Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
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Hello, all. I've been around for a few days but haven't yet made an #introduction post. So here we go.
I'm a #bioinformatics consultant with [The Bioinformatics CRO](https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/) working on a variety of small and large projects ranging from fundamental genomics to clinical decision support. Before that, for several years I was a postdoc and ORISE fellow specializing in high-altitude medicine and physiology at the University of Colorado Altitude Research Center. My academic background is a nearly even mix of #biostatistics, machine learning, and biology.
The ARC* has been sadly moribund for a few years, but thanks to collaborations with other groups, we're [starting to get more active again](https://harcsummit.org/). Hopefully I will have more to say about that in the future. Meanwhile, feel free to ask me anything about #altitude medicine---I think I still remember most of it.
Years before _that_, I was an Air Force #medic (after a brief stint as an Army infantryman) followed by a couple of years as a civilian EMT. My time in patient care informs my approach to science: the numbers I crunch represent human lives.
Otherwise, I'm an armchair #paleontologist hoping to be able to call myself an _amateur_ paleontologist again one of these days---by which I mean actually spending some time in the field and/or the prep lab---a too-occasional science fiction writer, and chronically sleep deprived. Also, my life is the internet: it's cats all the way down.
*Fellow #Primeval fans may recognize the jacket in the picture. My wonderful fiancée found it for me when I was hired at the ARC, for exactly the reason you think.
Middle-aged white people on #BadBunny and the #SuperBowl halftime show. One calls him "so famous no one has ever heard of him." I reply, "Don't equate 'no one' with 'no one I know'."
Yes, I am also middle-aged white people. Bast save me from ever being *that kind* of middle-aged white people, okay?
The #KPg is probably the only mass #extinction in Earth's history that conforms to the popular stereotype, and it's our mental model for such events just because #dinosaurs are so charismatic. But yeah. We're in the middle of a sixth great extinction event right now, and the pace makes it frighteningly easy for people to pretend otherwise.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/lorraine-daston/kaboom
I laughed. But more and more people believe this dangerous nonsense. Our ability to prevent and treat #disease is under full-scale attack, and millions—tens or hundreds of millions—will die because of it.
Nobody deserves to die of an easily preventable disease. If anyone did, though, the people pushing this insanity would be at the top of the list.
Checklist time!
Good food: #France ✅ #OlympusMons ❌
Good beer: France ❌ Olympus Mons ❌
The Louvre: France ✅ (kind of) Olympus Mons ❌
High peaks: France ✅ Olympus Mons ✅
Highest peak in Solar System: France ❌ Olympus Mons ✅
Cool fossils: France ✅ Olympus Mons ❌ (probably)
Hard decision, really.
That meme going around about how #rattlesnakes are evolving to lose their rattles because humans keep killing the ones that rattle? It's a just-so story. I get why those are often satisfying, but they're just as often nonsense. And for all its sins, Google is still your friend when it comes to this kind of thing.
[climbs out of acid bath] You mean I've been doing this wrong the whole time?
"Making fun of #antivaxers isn't the best way to educate them."
"It is very difficult to educate mass murderers as to why mass murder is bad."
Because this keeps coming up, and it's good to have a reference: there was never, ever a time when #climatologists were predicting #globalcooling on a human scale.
There was a brief time in the '70s when it looked like we might be headed into another #glacial period of the current ice age (yes) a little faster than expected, which got a lot of media attention. If this had actually happened, it would have been over centuries rather than the usual millennia, but of course that wasn't sensationalist enough, so there was considerable hype.
Meanwhile, researchers in the then-young science of #climatology accurately predicted continued #warming and the accompanying #climatechange: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml
"Scientists used to warn us about global cooling, now they say it's #globalwarming! Make up your minds, stupid scientists!"
Of course, even if there had been legitimate fears about global cooling fifty years ago, that wouldn't invalidate modern concerns about warming. One of the most fundamental principles of science is updating your knowledge base when new information comes along.
As it happens, this isn't even an example of that. Just another lie from the anti-#science loons. You won't convince them with the above link, but the lurkers might take note.
There's a line I've used in many contexts, but particularly enjoy when responding to people who express contempt for #academic #credentials and those who have worked hard to get them:
"It's really impressive how wrong you manage to be about so many things. Like you have a #PhD in wrongology."
Perhaps I was luckier than I thought when my academic career ended prematurely.
I'm horribly amused that at least on my server, the picture of Dr. Marrazzo's face is blurred out as "sensitive content."
#Noem is slaying her thousands, and #Hegseth may slay his tens of thousands. #Kennedy will slay his millions. Single-digit millions if we're *lucky*. Tens or hundreds aren't out of reach.
I know I keep repeating this. Because it's true.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-fires-nih-vaccine-whistleblower-dr-jeanne-marrazzo/
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
