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CT_Bergstrom's profile
Carl T. Bergstrom
Carl T. Bergstrom
Carl T. Bergstrom
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@CT_Bergstrom

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Carl T. BergstromVerified account

@CT_Bergstrom

#BlackLivesMatter Information flow in bio, society, & science. Book *Calling Bullshit*: http://tinyurl.com/y7ekfkhx  I love crows and ravens. he/him

Duwamish Lands (Seattle)
ctbergstrom.com
Joined June 2015

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    Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

    I haven't even gone to bed last night yet and today's bullshit coronavirus story is already here, courtesy of @pbleic. Elsevier's journal _Medical Hypotheses_ brings us a paper entitled "The use of aspirated consonants during speech may increase the transmission of COVID-19".

    4:52 AM - 17 Sep 2020
    • 110 Retweets
    • 457 Likes
    • Covert Goat Joshua Whitman Jeff Cavanagh Tom Sweeney The_Skeptical_Scientist⚗️💉🔬🔭⚖️ Josh - MD/MPH Wil S. hex eggs Robert Thömmes
    42 replies 110 retweets 457 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        That's right. The hypothesis is that English speakers may be more likely to spread COVID because the aspirated consonants at the end of words (p,k,t) generate respiratory droplets.

        28 replies 19 retweets 115 likes
        Show this thread
      3. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        The paper draws on an obscure 2003 letter in The Lancet, which made a similar argument about SARS. That letter is four short paragraphs long; you might as well read the whole thing.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7135525/ …

        4 replies 10 retweets 63 likes
        Show this thread
      4. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        The 2003 letter is based on the fact that many US tourists to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan caught SARS, but no Japanese tourists did. That's it. The claim is based on that one comparison.

        2 replies 9 retweets 81 likes
        Show this thread
      5. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        Also odd: the claim that language you speak determines your chance of *getting* the disease in China/HK/Taiwan, not your chance of spreading it. This is blamed on shopkeepers—silly, all the more so given the difficulties in following aspiration patterns in a second language.

        1 reply 8 retweets 74 likes
        Show this thread
      6. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        (In _Calling Bullshit_, @jevinwest and I write about the importance of considering alternative hypotheses before accepting data as evidence of a claim. Could there be other differences between US and Japanese tourists beyond three aspirated consonants?)

        4 replies 14 retweets 100 likes
        Show this thread
      7. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        So back to the new paper. The authors write "In this paper, we support the hypothesis reported in Inouye [the letter discussed above] that aspirated consonants might produce more droplets in comparison to unaspirated consonants."

        3 replies 5 retweets 31 likes
        Show this thread
      8. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        Let's see how they support it. They do a manifestly silly t-test comparing COVID incidence in countries with and without aspirated consonants. But it's not the ridiculous design that is the best part.

        4 replies 6 retweets 57 likes
        Show this thread
      9. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        The best part is that their analysis provides ZERO support for their hypothesis. Their t-test is non-significant. It's not even close. If I understand what they are doing, their t value of 0.73 with 18 df gives p=0.237 (@pbleic got the same value). Here are the data.pic.twitter.com/WHpGSbXiUa

        8 replies 20 retweets 108 likes
        Show this thread
      10. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        But of course we get the old "not significant but in the right direction" chestnut.pic.twitter.com/A7wmvNo1M0

        6 replies 8 retweets 95 likes
        Show this thread
      11. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        And then, @pbleic notes, @Forbes just has to jump on the story, and presents it as if the hypothesis is supported. This is why, in our class we encourage students to trace back to the source. Reading the Forbes story, you'd never expect the graph above.https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisonescalante/2020/09/08/why-speaking-english-may-spread-more-coronavirus-than-other-languages/#da3c3f46eeaa …

        8 replies 17 retweets 124 likes
        Show this thread
      12. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 17 Sep 2020

        Finally, I want to clean up a bit of my own bullshit. Earlier in this thread I referenced aspirated consonants at the end of words. In English we don't aspirate ending consonants. If you're familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet, you might say that I fuktʰ upʰ. /fin

        8 replies 10 retweets 151 likes
        Show this thread
      13. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 19 Sep 2020

        A follow-up about the "not significant but in the right direction" argument that the authors make. This is particularly problematic in the case of a retrospective observational study such as the one here. When the authors decided to do it, they had already seen some of the data.

        2 replies 2 retweets 29 likes
        Show this thread
      14. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 19 Sep 2020

        They presumably knew about the failure to control COVID in the US and Britain, and about the successes in Japan and elsewhere. Also they presumably knew something about aspiration patterns (from the Lancet letter if nowhere else), to have formed the hypothesis in the first place.

        3 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
        Show this thread
      15. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 19 Sep 2020

        Given all of this, the p value in question means something different than the p value of a hypothesis formulated before looking at any of the data. It's remarkable that their p value was not lower than p=0.237 on these grounds alone.

        3 replies 0 retweets 23 likes
        Show this thread
      16. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 19 Sep 2020

        So as unimpressive as "significant but not in the right direction" may be for an experimental study, when you hear this in a retrospective observational study, it's a whole 'nother level of nonsense.

        1 reply 1 retweet 34 likes
        Show this thread
      17. Carl T. Bergstrom‏Verified account @CT_Bergstrom 19 Oct 2020

        This email I just received from @ElsevierConnect is some pretty high quality trolling.pic.twitter.com/PJHTYHmY0z

        2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
        Show this thread
      18. End of conversation

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