Interesting Links for 22-05-2025

[andrewducker]

1. I am so sick and tired of "AI"

(tags:ai )

2. How do we know mRNA vaccines are safe and effective? An explainer

(tags:vaccines safety research viaKenny )

3. Reminder that you cannot trust anything that you see or hear.

(tags:ai video )

4. Why elephants have low cancer rates and what it means for humans

(tags:elephants cancer )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

№3. It's an abomination, I think.

[aldabra]

I thought we had observed the vaccine mRNA being reverse transcribed into DNA. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35723296/#:~:text=Our%20results%20indicate%20a%20fast,6%20h%20upon%20BNT162b2%20exposure. This makes me sceptical of explainers explaining that it can't happen.

[andrewducker]

Slightly lost - which line in the explainer are you pointing out?

[aldabra]

"mRNA can’t integrate into the genome since it doesn’t enter the nucleus, the part of a cell where DNA is stored. The molecule only enters the cytoplasm, the watery inner space that fills most of a cell and where protein production takes place." I get that this is by and large true in theory, but you can't round "usually doesn't" to "doesn't" and then infer "can't" from it, not after you have observations saying it can.

[andrewducker]

Gotcha, thank you. And yes, if we have observations saying that it does that then it certainly can do that!

[channelpenguin]

1. Exactly
2. Sigh. Seems the world may lose funding for good research for crappy reasons.
3. Didn't watch. Because I'm sick of this stuff.
4. Fascinating and hopefully useful

[mountainkiss]

Do you agree with the thesis of (1)?

[andrewducker]

Not as extremely as that. My opinions tend to be more nuanced. On specifically the current lot of what's being sold as AI you can read my opinion at https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/4285774.html

But I am very fed up of so much discussion, marketing, etc being centred around something that I think is vastly oversold.