Open Thread 227

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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. In this week’s news:

1: Nicholas C, who likes the book review contest, is trying to coordinate a general ACX community book rating system. You can use it here. I forgot to get permission to share his email address but hopefully he’ll show up in the comments and you can talk about it there.

2: In my ivermectin post, about a third of the way down, are two analyses of whether a raw meta-analysis makes it look like ivermectin works. I concluded that they showed marginal effect, but that this was probably due to other factors (eg antiparasitic properties). A reader points out that it was wrong to do this by t-test, and I should have used a DerSimonian-Laird test because it’s a meta-analysis, which would have shown a clear (not marginal) effect, so I updated the post and my Mistakes page. More recently, another reader has commented that a DerSimonian-Laird test is also inappropriate because the studies aren’t homogenous, and now I’m not sure which test is appropriate or what result it would give - but it definitely wasn’t the one I originally tried. I don’t think this significantly alters the overall conclusion of the post, which was that the apparent effect (whether marginal or clear) was better explained by other things.

3: Michael Shellenberger, candidate for governor of California, objected to my characterization of his opinions in my gubernatorial candidates post:

Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD

@slatestarcodex Thank you for correcting the error about my position about Suboxone, but you make another error claiming I support “sweeping institutionalization of the mentally ill.” That’s simply false. I address this issue at length in my book and writings. Please correct it.

I’ve provisionally corrected it and added an entry to my Mistakes page, and plan to read Shellenberger’s book to get a better sense of exactly what he does and doesn’t support. Sorry for the error.

4: Some highlights from the last Classifieds thread: Anti-factory-farming charity seeking litigation attorney, John Schilling needs spaceship tech support people, Russian emigre looking for work/study in data science or AI alignment, can a doctor help give marketing/distribution advice for underused COVID drug?