> Never hear about it again after the initial news.

Perhaps it is because you're not a specialist—all of these things are still worked on.

> San Diego does have a bunch of health tech, but it pales in comparison to Boston.

I don't have firm data on this, but colloquially among medical people, San Diego is seen to have more biotech startups than any other metro, including Boston/SF.

Boston has more research, of course, though SD is competitive there as well.

We can disagree about numbers etc, but 'pales' doesn't reflect reality.

edit: https://www.cbre.com/insights/local-response/global-life-sci... -- support for it being an important life science market

I have worked in tech in many different cities and when I worked for a startup in San Diego, we were surrounded by health tech companies of all sizes. I've never worked in Boston, but I would say San Diego is definitely a health tech hub.

> And so the dilemma is, do I say something to him? He looks like he is in awful health and high probability with an awful diet (based on profiling him). But I don’t interact with him or have any type of relationship and saying something would be incredibly awkward. Surely he knows I tell myself.

It's an interesting question—if you have knowledge about human health based on a person's appearance, do you share that information? I think a physician may not do that for a stranger, but I imagine you aren't a physician.

As part of a speculative fiction project I have imagined this scenario playing out many times over as people who wear AR-style displays have, eg, melanomas pointed out to them on bodies of people who don’t wear and are unsure if they should say something.

> What percentage of the market actually pays it this way?

The only way this can make sense mathematically is if you're including children, seniors, and/or the ill—populations who are unable to work. What is your reference?

Pew Research says just under 7% of the population uses the exchanges to buy insurance. Overall, about 36% of the population is on public healthcare, according to Census.gov. KFF says that about 80% of the working population, plus or minus, gets insurance through their employer, with an average of $570/month out-of-pocket for premiums.

Thanks for pulling up data!

These numbers are incommensurate in a way that may not be obvious.

7% of the population doesn't tell you what population fraction is covered by such policies.

36% coverage is even harder—every child in the US is eligible for Medicaid, and such children may not always need it, or may move states after using Medicaid, in a way that makes them doubly counted.

80% of the working population is also less clear; is that 80% of policy-holders get their own policy through their own job? Or 80% of working-age people have a policy through some workplace, even if they are not working?

> Unclear if the SC ruling is retro active. But of course, lawyers will try to make money out of this...

What do you mean unclear? The ruling says that certain of the tariffs were always illegal.

I am sympathetic to the argument you wish to make, that peer review is no panacea, but the actual evidence you offer has nothing to do with this claim.

You are trying to say that high profile journals have more retractions, which is well known as you share.

How does that have anything to do with peer review? Are you saying that there is more review or less review in some cases and that influences retraction rate? In what evidence? In what world does the arxiv system moderate this discrepancy?

> How does that have anything to do with peer review?

I already addressed this. People know peer review can be bad, but some think "good journals" still do good peer review. This is not so clear.

> In what world does the arxiv system moderate this discrepancy?

Open systems allow the scientific community to figure out ways to properly assess research quality and value more cheaply, and without passing through (often arbitrary and random) small numbers of gatekeepers that don't even do a reliable or good job gatekeeping in the first place.

Your argument depends on worse peer review at top journals - but fundamentally, you fail to show how doing any peer review is strictly worse than doing no peer review.

I understand that we want arxiv to exist, and it does, and it’s growing. That doesn’t mean we don’t want Nature or Science to triage the most compelling stories.

Importantly, we can already begin the search for these ‘cheaper’ review strategies while not losing the helpful information filter we get by seeing where things are presented/published

> Your argument depends on worse peer review at top journals - but fundamentally, you fail to show how doing any peer review is strictly worse than doing no peer review.

No, it doesn't. The argument is that peer review is incompetent gatekeeping in general, and so slows things down and makes thing expensive. Also, I am countering the argument "we need journals because journals do peer review" by arguing "peer review by journals isn't clearly actually good", I am not saying "peer review in general is unneeded", as I support review by the entire scientific community, rather than journal gatekeepers.

> you fail to show how doing any peer review is strictly worse than doing no peer review

I wasn't trying to show that. I have provided plenty of arguments to show why killing journal-based peer review could definitely speed things up and so potentially make things better. I want actual organic review by the community, not by tiny groups of gatekeepers.

> I want actual organic review by the community, not by tiny groups of gatekeepers.

But this happens—and good work is cited and talked about. I can't tell if you work in science, but this latter part is obvious.

I do work in science, I am claiming that pre-publication / journalistic peer review is limiting (and biasing) the amount of post-publication / non-journalistic peer review that can happen, and it is not limiting this in a very reliable or even IMO particularly desirable way.

There is definitely a problem with the over-production of junk science, and we definitely need a way to filter this out somehow. I am just claiming journalistic / pre-publication peer review does not do this effectively or reliably at all anymore (if it ever did).

> Darwin's work wasn't peer reviewed. Nor Einstein's

Except it was…? This is absurdly ahistorical and the fact that you cross disciplines in trying to make an incorrect argument questions whether you are in science at all.

The structure of peer review in Darwin’s time was different, where experts wrote monographs and gave lectures at symposia that then led to letters among their peers. Which is what happens now, if you take a step back.

The volume of new work these days is incompatible with the older informal system, and is in some ways our new paradigm is superior as there is a formal period in which new works are reviewed.

Sorry. I meant "peer reviewed prior to publication" as the phrase is presently used. I thought that was obvious.

What you're calling "peer review" is what I would call "discussed" or "debated" which it certainly was.

I dispute your claim that the new paradigm is superior.

> Sorry. I meant "peer reviewed prior to publication" as the phrase is presently used.

Accepted. But now there is Arxiv and Biorxiv and even Medrxiv—so we're back to where things were, it seems.

> I think the world got used to us being patsies where we spend our money on R&D paying foreigners

I can tell you're not in the business of training / employing people.

The best ROI is getting someone who is already trained (read you didn't pay for their K-12, their parents' teaching/maternity/healthcare) and just deriving value from their labor.

Leading a nation is not a business. In order to have a successful and self sustaining population we need to develop our own human capital. You want to take shortcuts —those are fine when you’re playing catch up, not when you’re in the lead. Also, it’s a governments responsibility to support and cultivate its own population and not dispose them for another population.

Absolutely true about creating talent. That does not mean you shouldn't take advantage of the easy talent available to you.

Please don't pretend like hiring scientists for a national lab has any effect on the colossal waste of human talent our nation is perpetrating—the problems begin so much earlier, and holding out for another American scientist at a national lab is doing nothing to address the ridiculous state of our human capital development.

> Approximately 370,000 Hmong Americans live in the U.S. largely due to their alliance with the CIA during the Vietnam war.

Correct, but how does this invalidate OP’s assertion? Are you saying that there are no collaborators who were left behind in Vietnam after supporting the US?

If I recall correctly, even getting the Hmong here was a political lift that some opposed

It contradicts his assertion that the US abandons allies.

> I would also describe Jordan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as cohesive societies.

I don’t know much about the region; is it incorrect to say that the nations you listed (excepting Jordan) are collections of fiefdoms with a relatively weak central power? To OP’s point, that is not how I view Iran

That would only be nominally correct regarding UAE, which consists of seven emirates.

Emiratis would describe themselves as a cohesive nation of Emiratis living under seven different Emirs. (There are many YouTube videos about it.) Emiratis from different Emirs do not view themselves as from different ethnicities/tribes/nations.

BTW -- My original post forgot to mention Kuwait as a cohesive nation.

Yes, I agree with you on this part, but the Emirs are very different places. I lived for two years in Dubai, not really by choice, I was sent on a three month assignment by my company that just got extended.

I came to appreciate the place.