Speaking as an artist, many (most?) of my enduring works were the result of an accident of some kind. I call them "happy accidents" because I recognized that the mistake was better than whatever the vision was that I had at the time.
As a corollary, there are unhappy accidents, and with respect to life forms in a chaotic system, such accidents can perpetuate and endure without human recognition.
"Scientists publish papers not because the paper is the end of science, but because it is a unit of research that is valuable to share with others so that others can use this brick of knowledge and either build with it… or find its weakness and break it down...We wrote our entire analysis in R and shared our code with the world. I tried SO hard to check every single line of code and make our pipeline clear & easy to reproduce. However, despite nearly giving myself stomach ulcers checking every line and stressing about these findings, it’s possible someone finds a mistake in our work. We don’t share this work happily - this is the saddest paper I’ve ever written. We’ve shared our code precisely for that reason: we want you to see exactly what we’ve done, and if we’ve done something wrong we are open to hearing it."
As to your original concern, it is a valid one. I wrote this is response to pre-prints popularized via the press earlier this year:
-> Make bold, unjustifiable claims in the preprint;
-> Ensure widespread coverage in the science press;
-> Walk back those claims during peer-review;
-> Get published; and then
-> Watch blue checks tout original claims as "Fact!"
Any publicity is good publicity. Sprinkle in some words about "this needs further study" and hope someone comes along to fund the next few years of your lab.
Thanks for this. I stumbled across the 2015 study and I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding its recent dissemination. Additionally, here is a recent article published by the author of the study: https://theconversation.com/vaccines-could-affect-how-the-co...
That said, I feel frustrated by how the author alternates between weak and strong wording that may influence a reader's interpretation. For example:
Said then: "When vaccines prevent transmission, as is the case for nearly all vaccines used in humans, this type of evolution towards increased virulence is blocked."
Said now: "...no vaccine is 100% effective...we still need more data to determine how leaky [the mRNA vaccines] are..."
Said then: "The use of leaky vaccines can facilitate the evolution of pathogen strains that put unvaccinated hosts at greater risk of severe disease. The future challenge is to identify whether there are other types of vaccines used in animals and humans that might also generate these evolutionary risks."
Said now: "Individuals and populations have always been better off when vaccinated. At every point in the 50-year history of vaccination against Marek’s disease, an individual chicken exposed to the virus was healthier if it was vaccinated. Variants may have reduced the benefit of vaccination, but they never eliminated the benefit."
If the author believed then what he says now, it would have been beneficial to include in the abstract of the 2015 study something like: In the view of the authors, this data suggests that next-generation vaccines coupled with mass vaccination programs are necessary to combat evolutionary pathogenic risks.
Thanks for the response. I created best bourbons page for fun after my traffic had collapsed, so that can't be the culprit.
I redirected the cloth mask page to the CDC's website. It was something that I created at the behest of friends and family members (and then forgot about). It's worth noting that I did not profit from that page when masks where in high demand. (In the early days of the pandemic, I actually spent a good chunk of time trying to wrangle available PPE and get it into the hands of first responders. I had a big moral issue with the publishers who were profiteering by selling consumers things that they didn't need at the expense of those who did.)
Didn't consider a homepage link from the footer, but it's a fair point. Added.
I was pretty salty at Google at that time. But in hindsight I'm really happy it panned out that way. I'm now in a lot more comfortable situation with respect to having much wider options of what I can do professionally than it would've been had I stayed on that course.
If I may briefly add a minor point: It somehow irks me that the Venn diagram on the landing page and in the icon are not the same orientation (they are rotated by 180°). Any specific reason for that? :)
Even with brand recognition, it's hard to build a product review business that doesn't rely on Google. Until 2018, I was the head of insights at one of the largest online publishers in the U.S. 90% of the company's revenue was tied to organic search. Sure, branding helped to prevent huge impacts like the one that I saw, but plenty of our competitors suffered big drops that resulted in 100s or 1,000s of layoffs.
True, but I think it points to an inherent weakness in the business model. The reason it's so hard to build these businesses without relying on Google (and playing cat and mouse with their ranking algorithms) is because customers fundamentally don't care whether they get their content from you or someone else.
As a corollary, there are unhappy accidents, and with respect to life forms in a chaotic system, such accidents can perpetuate and endure without human recognition.