Recent submissions

Comment · 8 months ago
His French is so simple and yet, incredibly beautiful and elegant, in a way that I am not even able to express in words. Only Voltaire compares.

"tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre." -- "All the woe of man comes from one single thing only: not knowing how to remain at rest, in a room"

In the same text, he follows with:

"Le roi est environné de gens qui ne pensent qu’à divertir le roi, et à l’empêcher de penser à lui. Car il est malheureux, tout roi qu’il est, s’il y pense."

"The king is surrounded by people who think only of amusing the king and preventing him from thinking about himself. For he is unhappy, though he be king, if he thinks about it."

Comment · 1 year ago
Most likely Gide ("Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent", "Believe those who seek Truth, doubt those who find it") and not Voltaire ;)

Voltaire was generally more subtle: "un bon mot ne prouve rien", a witty saying proves nothing, as he'd say.

Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
Permutation city, Greg Egan

Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire

The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek

The ICU Book, Paul Marino

Comment · 2 years ago
Great work, really hope you'll be able to pierce into the medical market eventually. Dragon is still useless to anyone who can touch type.
Comment · 3 years ago
It is rare, and is probably due to a combination of green tea and weight loss. However, the effects are catastrophic, and it worth pointing out before someone decides to use tea extracts to "protect" their liver.

There are more cases that appears through cursory review of the literature, as most go unreported/unpublished. I have seen one case myself, and the person barely survived.

Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
The best pen is the humble Platinum Preppy, especially when converted to an eye-dropper https://www.gouletpens.com/collections/platinum-preppy-fount...).

I also strongly recommend using an iron gall ink (Platinum makes a few; another very good one is http://www.registrarsink.co.uk). Those inks are very easy to work with, even on the crappiest paper, and are quite resistant to UV, water, and other hasards.

Comment · 4 years ago
Pharma and rich greedy doctors are an easy target, but reality is (always) more complicated.

Pyridoxine/doxylamine is nothing new, and was released in the USA in the fifties, and withdrawn from the market in the early eighties due to numerous (baseless) lawsuit alleging it caused birth defects. This formulation is known as Diclectin in Canada, where there were no lawsuits (and thus, no withdrawal), and it costs pennies.

The medication was reintroduced in the USA about 10 years ago as Diclegis by another manufacturer, and Bonjesta is essentially Dicglesis with improved pharmacokinetics (whether this matters clinically is another question).

It is interesting to note that Bonjesta is produced by Duchesnay USA, which is owned by the Canadian company Duchesnay, which markets Diclectin here in Canada. I suspect that no American company is willing to risk a lawsuit *even* at the current seemingly absurdly high pricing. Duchesnay USA is essentially a mono-pill company, and I imagine that the strategy is that they're willing to go under in case of a class action.

Comment · 4 years ago
You're assuming that more data will reveal a hidden pattern, but the fact is that most data, and especially most of the easily collectable data is useless junk.
Comment · 4 years ago
Unlikely.

Diagnosis is based on imperfect data with very high noise-to-signal ratio, and with auditory (patient's history), visual and tactile inputs. Treatment often need to be tailored for each patients unique needs, goals, and co-existing diseases.

Comment · 4 years ago
I'm very interested about your research area. Can you divulge anything publicly here, or maybe shoot me an email (just put in my profile).

Thanks.

Comment · 4 years ago
The quote is from Pascal: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte", "I made this one [the letter] longer, since I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter".
Comment · 4 years ago
Garbage statistics will not get better if you insist on some arbitrary fragility index threshold (and no accepted threshold of an "acceptable" fragility index does exist to the best of my knowledge). Also, using a lower alpha will automatically give you a larger sample size, without invoking a completely superfluous fragility index.

Nobody should interpret clinical studies in isolation; they only have meaning in a "qualitative" Bayesian framework which integrates physiological plausibility, other available trials, and risk/benefit ratio. The fragility index only muddies waters, as clinicians misinterpret it even more frequently than the much maligned p-value, all while not delivering any more information than the p-value itself.

Comment · 4 years ago
There is no point.

The fragility index is essentially a repackaged p-value, and serves only to introduce even more confusion on the top of this already often misunderstood metric. See very good discussion here: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/38/5/346/2422087

Also, trials are generally designed to recruit the minimal number of patients we can get away with, and this is done for good reason (cost, feasibility, and the ethical concern of "using" the lowest possible number of human beings, while allowing any beneficial treatment to benefit the most as soon as possible). If someone's then pointing out that this trial is "fragile" -- well, yes, it was designed so in advance! Would you propose to expose 100 more patients to an inferior treatment just to improve your fragility index?

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