Re: Speaking Of Misinformation -- 'healh care reform'

abelard wrote:
biology used to be a boring memory exercise...it is now becoming
a matter of highly complex logic...
but that isn't medicine...

No; but it's a common A-level for prospective medics. In my
schooldays, I could have done biology only by dropping maths [and, eg,
economics only by dropping science altogether]. Times have changed,
and it is much easier [probably too easy] for sixth-formers to take
almost any combination of A-levels. One consequence is that medics are
now much more numerate, on average, than a few decades back; another
is that physicists are a much more varied bunch -- which some depts
don't make any allowance for.

of course money is drawing some into
medicine, while many medics are choosing a career path into
the biotech/pharma companies

You could say much the same about maths .... Motivations
change a lot between school, first year at university, and when they
start looking for jobs/careers. I don't think this relates very much
to the question of intelligence, which is where we came in.

so much of the gp's life is handing out aspirins, antibiotics and
sugar pills...or acting as policeman to direct the traffic to
specialists...

True. OTOH, I'm impressed by both my current GP's and his
predecessor's ability to diagnose problems presented to them with
essentially no warning. Perhaps they are unusually competent?

[...]
it's so tedious to have to keep agreeing with you :-)

It's not compulsory, but it helps. There's no charge.

You also have some weasel words.
you're probably referring to my inclination to leave dopes room to
struggle and learn!

Possibly; but if you're going to wave statistics around, it
helps to know what they relate to. It's too easy to slip between
medics [and perhaps meaning GPs rather than the profession as a
whole] and those who at some stage thought of becoming medics -- the
nasturtiums you cast on one lot don't necessarily fall equally on
the others.

[...] It's
quite possible that many relatively thick people tend to be attracted to
medicine, whereas few want to do physics; but that nevertheless medical
students or graduates are brighter than their physicist friends.
that last bit looks on the edge of confused...

Broadly, any reasonably intelligent sixth-former who wants to go
to university to do physics in the UK will be able to. Most of those who
want to do medicine will not. Unless the admissions process is perverse
[and these days it is largely automated within the university bureaucracy,
sadly], the consequence is that medical students should, on average, be
significantly brighter than sixth-formers thinking about it, whereas
physics students won't. So it is possible, even likely, that differences
at school level are reversed at university. Clearer?

[...] I hope the L&V school of
statistics has not infected Steven Hsu or Lubos Motl as badly as it has
Robert. Always a worry when people take IQ too seriously.
now now...you can hardly blame facts for idiocy promoted by
hatstand...or any others

It's not the facts that are a problem, but the way they are
presented. Robert, in common with most of the population, does not
have the tools to dissect and understand them.

statistics is not well taught or understood...

This situation is improving. Modern GCSEs and "numeracy" have
quite a lot of this stuff. It's certainly not perfect, but much better
than in my day [or Robert's, or yours].

i have little time for lynn at the interpretive level...but he does
provide (alleged) data...

Yes, though I see accusations that much of it is bogus in
various ways. It certainly seems rather unfair on great swathes of
western Africa that they are dubbed the stupidest place on the planet
on the basis that (a) there is no direct evidence, but they are close
to Equatorial Guinea, and (b) *one* test administered to disturbed
young Spanish girls mistakenly became the only evidence for there.

it is amazing that people can still make such basic errors of
attributing directionality to correlations...

Makes for good headlines. People need causes.

--
Andy Walker
Nottingham
.

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