Grunslik
Grunslik t1_j2uu0xu wrote
Reply to Immuno-suppressants may negatively affect SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses. In a study on autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic disease (AIRD) patients, neutralizing antibody levels were significantly lower for AIRD patient than in controls. Arthritis treatments were risk factors for reduced responses by glawgii
Ah, another "this works exactly as expected" study. So drugs designed to hinder the body's immune system lowered patients' immunities? I'll notify the Nobel committee immediately!
I know these studies have to be done to establish the science, but they're still a bit funny to me. :)
Grunslik t1_j1838x7 wrote
Reply to Novel research published in the BJM provides evidence of the best way to prepare a hot cup of tea in a hospital setting and the best biscuits to eat with it. Results from the DUNCS study say oatmeal are the crunchiest. by carlos_6m
This is going to be a great IgNobel candidate. Heh.
Grunslik t1_iuloeju wrote
The paper that the article references (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm3233) does not single a bacterium out as the possible cause of colorectal cancer. The paper concludes "Indolimine-producing M. morganii caused increased intestinal permeability and exacerbated colon tumorigenesis in gnotobiotic mice. Overall, these studies imply an expanded role for microbiota-derived genotoxins in shaping host biology and disease susceptibility." The title of that summary article is misleading. It's possible that could be due to a translation error (what should be "... a possible cause ..." translated as "... the possible cause ...", but it's misleading nonetheless.
Grunslik t1_j8cwohd wrote
Reply to New analysis of 142 influential films featuring artificial intelligence (AI) — from 1920 to 2020 — reveals that nine (8%) of 116 AI professionals were portrayed as women by marketrent
What was the point of going back a century for this study? Women were underrepresented as anything but love interests, objects to be rescued, mothers, nurses, or teachers a hundred years ago. 1920 was the first year women could even vote in the U.S.!
What's more, "artificial intelligence," as we understand it today, hasn't existed in fiction that long. This is the rationale mentioned in the paper: >We have examined films over the course of a century, from 1920 to 2020. The total number of films featuring AI is sufficiently small that this large temporal range results in a corpus that is manageable but meaningful. 1920 is an appropriate start date both because of the rapid development of the cinema in the United States and Europe after the First World War, and because this decade saw the earliest high-impact portrayals of intelligent machines and their creators, in Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (1921) and Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1927).
While the sample size may indeed be small, that's no excuse for ignoring the representativeness of the sample. In fact, despite the fact that that the earliest representation of a woman as an AI-scientist that they found was in 1997, they included a corpus of the previous 77 years.
I'm all for equality, and women certainly could use more representation in AI, both in fiction and fact, but this is just bad research methodology.