Beware the lying Abstract

An entertaining (and important) piece, Telling the truth in the age of sponsored science by El Gato Malo.  The subheading is "why so many scientific studies refute their own conclusions."  Very much in the Stuart Ritchie Science Fictions arena.  

The heart of the argument is:

Click to enlarge.

I do encounter this sometimes and it is jarring.  You read the abstract and it says one thing and then you read the study and it says another.  You then have to spend the time reconciling the two.  The default assumption is, since it is not your field, that you must be reading it erroneously.  By the time you have proved to yourself that that is not the case, whatever epistemic value there might have been has been frittered away.

this was a big study, but also a retrospective study with post facto matching. the matching was by age, sex, and municipality. it is tainted by the ever present “we counted no one as vaccinated until 14 days post dose 2” issue which will inevitably deeply favor vaccine efficacy through a mathematical rig job (especially in the short run) and can even produce it from zero VE and looks to have had large effects in canadian data.

so we have some ingrained bayesian issues with our cohorts that may inject serious bias toward making vaccines look effective.

the data itself was rendered quite challenging to read. (heavy text, few graphics)

it was also truncated in a somewhat misleading fashion.

if you read it closely, you’ll see that even the longest follow ups on infection data were lumped after 210 days, several were 180 (before it really gets bad) others were 120.

this is just typical bayesian datacrime and presentation bias as we’ve seen so many times before. and it does not really speak to the interesting issue of “are the vaccines preventing severity?”

this is, in fact, omitted from the study. but they did collect the data, they just made it REALLY difficult to find. you need to go HERE to the supplemental materials page. you then need to download the actual PDF as the data is not on the webpage. then you need to go to the very last page of that supplement.

This caution of scientists in the woke academic world where any deviation from postmodernist, critical race theory, social justice theory, intersectional theory orthodoxy leads to your firing is perhaps understandable though incredibly reprehensible.  

If we societally invest the money and time to collect data, its availability and transparency should be above reproach.  El Gato Malo has a good time showing that the abstract does not in fact reflect the actual data.  His description reminded me of the planning department transparency described in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams when Arthur Dent's home is threatened with demolition.

“Mr. Prosser said, “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.”

“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no, he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display …”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”