Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Pinned toot
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 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. 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.
For once, a story about a new kind of #spacecraft #propulsion that’s not vaporware depending on hypothetical #physics breakthroughs! Unsurprisingly, that also means it’s a lot less exciting than the stuff that gets hyped as being able to take us to the #stars. Evolutionary, not revolutionary. But still pretty neat.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a60654632/next-generation-ion-thruster-nasa/
Nice overview. TL;DR: feathers are awesome. :)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-feathers-are-one-of-evolutions-cleverest-inventions
It’s so cute when #creationists try to sound sciencey. Like little kids misusing big words to try to impress the grown-ups.
I just coined “#Xycophancy” to describe the thought processes of #Musk stans and I’m very proud of myself.
Their entire worldview is antebellum, so this tracks. 😐
Conservative justices appear skeptical federal law requires emergency abortion care https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/supreme-cour...
“You think you have it bad? Lemme tell ya …”
Stop. Nothing good comes after that.
Holy shit, the #House passed a solid #Ukraine aid bill. Miracles can happen.
Of course they could have passed the #Senate version weeks ago [1] but this is, fortunately, a case where “better late than never” really does apply. Ukraine has suffered terribly due to the pointless delay, but I have a reasonable expectation the Senate will pass it quickly, #Biden will sign it immediately, and the aid will be on its way in short order. If nothing else, this should put a serious dent in #Russian plans for a late spring / summer #offensive.
I have no idea what’s going on in #Johnson’s head [2]. If he wants to be yet another #Putin / #Trump tool [3] like so much of the #Republican Party clearly does, he could have kept delaying practically forever. If he wants to do what’s best for the country, for any value of “best,” he should have done that already. Ukraine will benefit from this aid, absolutely. The benefit would have been considerably greater if Ukrainian cities hadn’t suffered under Russian #missile strikes without adequate air defenses and Ukrainian soldiers had enough #artillery shells to break up Russian formations at the front.
Oh yeah: please do not turn this into a discussion about Israel and Palestine. That conversation is going on elsewhere, all over the entire internet. Plenty of forums to say your piece. My post isn’t one of them. I’m talking about Ukraine here, and that’s all.
[1] Months? I’ve lost track.
[2] Huh-huh, huh-huh.
[3] These lines just write themselves.
In light of this, the current “#HellChicken” a.k.a. #Anzu should be promoted to Hell Turkey, while the as-yet-unnamed small variety should be Hell Cornish Game Hen.
I see a lot of people talking about #science as a #religion, or the closely related idea of “#scientism,” the purported ideology that says science is the only way to know things. Oh, I’m not talking about you, they’ll solemnly assure anyone who objects. Naturally you know better. Just … you know … them. Those people, out there. The great unwashed. On the #internet, nobody knows how long it’s been since you took a shower.
You know what I hardly ever see? The phenomenon in question.
There are people who think that way. Yes. Ideologues of science—hardly if ever #scientists themselves—who invoke The #Scientific Method™ (that’s a whole ‘nother rant) as the be-all and end-all justification for whatever nonsense they spew. Such posts and comments have crossed my feed a time or two. But they are vastly outnumbered by those who complain about them, at least where I can see both groups. I have no reason to believe my experience is atypical in this regard.
As a scientist myself, I think science is a very good way to understand certain things. In my field, it’s the best way to know what makes you sick, and hopefully what will make you better. There are other ways to learn these things, sure, and many of them can be useful places to start. If you don’t end up with a #clinical #trial sooner or later, you’re as likely to kill as cure.
To know what we’re seeing when we look up at the lights in the sky. How the natural world around us, of which we’re a part whether we like it or not, changes and how we both affect and are affected by that change. What came before us, and what might come after. The fundamental building blocks of reality. All these require science for real understanding. If you try to puzzle them out any other way, you may learn something, but you’ll also fill your head with a lot of nonsense. Sorting the wheat from the chaff later is a lot harder than doing it right the first time.
Other questions are at least amenable to scientific inquiry, although that process itself may not be enough. What my fiancee does as a #historian looks, to me, a lot like what I do as a #biomedical #researcher. Make observations, construct #hypotheses, gather evidence, test and revise. (And revise, and revise, and …) But #history vanishes every minute. What’s left is always fragmentary, and shaped by the interactions of modern minds with those long since gone to dust. There will never be an objective truth, only the truest story that can be told.
And then there are things beyond any kind of quantitative analysis, or even rigorous qualitative description. We may be able to agree on what makes a true story, more or less, but what makes a good one? That’s inherently personal. A happy marriage, a tasty meal, a satisfying job—only we can define what these goals mean for ourselves. Science may at best, occasionally, provide vague guidelines. Even then, my advice will not determine your experience.
My perspective is unusual in one key way, sure: not too many people do science for a living, at least not compared to other jobs. With regards to the way people talk about science, I think it’s not unusual at all, except maybe that I pay particular attention.
The division above—things that clearly belong in science’s domain, things that clearly don’t, and a whole bunch in the middle—is a whole lot more common than the idea of science as the One True. It’s at least somewhat more common than blanket rejection of science too, but not as much as it should be. That’s also a rant for another time.
Which all makes me wonder what people who never miss a chance to bring up “scientism” and science-as-religion get out of it.
#Troodon may once again be a valid #genus. Or, uh, so I’ve heard.
#Brontosaurus is smiling, and #Diatryma is waiting patiently.
Huh, I can now write about #antivax without frothing at the mouth too much. That’s progress, I guess.
Text, for anyone who doesn’t want to click the link. Every once in a while I can convince myself I’m still a writer.
===
“How did the 4 years in the #infantry change your life?”
Thanks for the A2A. It wasn’t four years in my case, only two. At that time the US Army offered short enlistment for various MOSs including 11B, and fortunately I took one.
I was a mediocre infantryman, to be honest. I was very good at what are perhaps the two most important infantry skills, marksmanship and road marching—but lousy at the rest of the job. In particular, I have a poor sense of direction so I get lost in the woods easily, I don’t tolerate sleep deprivation well, and I’m terrible at throwing so I was just hopeless with hand grenades. One of my best friends was a former minor-league baseball pitcher, and an absolute wizard with grenades as you’d expect, but a really bad shot. We made a deal that if we ever went to war together, he’d give me all his ammunition, I’d give him all my grenades, and we’d stick close together.
Fortunately we never did go to war: that had to wait until Desert Storm, by which time I’d gone over to the Air Force as a medic, a job which suited me much better. Two years in peacetime humping a rucksack, burning through ammunition at the range, and moving a whole lot of dirt with an entrenching tool didn’t make me some kind of super-soldier. It was a job, with its good and bad points like any other. I was glad I’d done it, and glad to leave. The big-picture outline of my life would probably be about the same if I’d never done it at all.
But it did change me, and for the most part I think in a good way. Infantry work requires a level of endurance few other jobs, military or civilian, can match. You don’t have to be especially strong or smart or tough to be a grunt. You do have to be to determined. To keep going, mile after mile. To find what creature comforts you can in the midst of heat and cold and mud and sand. To meet the worst the world can throw at you with tempered pride and a sense of humor. To not stop, no matter how much you want to, because you won’t let your fellow soldiers down. You can whine, you can curse, you can even cry. You just can’t stop.
I’ve been through other hard things in my life since then. Working in the base ER as a medic, and then as a civilian EMT, showed me more blood and pain than I ever saw as a grunt. My divorce and subsequent romance with the bottle came closer to killing me than any enemy bullet. Getting my PhD was a very long hump indeed, with plenty of agony along the way.
Through it all, I told myself: You marched through Georgia. You can do this too. One foot in front of the other. Rest and food are over the next ridge, or maybe the next one after that. You’ll get there, because you have no other choice. Infantry.
#Hooah, as the kids say these days. In my day it was #ooshah, and we wore #onions on our belts when Uncle Billy #Sherman led us against the #Redcoats on #SanJuanHill.
https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-4-years-in-the-infantry-change-your-life/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
