Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I have a top 50 pro prospect rankings update slated for Monday the 3rd.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game French Quarter, from the designers of Three Sisters and Fleet: the Dice Game. I think it’s fantastic, although it’s harder than any of their previous games to play well.
I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and somewhere in the 2:30 pm show Unpacked for one more segment. We’ll discuss some of my new rankings on the first show and have an interview with Colt Emerson lined up.
A million bonus points if you know what today is, by the way. I’ll accept two answers, although one is more obvious than the other.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: You’ve probably seen this Guardian longread on the so-called “pro-natalist” family who, among other things, think nothing of physically abusing their children in the name of “discipline.” My issue with the piece is this: The parents claim that their parenting is “evidence-based,” yet they then do many things, including smacking their children, that are unequivocally contrary to all available evidence – and the piece’s author does not push back in any way. That is your job as a journalist.
- This New York Times retrospective on Cass Elliot and the vicious hoax about how she died is an empathetic and thoughtful look at a major figure in pop music history who was, unfortunately, best remembered for that false rumor.
- WIRED has the story of Jane Willenbring, the victim of sexual harassment by disgraced Professor David Marchant while they worked in Antarctica, whose willingness to come forward led to Marchant’s firing and the renaming of the glacier that once bore his name.
- Two stories on the 19th century state of Mississippi: In DeSoto County, a hospital transfers some patients to jail while they await mental health treatment, with the results you would expect. Meanwhile, Mississippi Today also obtained transcripts of WhatsApp messages from the soi-disant “Goon Squad” of racist, abusive cops who terrorized a central Mississippi County – including torturing two Black men and shooting one in the face – for a generation.
- A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found a strong positive correlation between public school expenditures and Black student achievement during school and later in life. They used data from that same backwards country of Mississippi, which has been busy trying to find ways to spend less on education.
- A new paper in Nature shows how researchers used machine learning to help explain how insect wing hinges work. We know of four separate times when a species has developed the ability to fly, but insects are the only case where flight evolved without muscles or nerves in the wings.
- Quanta has the story of two groups of physicists using machine-learning to try to understand the nature of the ‘missing’ dimensions required by superstring theory.
- Splinter’s Jim Vorel looks at the slow death of QAnon and the even more virulent strains that have replaced it. There’s a strong sense of “When Prophecy Fails” here – when people realized they believed in a con, they don’t just come to their senses; they look for another con to believe.
- Greenpeace sided with the anti-science crowd and blocked the introduction of the nutritious Golden Rice variety into the Philippines, claiming, among other things, a “human health risk” that has never been demonstrated with any genetically-modified foodstuff.
- A nurse at NYU’s Langone Health hospital mentioned the genocide in Gaza during her speech accepting an award for her compassion in caring for mothers who’d lost their babies. The hospital fired her. They’ve said she was warned before “not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.” The hospital took its name from Republican billionaire donor Kenneth Langone, who has previously compared critics of rising income inequality to Nazis.
- UC-Irvine law professor David Kaye writes in the New York Times that we should allow the International Criminal Court to do its job after the Court announced charges against the leaders of Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The U.S. has remained outside of the ICC for twenty years, even though we could do the most good by accepting its tenets and supporting its efforts to pursue war-crimes charges – as we have asked the ICC to do against Vladimir Putin.
- Many students walked out of Harvard’s commencement last week, spurred by the University’s corporate board’s decision to overrule a faculty vote that would have allowed 13 students to graduate after they’d been suspended for their actions in the campus protests over the Israeli war on Gaza.
- Even before Friday’s verdict, Greg Sargent noted that Trump’s anti-media rhetoric had turned more dangerous with the convicted felon’s apparent endorsement of a rant about how he’ll “get rid of all you fucking liberals.”
- The Washington Post sat on the story of Samuel Alito hanging pro-insurrection and pro-nationalist flags at his house for several years. The New York Times has been reporting on the story now, including this very measured piece on what seems to have happened, including disputes over the order of some of the events in the neighborhood dispute.
- The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina is a QAnon-touting, Holocaust-denying, antisemitic, anti-LGBT conspiracy theorist. Will he cost Trump a swing state he won in 2020?
- A passenger on a United flight into Fresno this week has tested positive for measles. This should be a criminal offense – they put many, many other people at risk through their actions, like driving drunk.
- Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times that now Democrats are just as bad at Republicans in putting political concerns over science, as Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) continues his sham hearings promoting the debunked lab-leak hypothesis.
- RFK Jr.’s turn into vaccine disinformation came after he spoke to and then totally ignored Dr. Paul Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine.
- Pope Francis apologized for using the Italian equivalent of the f-slur and saying there was too much of that in the priesthood when arguing against allowing celibate gay men to take orders. I think there’s too much emphasis here on the word choice and nowhere near enough on pretty much everything that lies behind it.
- Two board game Kickstarters of note this week: 25th Century Games (who published French Quarter) just put up a new crowdfunding effort for a four-pack of smaller games that you can back as a bundle or individually.
- Luthier is the latest complex game from Paverson Games, publisher of last year’s excellent heavy game Distilled. There’s a full site up for the game but the crowdfunding link isn’t open yet. I saw Luthier at PAX Unplugged; it’s gorgeous and huge, but my guess is it’s too long a game for my personal tastes and attention span.
June 1 is the first day of Pride Month and the first day of meteorological summer. Do I win?
Um…. Happy Birthday, Keith?
thank you!
Happy Birthday Keith.
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Best wishes for a wonderful year ahead, Keith.
Oops, I guess this comment section does not accept Japanese characters. Happy birthday, Keith.
Happy birthday!
Regarding the NYU nurse, not sure where the grievance is. She was told not to do something (the request was reasonable, given the political climate and the non-political nature of the award she received), and she did it anyway. She knew what might happen, and made that choice. Which is fine! She’s free to make that choice, but she should also realize there’s going to be a result of making that choice.
Who the hospital was named after has no bearing on the issue.
You’re overlooking the power differential here. In an ostensibly liberal society, one’s livelihood should (generally) not be threatened by speech. Doubly so when the ongoing atrocity she referenced is directly related to the thing she’s being recognized for.
Congrats on completing another lap around the sun!
Happy Birthday Keith!
Happy Birthday. You’re catching up to me ;).
Slightly off topic though related to your upcoming top 50 pro prospects rankings and today’s MLB transactions. Not sure where you personally rated him, but what did scouts see in Nick Madrgial to make him an elite prospect? This has been bothering me for a while. Obviously we have some benefit of hindsight, but he doesn’t walk and doesn’t have any power and that doesn’t seem to be a new revelation. So even if he hits .300, he’d put up something like .300/.340/.380. A league average hitter who plays solid 2B is a valuable asset but not a star. And that seems to be his 80th percentile outcome. Yet he was drafted 4th and rated as a top 50 prospect at some point.
More generally I feel like some prospects are rated for tools without enough regard to how those tools translate to major league production.
Thanks
I never had Madrigal on a top 100 because I didn’t think he had near enough power to prevent pitchers from just challenging him in the zone. I didn’t see how he’d hit for a high average or walk much, because he wasn’t strong enough to do damage and pitchers would rather throw him strikes (given the low risk of more than a single) than pitch around him.
I got slaughtered for leaving him off the top 100, BTW. Those angry fans have had very little to say since the White Sox traded him.
This goes to the fact people don’t read how a prospect is being described, just where he is ranked on a list. Keith, Eric, Mayo, and the other prospect writers all described Madrigal as the exact same player. His floor is what he is now and his ceiling a decent starting 2B. There were some differences in the odds of those two extremes happening, but that was the consensus. So they all saw the same player, just differed on how valuable that skillset was.
Amongst fans, it seems a lot of people don’t understand what slug means. They think it only means homers, but it really is having enough power to get doubles and triples as well. When Madrigal was traded to the Cubs, there were a couple Cubs fans comparing him favorably to Nellie Fox. So I looked up Fox’s numbers and saw he typically hit 40-50 XBHs every year, enough that defenses and pitchers had to respect it. Madrigal doesn’t even have 50 for his career yet.
And that’s why I tend to look at what guys like Keith, Eric, Mayo, etc actually say about prospects vs worrying about the numerical rank. In my mind, the rankings are somewhat arbitrary. The difference between ranking a guy 75 vs 85 could come down to how you value the skillset or just gut feeling. The other thing is sometimes a guy 25th and 75th percentile outcomes are much locked because of his age at the time (like Madrigal coming out of the draft) vs a younger player who has a much wider range of outcomes at 18 or 19.
Happy Belated Birthday Keith! As a former Bostonian, I was wondering if you had a few recommendations for me as I am visiting in a few weeks: (1) the best Cap Code league ballfield, (2) best local independent bookstores, and (3) best local coffeeshops. I’ll be staying at the Boston Renaissance Waterfront. Don’t ask me where in town that is because I don’t know my Boston geography. I’ve only been to Boston 2 times previously. Thanks!
1. I’m partial to Chatham, although Orleans is also quite pretty. Wareham is the only one I’d say it’s worth avoiding, and it’s not even on the Cape.
2. I’m partial to the Harvard Book Store (not affiliated with the school) in Cambridge. Brookline Booksmith is excellent and Brattle Books is one of the oldest in the country. Also, if you’re out in the burbs, Silver Unicorn in Acton is owned by former baseball writer Paul Swydan.
3. George Howell all the way. I think there are 2 downtown?
Jibraun – to piggyback on Keith’s answer of Chatham for the CCBL, there is a great small independent bookstore in Chatham (Where the Sidewalk Ends) and Snowy Owl Roasters is great local coffee to the Cape. 🙂
Wait, when was the lab-leak theory debunked? You may disagree with it, but it’s clearly an open question. A former CDC director believes the virus originated in the lab…
It’s been debunked for a year or more. It’s not “clearly an open question” except to politicians, deniers, and other grifters.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
https://journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.1128/jvi.00365-23
The New York Times published an opinion piece *today* arguing for the lab-leak hypothesis. There’s a point in the doctor’s piece specifically pushing back against that Science article.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html
Yeah, and it’s hot garbage, authored by someone who’s selling a book that pushes the debunked claim. Virologists and epidemiologists have been tearing her article apart today.
This isn’t an open question any more. We have plenty of peer-reviewed research demonstrating the zoonotic spillover origin. You can deny that if you wish, as Alina Chan is doing to sell books.
What does writing a book have to do with the credibility of her arguments? I honestly had never heard of her before today (she could be a grifter—I have no idea), but her NYT article has many links to the works of others and comes to its conclusions using scientific reasoning and evidence.
Fauci admitted in his testimony today that a lab leak “absolutely” was possible. Do you trust him? This isn’t a controversial point anymore. It’s at least possible, even if you think it’s unlikely. The natural origin can be the most likely without the lab leak being “debunked.” It’s not.
She’s flogging a book, and has been doing so for several years, that actual experts have said is full of misrepresentations and outright falsehoods. I shared one thread taking apart her NYT column on twitter earlier. Chan has a strong incentive to make these false claims – it is profitable for her personally.
A lab leak was ‘possible.’ It has been debunked by multiple studies demonstrating the zoonotic origin. You’ll notice that lab-leak proponents never share any actual published, peer-reviewed research showing that the lab leak was the most likely origin … because there aren’t any. Every study on the subject shows zoonotic origins.
I don’t know which thread you’re referring to because you blocked me on X a few weeks ago for engaging in another good-faith, non-personal, logical-fallacy-free disagreement. If you want to unblock me, I’d appreciate it! I’d be interested in which “actual” experts you’re relying on.
You won’t like the answer, but I imagine it’s nearly impossible to publish a peer-reviewed article arguing for the lab leak theory in this environment. To go against the medical establishment on anything related to Covid (despite the establishment getting many, many things wrong—school closures is the easiest example) is not easy. You jeopardize your career and are subject to the same (unjustified, I’d argue) attacks that you’re levying here.
I highly doubt I blocked you for “engaging in another good-faith, non-personal, logical-fallacy-free disagreement.” I block people for being abusive, for snitch-tagging, or for use of certain slurs and other offensive terms in any context. I don’t block people for disagreeing with me.
“I imagine it’s nearly impossible to publish a peer-reviewed article arguing for the lab leak theory in this environment.”
It’s nearly impossible because there is no evidence to support it that would survive the peer-review process. There is no penalty for espousing the lab-leak hypothesis, even now that the evidence is all on the side of the zoonotic spillover hypothesis; just look at all of the academics (none virologists or epidemiologists) who have very publicly touted the lab-leak hypothesis or other discredited ideas (herd immunity, vaccine denial, mask ineffectiveness) with no adverse impact on their careers. Bhattacharya, Ebright, Makary, it’s a long list. But more to the point, that’s not how the academic research process works.
@Michael I think the “reasonable centrist” opinion on “lab leak” is that we’ll probably never know for certain the precise origin of covid, so we need to focus on what we know. Which is that, simultaneously, a) there is a good body of evidence that covid was zoonotic in origin, and b) current standards for viral research are problematic, and certainly could cause a future pandemic. Concordantly, there is roughly the same incentive for mainstream scientific journals to support these bad research practices than there is for hacks to support alternative theories like lab leak, so I don’t find the “she’s selling a book” argument to be particularly useful.
At the same time, saying school closures were “wrong” is AFAIK backed by nothing other than Koch-funded junk research from Emily Oster and the likes. So I question just how honest and impartial you are being here.
I’ve been on record here that I think lab leak is still a formal possibility (based largely on a series of potential coincidences instead of formal data), though I think a zoonotic origin is more likely based on the sequencing data we have on virus from the Huanan seafood market. I also have been an advocate of public health measures that decreased the likelihood of zoonotic spillover (which happen regularly–see ebola and swine flu), as well as regulating pathogen research (I think gain-of-function research is rarely appropriate, and that working with organisms with pandemic potential and no vaccines should be at BSL-3).
As for publications that would support a lab leak, there has been no easier time in science to put ideas out there. While it’s perhaps difficult to get peer reviewers at good journals for those types of studies, or get accepted by a journal, those manuscripts can be released as preprints. The fact that there are very few of those speaks to the fact that it relies on coincidence rather than any pop gen or evolutionary genomic signatures.
I don’t know if this will work, but here’s the thread:
https://x.com/HuPloughjogger/status/1793314913819017377
I suppose others can judge for themselves, but I didn’t engage in any of the activities you describe.
(There is evidence of the Biden administration violating the 1st Amendment, for the record…)
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/08/politics/biden-administration-social-media-lawsuit
Haha I didn’t realize the efficacy of school closures was even a debate among serious, non-conflicted people. They were disastrous policy. Europe discovered this reality very quickly and reversed course.
The original point I quibbled with was whether the lab-leak hypothesis is “debunked.” It’s not. That would require mountains of evidence for the natural origin, which doesn’t exist. Peer-reviewed articles take opposite positions all the time. And the few articles on Covid origin usually state that their conclusions are not definitive.
I also think it’s pretty unfair to label a freaking Broad Institute molecular biologist a grifter and non-real expert just because she’s trying to sell a book on a virus that is less than 5 years old. I’m assuming your prior tweets on sabermetrics weren’t wrong just because you later wrote (and tried to sell) a book on the topic.
If you could unblock my X account, I’d appreciate it. I’ll keep quiet. I’ll just say that if we can’t have these types of conversations (done respectfully, of course), we’re screwed as a country. Living in an echo chamber isn’t healthy.
Oh, you’re that guy, the one who kept citing Alex Berenson – a troll who has been wrong about everything COVID-19 and name-searches himself on twitter to harass people (he did it to me, so I speak from experience). You are not a serious person if you’re citing Berenson, an expert on nothing with a history of being consistently wrong. You bring that asshole into my feed, you get blocked. And if you follow his work, you are not engaging in any good-faith anything, because Berenson is an extreme denialist who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by spreading false information on COVID-19 (after doing the same on cannabis). I have every right to decline to “discuss” anything with people who believe in and promulgate such bullshit.
I don’t doubt that Alina Chan is smart within her own field, but 1) she’s not a virologist, evolutionary biologist, or epidemiologist, and 2) she is a postdoc at the Broad and not a faculty member (if we’re making a credentialist argument). I don’t think she’s a grifter–I think she’s a true believer–but it’s telling to me that the vast majority of lab leak proponents are scientists outside of the immediate field.
To clarify, I only cited to Berenson because it went to the heart of one of your previous tweets—he alleges that the old Twitter banned him, at the behest of the Biden administration, even though it determined internally he hadn’t violated its terms of service. As I said, his underlying views on Covid and marijuana are irrelevant. The CNN article would have been a better example of a 1A violation, I guess.
I fear that it would be very, very damaging for a virulogist or epidemiologist to argue against the most powerful immunologist/doctor (Fauci) in the country when (I believe) he had (has?) the ability to curtail your funding (and ruin your reputation).
“Haha I didn’t realize the efficacy of school closures was even a debate among serious, non-conflicted people. They were disastrous policy. Europe discovered this reality very quickly and reversed course.”
See this almost *has* to be disingenuous because 1) “Europe” absolutely closed schools regularly before widespread uptake of the vaccines (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/school-closures-covid?time=latest), 2) domestic polling repeatedly showed broad support for public health measures at schools (closures, remote, masks, vaccines, etc), 3) no one outside of the aforementioned Koch-backed hacks really thinks it’s a good idea to barrel forward with full school operation during a novel pandemic.
If a virologist, evolutionary biologist, or epidemiologist came out with evidence that it was a lab leak, they wouldn’t need government funding anymore as they would get funding from other, private sources. I mean, has Alina Chan lost funding for any any of her projects at MIT/Harvard because of her views? If funding had been lost, wouldn’t MIT/Harvard end her fellowship? As Salty said, the far most likely reason it hasn’t happened yet is that there isn’t much evidence of it.
Seriously, dude? On your chart, Europe turns orange and yellow long before the US. Watch France. It’s orange in May 2020 and yellow in June 2020–long before the vaccines. The US is, of course, red. I had to watch it a few times to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I don’t see the US turning orange until February 2021. Google “school closures in Europe during Covid.” This point absolutely is not debatable.
Your second point obviously is argumentum ad populum. Popular support for a position doesn’t make it correct. Ask the Iraq War in 2003.
Your third point is part circular reasoning, part argumentum ad populum, and fully wrong.
Who’s the troll here?
If a vocal critic of Fauci received a grant percentile below the payline (i.e., a normally fundable score), but wasn’t funded, they would very likely have a Constitutional case. I seriously doubt that NIH program officers and the council are going to risk not picking up a grant that scores well. Ebright has been about as obnoxious as they come publicly, and he has a large grant with a start date of 2023.
If you click on the individual countries, you can see the individual policies. Every European country that I looked at had full or partial closures well into 2021. More to the point, I was alive then and am well aware that there were school closured in Europe beyond May 2020. Indeed, it’s part of why right-wing cranks are so angry! Most countries actually took action for the common good! What a concept!
On point two, thanks for pointing out that popular things aren’t always good things…who knew. Anyway, the point of sharing that was clearly to rebuke the “was even a debate” part of your statement.
And finally, if you’re sure that the mainstream consensus among non-crank epidemiologists was that closing schools during a pandemic was “disastrous policy” then it should be easy for you to provide evidence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/upshot/pandemic-school-closures-data.html
“Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.”
Yeah that’s the only support given to your argument in that article, backed up by nothing other than that guys’ word. Most of the article is about learning loss (which probably would have happened no matter what…there was a pandemic!), but even if we fully accept that premise, people still think it was a good idea. From that very same article:
““I do believe it was the right decision,” said Jerry T. Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which resisted returning to school in person over concerns about the availability of vaccines and poor ventilation in school buildings. Philadelphia schools waited to partially reopen until the spring of 2021, a decision Mr. Jordan believes saved lives.
“It doesn’t matter what is going on in the building and how much people are learning if people are getting the virus and running the potential of dying,” he said.”
>>Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times that now Democrats are just as bad at Republicans in putting political concerns over science, as Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) continues his sham hearings promoting the debunked lab-leak hypothesis.<<
So, one guy in the Democratic party is doing something that a fairly large percentage (probably a majority, I'm not doing the math) of his opposites do and that earns us bothsides-ism!?!?
Makes me extra grateful that Manchin has declared himself an independent, lest his awfulness be used to tar all Democrats….
Well said, Michael. You’ve made good and reasonable arguments here regarding the lab leak possibility, which remains a source of debate within the medical community. It’s unfortunate that you’ve been blocked for expressing a contrary opinion, all while avoiding personal attacks and insults. (I was called a sinophobe–among other names–in this space for even suggesting that the lab leak was possible.) I think there is something to be learned from that.
Well, that’s an outright lie. Here’s the comment thread where I referred to your sinophobia. It wasn’t for “even suggesting that the lab leak was possible.”
I posted a response, but, for the first time, it’s “awaiting moderation.” I’m hoping Keith clears it. If not, he again has blocked me for engaging in yes, good-faith, non-personal, logical-fallacy-free disagreement. Disappointing.
Because your post contained URLs. Good job playing the victim, I guess.
Can you get down off the cross Michael? When I post something with URLs the same thing happened to me. You’re not special, ok?
If you have multiple URLs in your post, it always awaits moderation. It’s been that way since I started posting here over a decade ago. It’s to prevent spam posts.
While too much work I’m sure, I would appreciate Keith moderating and telling me to “tone it down, asshat” on those occasions when I am indeed being an asshat (we all have bad days).
Sounds like an opportunity to have ChatGPT evaluate all comments and reject those that are asshatish. Can even have a gif of Keith with an admonishing finger wag, like Dikembe Mutombo.