I’m a quantitative biologist with a background in evolutionary theory, microbiome data science, and metagenomics methods development. I co-lead the [Nucleic Acid Observatory project](https://naobservatory.org), which seeks to develop a metagenomics-based early warning system for future pandemics.
mike_mclaren
Interesting post, thanks for sharing. Although I am skeptical for some reasons I note below, the potential upside to such a cheap treatment for a very unpleasant disease seems highly worth pursuing. For context, I’m viewing this post as an academic biologist who develops methods for microbiome data analysis and collaborates with some clinicians, though my background is ecology and evolution rather than medicine.
While reading the post, I struck by how the referenced evidence for the author’s (Martin Laurence) hypothesis is entirely from citations to his own papers and a short reply to a journal article (I don’t think peer reviewed) about anecdotal observations from six IBD patients. The author’s papers referenced take the form of reviews and argued hypotheses from research done by others, rather than original experiments, and seem to be about spondyloarthritis, prostate cancer and MS rather than Crohn’s directly. Given that IBD and Crohns disease are popular research topics in biomedical research and specifically in microbiome research, I found this lack of reference to others in support of the main hypothesis suspicious, and it made me think the hypothesis is controversial or not well subscribed to in the field. That is not to say it is unfounded, but I would have expected some acknowledgement if this is an “out there” view and discussion of why that included some references to the mainstream view and coverage of the controversy. I would also expect that building further evidence that would convince other researchers and mainstream funders in the field would be the next step, rather than crowd funding a clinical trial, and so would have liked to see an explanation for why this strategy isn’t being taken.
I also felt that the reasons under Neglectedness and Funding Gap didn’t explain why other biomedical researchers aren’t pursuing this, or why the author isn’t soliciting funds through standard biomedical funding agencies. The lack of incentive for private drug companies mentioned does not explain why standard agencies and organizations aren’t funding it. It is true that fungi are often neglected over bacteria in microbiome studies, but if there is good evidence that fungi are playing a role in Crohn’s and they’ve been historically neglected, they I would expect researchers to be jumping on this hypothesis, and for standard biomedical funders to be glad to fund it, unless for reasons mentioned above.
After reading the FAQ on the author’s website, I suspect the author is forgoing the mainstream route and soliciting small private donations because he is operating outside academia and lacks academic or hospital collaborators who can apply for the needed grants. But without these collaborators, I don’t see how the proposed clinical trial could be orchestrated. This is not to say that I think the author is wrong in pursuing this work or not credible, but I feel that ignoring these issues makes the post seem less credible than it might otherwise be.
Small suggestion: I would find it helpful if you linked to the previous post(s) in the series in the beginning and, if the forum software allows it, to make references to individual sections (such as “Section 3 argued that”) to be clickable links to those sections.
I like this idea as well. As a thread grows, it can also be useful for the OP to edit the thread to maintain a structured list of links to key posts, as in the textbook recommendation thread on LessWrong
For the record, the AMAs were mentioned as upcoming in the New EA Funds management thread and a few-day window was given on Dec. 5 in the December quick update thread
Something that seems to be missing from this (very valuable) conversation is that many people also spend months looking for non-EA jobs that they have a personal fit for. I’m mainly aware of people with science PhDs, either applying for industry jobs or applying for professorships. It is not uncommon for this to be a months long process with multiple 10s of applications, as being reported here for EA job searching. The case of where this goes faster in industry jobs tends to be because the applicant is well established as having a key set of skills that a company needs and/or a personal network connection with people involved in hiring at the company. Some academics get lucky just applying for a few professorships, but others apply to 50+ jobs, which easily takes 100+ hours, perhaps many more. And in both cases you spend lots of time over the preceding years learning about the job search process, how to write cover letters, teaching statements, etc.
~1h sounds like the time to make a CV and cover letter personalized for Charity Science starting from an at least semi-relevant CV and cover letter for a previous job application.
Regarding applying to EA organizations, I think we can simply say that the applicants are doing good by applying. Many of the orgs have explicitly said they want lots of applicants—the applicants aren’t wasting the orgs’ time, but helping them get better candidates (in addition to learning a lot through the process, etc).
+1 thanks to Vipul for writing this. But I also want to balance the second part of Aaron’s comment by saying that I would like to see more posts explaining personal donations in general, and don’t think that will happen if the average level of quality and time has to hit this level. Please share your donation reasonings even if you don’t feel super confident about them and don’t have time to make a carefully researched and written post! I had originally thought “Blog posts” would be a good venue for such less-well-crafted posts, but I see now that attempting to make a new blog post simply takes you to the new post page.
Thanks for clarifying! Perhaps clicking the “Blog post” button could autofill a standard note for this, that one could choose to delete. That way new users will be able to understand how this works right away. (Unless the idea is to phase out / discourage / remove this feature)
Thanks for posting this. Posts introducing books or other bodies of work not explicitly about EA or an EA cause area, but that introduce or explain relevant ideas from disparate disciplines, seem valuable and I would like to see more.
Regarding the breakdown by subject, I agree that this would be very valuable, but that having a bunch of subforums probably isn’t the answer. To me, the obvious solution is having keyword/tag support, where authors and/or mods set the keywords for their article, and users can view all posts with a given tag. This feature is built into popular blog-building platforms like Hugo (through Hugo “taxonomies”); I have no idea how hard it would be to implement in the LW/EA forum software. But the ability to filter to posts relating to AI, wild-animal suffering, community building, cause prioritization, etc. seems to be an important feature for making forum posts on a given topic remain relevant long after they have fallen off the Latest Posts list.
Reading this paper carefully actually left me feeling quite skeptical about how species population monitoring is conducted and reported. … So the conclusions have to be pessimistic if all the studies you have to review focus on monitoring species with the highest risk of extinction.
I haven’t read the paper, but did listen to a More or Less episode about the paper. The episode discusses the poor quality of the available data and left me feeling similarly. The radio episode also highlights a potential bias in search strategy used by the authors in their meta-analysis that would favor finding an overall population decline. If I recall correctly, it was something along the lines of the authors searching with keywords related to “declining populations”, so they would naturally tend to be including papers that found declines and excluding papers that found population increases. This idea squares with your interpretation that the −2.5% number shouldn’t be interpreted as a projection for total insect biomass or numbers.
As a scientist, I consider science a way of learning about the world, and not what a particular group of people say. I think the article is fairly explicit about taking a similar definition of “science-aligned”:
(i) the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out...
(...)
Science-aligned. The best means to figuring out how to do the most good is the scientific method, broadly construed to include reliance on careful rigorous argument and theoretical models as well as data.
There is usually a vast body of existing relevant work on a topic across various fields of research. Trying to seriously engage with existing work is part of being scientific; and the opinions or consensus of researchers in the field are a form of data one should not ignore. You can disagree after serious consideration without being unscientific. Simply coming to your own conclusions without engaging with existing work, or acting based on emotion or gut feelings acquired without ever thinking about them critically would be unscientific.
A part of being scientific is also being open to and trying to learn from critiques of your work. It is true that scientists often make bad critiques for bad (unscientific) reasons, and it can take quite a lot of effort to understand the social and historical reasons behind consensus opinions in particular fields on particular issues. I don’t think most EAs would think having a certain degree of support from a particular group of scientists is the relevant criterion.
A possible reason for the downvote is that your initial question ‘What does it mean to be “pro-science”?’ is explicitly answered in the article and it’s not immediately clear that you are acknowledging that and really asking, isn’t everything science-aligned under this definition?
Thanks for writing this and posting it here on the forum. Beyond the helpful suggestions, I feel that both managers and those experiencing imposter syndrome need reminders that many people experience this, likely including many who they themselves view as highly competent. I imagine that imposter syndrome also affects many people not working at EA organizations but who are working towards applying to an EA org or taking another form of career move for EA reasons, especially for orgs or cause areas that are high-profile within the community. (It certainly affects me in this way.) Regarding therapy options for anxiety related to imposter syndrome or more generally—if you’re currently in college or graduate school then you likely have easy access to cheap/free therapy through your university’s student health services.
The link to the previous post is broken
Just wanted to say thanks to both Gregory and Spiracular for their detailed and thoughtful back and forth in this thread. As someone coming from a place somewhere in the middle but having spent less time thinking through these considerations, I found getting to hear your personal perspectives very helpful.
Last week, Science published four responses to the original article,
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaay8060
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaay7976
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaaz0388
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaay8334
along with a reply to the responses from the original authors,
(hat tip to the Future Perfect newsletter)
For the record, you can see all of GPI’s papers at https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/papers/, and seminars by the authors presenting some of these papers can be seen on GPI’s YouTube channel.
(and thanks to the OP for helping bring them to my attention!)
It seems basically impossible to reliably execute a newly-learned many-step task within one second.
Since this also seemed hopeless to me after my test donation took me 20 seconds, I thought I’d reiterate the key part of AviNorowitz’s reply even more plainly: What the EA Giving Tuesday team’s instructions recommend is that you do all of the steps except the last one prior to 8AM. So you only need to do one step (a single mouse click) in one second.
It’s not just you, I’m also unable to log in with this forum’s credentials (“wrong password” error). The links to log in with Google or Github also don’t seem to be functional.