#data padding

[judgestarling]

How to Ignore More than a Century Worth of Scientific Literature and Make Headline-Grabbing Claims on One of the Deadliest and Exhaustively Studied Pandemics in History Based on Flawed Data and Questionable Analysis

The 1918 influenza pandemic, also erroneously referred to as the “Spanish flu,” has affected up to one billion people—half the world’s population at the time—and has killed an estimated 20–30 million people in the Western World and God-only-knows-how-many people in other countries. Previous and subsequent influenza pandemics usually hit infants and the elderly the hardest. The 1918 influenza pandemic was a weird one because of the atypically high mortality among young adults. The peak mortality rate during the fall wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Canada and the USA was 28 years. The death of young adults lowered the average life expectancy in the United States by more than 10 years. Numerous studies have confirmed these findings.

A typical picture illustrating the haunting age peculiarity of this pandemic is shown below.

Even in poor, medically underserved communities, it was the young healthy adults that perished leaving many very young orphans behind.

In the early 2000s scientists started looking for samples of the 1918 virus. They reasoned that their best chance was to find it inside an influenza victim buried in permafrost. Brevig Mission in Alaska had 89 inhabitants in 1918 of which 87 died of influenza. It was a good bet that some sequenceable genetic material could be recovered from the graves of these flu victims. Indeed, genomic RNA of the 1918 virus was recovered from frozen lung tissues of an Alaskan influenza victim who was buried in permafrost in November of 1918.

In 2005, scientists used reverse genetics to generate an influenza virus bearing all eight genome segments of the 1918 virus to study its properties. The deadly 1918 virus has thus been resurrected!

The reconstructed virus turned out to be as deadly as the original one with a 100% mortality in mice. Another conclusion of this “resurrection” study was that the virus kills by overreaction of the body’s immune system, which explained the weird age distribution of deaths due to the "Spanish Flu." The strong adaptive immune systems of young adults ravaged their body, whereas the underdeveloped immune systems of young children and the weakened immune system of old people resulted fewer deaths. It was inflammation that killed people, not the viral infection directly or secondary infections. These studies seemed like the end of the 1918 influenza story.

Imagine my surprise, then, when at the end of 2023, I started noticing that the 1918 influenza pandemic is in the news again. “Killer 1918 flu didn't pick on the healthy, after all,” declared Science (the same Science that “killed” Junk DNA a decade earlier). “History Says the 1918 Flu Killed the Young and Healthy. These Bones Say Otherwise,” quipped WIRED. And US News and World Reports headlined the findings as “Contrary to Popular Belief, 1918 Flu Did Not Target the Healthy Young.”

The origin of these headlines was a 2023 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science entitled “Frailty and Survival in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic” by Amanda Wissler, currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and Sharon DeWitte, Professor of Anthropology at University of Colorado in Boulder. The paper was largely based largely on Wissler’s PhD dissertation at Arizona State University under the supervision of Professor Jane Buikstra.

One would have thought that a study that purports to discard more than a hundred years of observations, refute dozens of analyses, refute the conclusions in about 18,000 peer-reviewed articles, and generate headlines in serious news media would require a great amount of unimpeachable data and an analysis that is—if not infallible—close to infallible. If you thought that, you will be sorely disappointed.

Let us start with the Materials and Methods section. The study is based on a bone sample from the Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection which contains skeletons of people who died in Cleveland, Ohio between 1910 and 1939. The skeletons belong to people whose bodies were not claimed within 36 hours of death (i.e., the poor, the homeless, the socially isolated, the incarcerated, the institutionalized as “mentally defectives,” and those whose relatives couldn’t possibly collect their loved ones’ bodies within a day and a half. Black and indigenous people most probably made the bulk of this collection. Wissler and DeWitte euphemistically called their sample as consisting of “individuals of low socioeconomic status,” who mostly “died in almshouses or public hospitals.” Is this sample representative of the population in Cleveland between 1910 and 1939? I very much doubt it. And don’t even start me on the ethical crimes committed to assemble this collection. Of course, the bodies in this collection were legally obtained following an Ohio legislation that permitted people whose bodies were not claimed within 36 hours of death to be “donated” for scientific study, but was the collection ethically assembled? I think not! The ethics of this collection reminds me of a joke my dad used to tell. “A religious Jewish woman goes to the Rabbi in a panic. ‘Rabbi, the chicken I cooked for Shabbat dinner fell into a soiled baby's diaper. Is it still kosher?’ she asks. The Rabbi replies, ‘It's kosher, of course, but I would I eat it?’” But, I digress.

Wissler and DeWitte’s sample consisted of 369 individuals: 310 males (84%) and 59 females (16%). This fact immediately tells the reader that something is off; the sample is not representative of the general population.

Curiously, the Materials and Methods section also contains the following statement, “to maximize the sample size, both the 1918 flu and the control groups include individuals who died from influenza and pneumonia as well as other diseases such as tuberculosis and myocarditis.” (No data is provided as to how many individuals were included for the purpose of padding the sample size.) Finally, medical history for the individuals in the study is mostly not known. Thus, it is impossible to know whether “an individual suffered another disease during life unless it was listed as the cause of death or left diagnostic evidence on their skeleton.”

Finally, we have the problem of missing data. In the previous paragraph, we have seen one method of padding the data. Here comes another one. The last sentence of the Analytical Methods section states that missing skeletal data “were imputed using the ‘pmm’ function of the mice R package following previous recommendations.” Now, I need to tell the reader that I get hives and homicidal thoughts whenever I read the terms “imputed” or “imputation,” which nowadays essentially mean conjuring data out of thin air. Interestingly, “imputed” was originally a theological term meaning to falsely ascribe guilt to a person. The way data analysts use the word “imputed” started with economists in 1893 when a step in a multistep process was assigned a value by inference from the value of the process to which it contributes. More recently, the term “impute” was used by the Internal Revenue Service to assign interest to an investment when the interest rate is not known. The fact that imputation is used in scientific research to artificially increase the sample size is an inexcusable obscenity.

In the abstract of the article, it is stated that “frail or unhealthy individuals were more likely to die during the pandemic than those who were not frail.” Now, “frailty” is a nebulous and inexact term often defined as “an aging-related syndrome of physiological decline, characterized by marked vulnerability to adverse health outcomes.” https://www.uptodate.com/contents/frailty Thus, the authors used a skeletal proxy to identify frailty. The proxy was lesions on the shinbones (periostosis). Whether this proxy has anything to do with anything is unknown.

The choice of lesions on the shinbones reminds me on of the Streetlight effect or the Drunkard's search principle—both examples of an observational bias whereby one limits the variables used in a study to those that are easy to obtain regardless of whether the choice is actually relevant to the study question.

Let us now discuss the article’s statistical analyses, results, and conclusions. A good piece of advice that I once got from one of my mentors was “Before you subject your data to complicated analyses and reach extravagant conclusions, do yourself a favor and look at the data carefully and perform some simple analyses.” In this case, subjecting the data to complicated (and frankly confusing) Kaplan–Meier survival analysis, Cox proportional hazards analysis, and Schoenfeld test, one should look at the data and do some long division or at most some simple 2×2 contingency analyses.

The following data was extracted from Table 1 of Wissler and DeWitte (2023).

The first thing I noticed was that 67% of the skeletons in the sample belonged to "frail" people. Does this look like a representative sample of the population of Cleveland, Ohio in 1918? The second thing I noticed is that 69% of the control group have had lesions on their shinbones (either active or healed) versus 59% in the group that succumbed to flu. Thus, by the definition used by Wissler and DeWitte, the group of people that succumbed to influenza were 14–17% less “frail” than the group that survived. Of course, in my simple analysis I can use the skeletons exhibiting active or mixed lesions versus the rest of the skeletons (healed and no lesions). In this case, 25% of the control group turn out to be frail, versus 20% in those that succumbed to flu. This result seemed to support the thesis of Wissler and DeWitte, until you realize that the difference is not statistically significant (Fisher's exact test, P = 0.3074).

After reading this paper very carefully, I am left with one open question. It remains unclear to me how this paper managed to get published in PNAS and become a news sensation. Is this another example of the power of the press release?

[misstoodles-doodles]

Patching Up & Post-Mission Debrief (AU)

AKA a 3 character sketch that got way WAY out of hand.

Close ups:

[ghostymarni]

“uh- commander thorn? He fell asleep standing up again.”

[radiospectre]

ignore the text it was stuck in my head LOL. my friends keep quoting the original meme im in hell. mostly just a style test for future artistic endeavorsss & whatnot

[snawleyy]

idk if I’ll ever finish this so here’s little iPad kid ahsoka

[amandamadeathing]

The Match from Another Batch:

[here-comes-the-moose]

Tech: Echo my stomach hurts.

Echo, not looking up from his reg manuals: It’s because you’re always on that damn data pad.

[horatio-fig]

iPad baby Thrawn

[bittercafanddatapads]

Marshall Commander Fox is scarcely seen without his iconic helmet, even within the confines of the Coruscant guards headquarters. The freshest of shinies usually don’t see his face until a few rotations into their deployment, even then usually in private moments and passing chances. The very rare occasion Fox eats with his corries in the mess hall (the times he actually has time to), glances of Fox in the medical bay being treated after a sideways operation (only after everyone else has been cared for by his firm insistence,) the training assessments he’s able to schedule and be apart of and participate in (swift healing to the pride of cocky shinies he calls to the sparring mat.)

Rather, it’s not impossible that he’s most often unhelmed in the situations of senate view.

Talking down antsy senators is one thing, and there’s numerous reasons why Fox’s number one rule for his Corries to follow is to never remove your helmet in senate view. The ability to decorate yourself and make yourself unique is a freedom the Coruscant guard gets to indulge very little in. They can’t decorate their armor for their own safety, and still enabling them the freedom to decorate their bodies and hair Fox is thankful he’s able to allow. But Fox’s mismatched armor isn’t unique to be hypocritical towards his own rules and troopers. It’s to protect them.

When a senator finds yet another fickle complaint about the troopers in red, they can’t discern amongst a selective Trooper to pin the blame. But in the line of white and red, Fox’s red and white armor catches their eye. There’s someone they can funnel their frustrations towards. Fox’s scars, hardened eyes, and graying hairs is the only face they’ve seen helmetless, the face they think about when building their ire.

[prowling-muffin]

literary nerds <3

[kosmos-dan]

So I wanted to share this lt. commander Data I made last year

[eclec-tech]

My Nerd Year's Eve Gifts!

Tech is a huge part of why I started writing and was the focus of my very first story, so I had to get this little hardcover book from @autistic-artistech that looks so much like his beloved data pad! It even says "The Bad Batch" along the spine, so it's going to look amazing on the shelf no matter which way it's facing!

The other two are Tech's season one ear cup art in a magnet and a sticker that's getting slapped on my laptop as soon as I post this. I miss that lightning bolt, and this is the best recreation of it I've seen. The shading gives it a faceted 3D look!

I will be back for more! I had to behave myself because it was Christmastime and I wasn't supposed to be buying myself gifts. 😁

HERE'S THE SHOP IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR OWN!

[ghostymarni]

@kark-trooper-echo I have a self applied warning label, hope you know what you’re getting into by following me back

[archives-of-iacon]

"C.O.G.S." Welcome Post Draft v7.2

Note from Veltrex, Senior Archivist and Long-time Sufferer: Please review the following edit suggestions prior to resubmission for final project approval. Please note that the formation and longevity of the proposed intern GRID outreach sub-committee is dependent on internal review and employee behavior.

Welcome Message [Original Title: “YO WE’RE LIVE” – please adjust for tone and dignity.]

Greetings, fellow data-seekers and cultural recorders. [Removed: "fellow protoforms"]

The Iacon Archives Outreach and Engagement Subdivision [hereafter referred to as currently under review name "C.O.G.S." until a more acceptable name is selected] has been granted limited* [*Edited by Veltrex] , [removed phrase: "ALL OR NOTHING^^SWEETSPARK"] , [Reason: Inaccurate descriptor, informal tone, ill-fitting syntax] authority to facilitate public interaction with selected archive material.

Objectives include:

“Making the archives cool again” [REWRITE: Engaging broader audiences]

“Reducing latency on lore drops” [REWRITE: Streamlining access to in-progress materials]

“Harassing people into voting on stuff” (REMOVE – unprofessional)

The Outreach Team will be posting:

Curated polls relevant to cultural, political, or entirely fabricated scenarios

Article previews and works in progress (subject to admin approval)

Commentary and discourse [REVIEW ALL COMMENTARY]

“Meme-based dissemination” [STILL NOT A REAL TERM]

Important Notice for Committee on Approval:

Outreach interns have submitted seven name proposals. All have been vetoed for reasons including:

1. Excessive use of Cybertronian slang

2. Inclusion of explosive references

3. Lack of vowels

4. All of the above

Current working name: “C.O.G.S.” (Committee of Outreach and General Shenanigans) – under review.

A public vote may be authorized after internal behavioral metrics improve.

We thank you for your attention, patience, and tolerance of youth energy. All relevant material will be posted through official channels—eventually. [Remove: Attitude]

[Please include an appropriate quote as is customary for archival postings. Note this quote will require internal review]

— Approval (with caveats) pending from the Archives Administration.

[iiryebreadii]

the older pines twins in my starwars!gravity falls au :D

Jedi Master Stanford Pines

He was seen as a rising star amongst the Jedi of his generation; powerful in the Force, incredibly intelligent, and firmly rooted in the Light. Many knights and masters clamored with one another over who would take him on as a padawan, and he was eventually paired with Master Jheselbraum, a young Jedi famous for her accomplishments in both research and in sentient aid.

An incident involving his twin brother during their apprenticeship caused his master to repudiate him before he could be knighted. He struggled to catch up after spending nearly a year without a Jedi Master to teach him, and never forgives his brother for ruining his reputation and his chances at becoming a Jedi knight ahead of schedule. He'll always carry the shame of repudiation with him. (He'll always carry the wound of his brother's betrayal)

He goes on to study the mysteries of the galaxy, of the Force itself

He had a run-in with a sith holocron in his youth, when he was freshly knighted and very self-assured in his ability to stay in the Light. He thought he could study it without being corrupted, but was wrong. The secret of that holocron haunts him to this day.

He couldn't bring himself to destroy it. He tells himself it's because he fears destroying the holocron would release the spirit within and allow it free, but really... it contains so much knowledge, if he could just learn how to keep the Dark at bay, he could learn so much. The thought of permanently destroying that potential knowledge was too much for him to bear. Instead, he called on someone to hide it for him.

After ten years of silence between them, he contacted his twin brother to get him to take the holocron away and hide it where no one would find it. That was 30 years ago, and he hasn't seen his brother since.

He never planned on taking on a padawan, but when he meets Dipper on a visit to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, he is immediately charmed. Dipper reminds him so much of himself, at that age; strong in the force, rooted in the Light, and fiercely intelligent. He wants to train him, to teach him everything he's learned about the Force (he wants to give him the opportunities that Ford never had, after being repudiated).

Stanley Pines, notorious space pirate

Grew up in the Jedi temple on Coruscant, alongside his twin brother. Where Ford was seen as having incredible potential, Stan was... not. He was less outwardly powerful in the force, no good at meditation or finding 'serenity', and his emotions tended to run hot. The people of the Order generally thought he wasn't fit for the life of a Jedi.

When Ford accepts an apprenticeship with Master Jheselbraum, Stan manages to find a master as well, though one not nearly as famous or accomplished as Master Jess.

Years later, when a mission goes terribly wrong, and a huge misunderstanding occurs, Stan is thrown out of the Order for fear that he's falling to the Dark side.

He does what he has to in order to survive; he becomes a drifter, he stows away on ships and works with pirates, he scams and does menial labor, he runs spice for a bit. He ends up wanted in various parts of the galaxy for various different crimes. He eventually manages to get his hands on a small spacecraft, which he lives out of for a few years.

When Ford reaches out and contacts him, Stan drops everything to go to his brother, hopeful for reconciliation. It doesn't go over well, when he realizes what Ford wants. Arguments are had, strong words exchanged, and Stan leaves with the artifact his brother wants him to hide. (He destroys it instead) (What Ford doesn't know won't hurt him)

30 years later, Stan is a fairly successful pirate captain. His crew is small, but effective, and they make enough to take care of themselves. Stan has found something that resembles belonging, in his little crew. The finality of his last interaction with his brother causes him to lose hope for reconciliation, but it also leaves him open to forging new bonds.

When he and his crew board a rival pirate gang's ship, looking to take back the credits they rightfully scored on a successful scam, they end up finding a small group of kids. It's Mabel, and her new friends: Candy, Grenda, and Gideon. Stan and his crew take in the kids, trying to figure out a good way to return them to their families without also being caught by law enforcement.

[random-kido]

Very quick very silly sorta kinda exposition time with a fun little 4th wall break from the prime boy himself

to tack on to what he said

yes. Aside from carrying the consciousness/memories(?) of the past primes, the matrix in this au has gained sentience due to constant proximity to the scavs and their shenanigans. Only way I can really explain why it keeps full sending right back at him and breaking into his room even when he locks it out. The primary reason I gave it sentience though was simply for the silliness factor lol.

The reformat gave him a slot for the matrix but this is all still a tad too jarring for him so he just kinda carries it around. Putting it where it’s supposed to go would probably make him faint again, so he just kinda tugs it along. Though due to its sentience it can just kinda float around after him but that adds to the whole reason he didn’t want it in the first place factor due to it drawing unwanted attention. So. Hip chain it is. Just looks like any other matrix replica that way.

throughout all of this the matrix is respectful enough of his wishes to not be let in. As long as it’s near its current prime it’s chilling so krok has admitted defeat and let’s it stick around (he still tries to get rid of it when gets wildly overwhelmed but his attempts have certainly lessened. Does any of this make sense? Idk I’m tired lol)