (with articles in some of the best venues). I paid a political price for my choice to fail the student. The student eventually did get a PhD after an appeal. I would not be surprised to learn that this student became a professor. The lesson is that you should always doubt scientific studies. Ask that they be independently reproduced.