Open Thread, April 27-May 4, 2014

NancyLebovitz

You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

And, while this is an accidental exception, future open threads should start on Mondays until further notice.

You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

And, while this is an accidental exception, future open threads should start on Mondays until further notice.

You might want to read a bit more precisely. I did choose my words when I said "promise of a solution" instead of "a solution".

In particular MetaMed speaks about wanting to produce a system of Bayesian analysis of medical papers. (Bayesian mathematical assessment of diagnosis)

I mean what exactly did you expert, a free lunch? Getting causal info and using it is hard.

You miss the point. When it comes to interviewing candidates for job then we found out that unstructured human assessment doesn't happen that good.

It could very well be that the standard unstructured way of reading papers is not optimal and that we should have Bayesian beliefs nets in which we plug numbers such as whether the experiment is experimental or observational.

Whether MetaMed or someone else succeeds at that task and provides a good improvement on the status quo isn't certain but there are ideas to explore.

Is it clear that MetaMed as group of self professed Bayesians provide a useful service? Maybe, maybe not. On the other hand the philosophy on which MetaMed operates is not the standard philosophy on which the medical establishment operates.

I don't know how Metamed works (and it's sort of their secret sauce, so they probably will not tell us without an NDA). I am guessing it is some combination of doing (a) through (e) above for someone who cannot do it themselves, and possibly some B stats. Which seems like a perfectly sensible business model to me!

I don't think the secret sauce is in the B stats part of what they are doing, though. If we had a hypothetical company called "Freqmed" that also humanwaved (a) through (e), and then used F stats I doubt they would get non-sensible an... (read more)