> So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?

I'm sorry, was I not clear enough? Bad research should not get funding. Or at least, it shouldn't get it for decades and decades, while producing no results [1].

One's desire to do research into irrelevant questions does not entitle you to support in the name of "science".

[1] I'm OK with some crap science getting funded if every renewal is random!

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estearum 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just because the medical system hasn't adapted to the (frankly astounding) findings produced by SDOH research doesn't mean it's not valuable or should be stopped. The takeaway from SDOH is that social determinants are by far more powerful forces on people's health than actual medicine.

You would prefer we spend all of our money on the 10-15% of health outcomes determined by actual medical care and simply ignore the remainder, and you argue this from a point of "logic?"

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timr 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> (frankly astounding) findings produced by SDOH research

I'm telling you, these same "astounding" findings were around 20 years ago. I learned about them when I was an undergraduate. They haven't changed.

Things can be astounding and still be old news. Quantum mechanics were astounding in 1930. Doesn't mean we should firehose money into standard model research. The world moves on.

> You would prefer we spend all of our money on the 10-15% of health outcomes determined by actual medical care and simply ignore the remainder, and you argue this from a point of "logic?"

No. Next question.

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estearum 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect, based on your disposition towards it, you actually are not keeping up with the latest in SDOH research, and so I'm not sure where your confidence comes from as to whether we're firehosing money into "standard model research" or whether we're building a more refined and useful picture of stuff that was more vaguely understood 20 years ago.

Is this a field you've been following closely, or am I listening to the equivalent of a person with no interest in quantum mechanics complaining that nothing new has happened in quantum mechanics?

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timr 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> I suspect, based on your disposition towards it, you actually are not keeping up with the latest in SDOH research,

Man, you guys keep finding fun new ways of saying "if you don't like what I like, you must be uninformed".

Instead of doing that, inform me: what revolutionary new finding in SDOH have we discovered in the last 20 years? Prove me wrong.

> I'm not sure where your confidence comes from as to whether we're firehosing money into "standard model research" or whether we're building a more refined and useful picture of stuff that was more vaguely understood 20 years ago.

That's called a metaphor. Feel free to substitute any other example that you feel better illustrates the concept of "studying a question we already know the answer to".

Knowledge is always fractal, so it's not particularly responsive to argue that there might be something we don't know about the thing we've already intensively studied. Of course there might be...but when there are lots of questions we don't know the answer to, it's smarter to focus on those, instead.

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estearum 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.

Here's another one: a person's perception of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they actually are rural. I.e. two neighbors living side by side in suburban America, the one who perceives themselves to be rural will have dramatically worse outcomes than the one who perceives themselves to be urban/suburban.

These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans.

You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?

FWIW, the specific cited research where she's trying to quantify the health impacts of living near pollution sources is actually important for e.g. lawsuits where people try to hold corporations accountable for poisoning their children. Any value in that?

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timr 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.

This isn't revolutionary. But it's a perfect example.

This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.

> a person's perception of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they actually are rural.

OK. Great. I'm poor if I think I'm poor. Roger.

> These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans. You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?

I don't know! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!

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curt15 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.

It's one thing to theorize a causal relationship, but informed policy-making needs actual data that can only be obtained by legwork. What aspects of the social/cultural environment are we talking about? What genes are being expressed differently? What are their estimated health or economic impacts?

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timr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It wasn’t a “theory” (at least no more than any other scientific fact), and telling me that someone found a relationship between two things doesn’t tell me that someone proved the relationship was causal.

But sure, let’s say I accept your (implicit) assertion that this genetic relationship is solid, causal and clear. How does it help solve the problem? It’s a perfect example of research that does nothing except making people feel virtuous for doing the research. Academia is loaded with this stuff, and if you point out that it’s a waste of time and money, you get indignation and faux outrage for having the temerity to “question discovery”.

Y’all keep coming back with “there are always things we don’t know!” as if this is somehow an argument for funding literally any question (and any bad methodology) that someone labels as “science”. It isn’t.

	▲	estearum 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Realistically yes, science and academia are loaded with "waste". The vast majority of questions there's nothing interesting or useful to discover. The problem is that we don't know ex ante which questions fall into that category (except you, obviously, you do know this, but just don't want to share the secret sauce) And no I think people are coming back with "there are things we don't know that seem highly relevant to understanding and improving our population's wellbeing." The two ingredients to fixing a problem are knowledge and action and it's not scientists' jobs to be doing the action part, and while one could argue we have all the knowledge we need, a reasonable counterargument is that the only way we know we have the knowledge we need is when action is taken (and successful). And we're obviously not there yet.

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estearum 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.

Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao. There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?

> I don't know [how to mitigate health disparities]! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!

Huh? I didn't claim to have all the answers lol, you did.

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timr 14 hours ago | parent [-]

> Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao.

OK, cool. Let's not do more of that, then. I just said that I could see the difference between the questions, and that they're not likely to get funding elsewhere, not that we should absolutely fund more black hole space telescopes.

> There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?

No. Not in the same class as "are poor people sicker than rich people", or "does gravity cause things to fall down". Next question.

	▲	estearum 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		FYI we've discovered precisely 0 (zero) things in cosmology or physics more broadly, or even material science, in the last 100 years that aren't derivable from relativity lol. Does your tirade copy/paste to that entire field too?

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ModernMech 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I understand you personally are of the opinion that it's bad research, but thank God you're not in charge of funding research, because I pay taxes too and I think it's good.

But that begs the question -- how do you determine what is relevent and irrelevant research, beyond just consulting your personal feelings? Because if you have a sure and nonbiased way to do that which will satisfy all the current stake holders (the entire tax base and US population), I think everyone would agree we should that!

But if you don't have a proposal beyond "I don't like it, it's bad" then I'm sorry, the current system with all its flaws (delegating funding decisions to renowned experts in their respective fields rather than the sensibilities of the HN comment section) is far superior to that.

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timr 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> but thank God you're not in charge of funding research, because I pay taxes too and I think it's good.

Oh stop with the silly straw men, already. I think research is good. I did research for decades of my life.

I am against bad research.

> how do you determine what is relevent and irrelevant research, beyond just consulting your personal feelings? Because if you have a sure and nonbiased way to do that which will satisfy all the current stake holders (the entire tax base and US population), I think everyone would agree we should that!

Well, I proposed one way (which you completely ignored, in order to accuse me of being biased): just fund stuff at random.

I don't think you're being a sincere interlocutor, but you've stumbled upon a legitimate class of argument: how does anyone separate their personal bias from objective evaluation of science? The current system sucks at this, and is not only loaded with bias, the bias is built into the system.

We probably not do worse to just set some minimum objective bar for competency (degrees, institution, basic review for research viability, etc.) then fund whomever passes the bar at random.

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ModernMech 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> I am against bad research.

Most people are against bad research, but not everyone agrees with you on what bad means. Maybe the research you label "bad", I label "good". Your opinion has just as much weight as mine. So where does that leave us on the question of who gets research funding? Or did you have a different definition of "bad" in mind that doesn't consult your biases?

> One's desire to do research into irrelevant questions

Who decides what's a relevent question? The president? Political parties? B/Trillionaires? Big Tech / Oil / Pharma ? You?

> Well, I proposed one way (which you completely ignored, in order to accuse me of being biased): just fund stuff at random.

Sorry I ignored it, but you only included it as a footnote to your reply, so I wasn't sure you were actually serious. You gave two ideas really: fund stuff at random and fund continuations at random but holding a minimum objective bar. I'll take them in turn:

> just set some minimum objective bar for competency (degrees, institution, basic review for research viability, etc.) then fund whomever passes the bar at random.

This is more or less how the system operates now. You get a PhD, you go to a good institution, get some results, publish some papers, submit a proposal, and then it's a dice roll from there whether it gets funded or not. You said you had a career in research so you know this. How do you do "basic review for research viability" to your liking that's different from what's done now? Because now it's done by experts in their respective fields. You seem to think that means "bias is built into the system", yes? How do you evaluate basic research viability without consulting people specifically for their biases to determine that viability?

But funding continuations at random means that good research and bad research, whatever that means, would have a random chance of just not continuing. How does a country build long time-horizon research programs if they can just be defunded at the roll of the dice despite good results? How does that improve the system if good research can just randomly die and bad research can continue randomly as a matter of policy?

> just fund stuff at random.

Doesn't prevent bad research from being funded, as you admit. So to me, since both of your ideas aren't really designed to eliminate bad research but do work to eliminate biases, it seems like you're less concerned with not funding bad research, and more concerned with how biased you perceive the funding process to be.

> you've stumbled upon a legitimate class of argument: how does anyone separate their personal bias from objective evaluation of science?

That's my whole point, you can't. The system we've built is a compromise because so many people have an opinion on what should / should not be funded. You and I are biased and will never agree, so we leave it up to experts who are biased and will also never agree, but at least they know what they're talking about. So at the end of the day some things we both don't like get funded from a very small pot. Maybe a dice roll improves the whole process, but given the system has been wildly successful in producing technological breakthroughs despite inefficiencies and biases and disagreements, we shouldn't just go throwing wrenches in it just because it's biased.

	▲	tbrownaw 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Maybe the research you label "bad", I label "good". Your opinion has just as much weight as mine. "Just as much weight" in what context? Who is evaluating these weights? For what purpose? The person you're arguing with appears to be claiming to be a domain expert. Are you also claiming to be a domain expert, or is this a case of "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge"?