the two diagrams can’t be about the same thing, since what is constant in the first (age disease detected) is variable in the other, and what is variable in the first (age disease contracted) is variable in the other.
Final ‘variable’ ought to read ‘constant’.
This section,
what would you expect, should this story come to light? In a well-functioning discipline, a wave of retractations, public apologies, general embarrassment and a major re-evaluation of public health policies
is weak because many are cynical about medicine being able to do this (see Ioannidis specifically). Recommend changing ‘what would you expect’ to something more hopeful and acknowledging of pessimism, like “what would you at least hope, even if not expect from the field?” Or perhaps skip the “change in the field” concept and go for the jugular, “this study and the practice of citing it and believing it is killing people, and the field better recognise it and change, and if it doesn’t it’s gross negligence leading to thousands of deaths.” Your main thrust depends on this part being impactful; as it stands it’s a little weak.
The story is substantially true, but the field isn’t medicine: it is software engineering.
Excellent twist, but needs to be followed up with a painstakingly simple, bare, easy to follow comparison to software engineering, preferably with a one-to-one mapping of concepts (people dying = software dying, tuberculosis = number one cause of death of software, etc) and retelling of the main story points (same syntactic structure with software engineering words instead) to solidify the analogy for people—as it stands, a not insubstantial fraction of the impact of your post is lost in translating it into software engineering, and I think it would be valuable to take that fraction down to epsilon.
I may mull over your points for a day or so before actually making any changes, but those are excellent points, and just the kind of feedback I was hoping for telling this story here. Much appreciated!
I may mull over your points for a day or so before actually making any changes
Please do!
Much appreciated!
Thank you. I have to remind myself sometimes that despite all my support-the-fellow-tribe-member-in-all-things instincts, feedback and critique is actually useful to people!
Well, you somewhat shift the impact. The result can hit stronger in the less sensitive point.
As I see it, the point is not “We are doing something wrong and innocent programs are dying!”, more like “When we write programs, we’d better first acknowledge that we have no idea what we are doing and then try to get this idea”.
Your statement can be read as if people know what they want to acomplish and then fail to accomplish it. This view is too optimistic, I think it is a good idea to remove such a misreading.
Final ‘variable’ ought to read ‘constant’.
This section,
is weak because many are cynical about medicine being able to do this (see Ioannidis specifically). Recommend changing ‘what would you expect’ to something more hopeful and acknowledging of pessimism, like “what would you at least hope, even if not expect from the field?” Or perhaps skip the “change in the field” concept and go for the jugular, “this study and the practice of citing it and believing it is killing people, and the field better recognise it and change, and if it doesn’t it’s gross negligence leading to thousands of deaths.” Your main thrust depends on this part being impactful; as it stands it’s a little weak.
Excellent twist, but needs to be followed up with a painstakingly simple, bare, easy to follow comparison to software engineering, preferably with a one-to-one mapping of concepts (people dying = software dying, tuberculosis = number one cause of death of software, etc) and retelling of the main story points (same syntactic structure with software engineering words instead) to solidify the analogy for people—as it stands, a not insubstantial fraction of the impact of your post is lost in translating it into software engineering, and I think it would be valuable to take that fraction down to epsilon.
Ick. Thanks!
I may mull over your points for a day or so before actually making any changes, but those are excellent points, and just the kind of feedback I was hoping for telling this story here. Much appreciated!
Please do!
Thank you. I have to remind myself sometimes that despite all my support-the-fellow-tribe-member-in-all-things instincts, feedback and critique is actually useful to people!
Well, you somewhat shift the impact. The result can hit stronger in the less sensitive point.
As I see it, the point is not “We are doing something wrong and innocent programs are dying!”, more like “When we write programs, we’d better first acknowledge that we have no idea what we are doing and then try to get this idea”.
Your statement can be read as if people know what they want to acomplish and then fail to accomplish it. This view is too optimistic, I think it is a good idea to remove such a misreading.