
Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer - wanderer42
https://priceonomics.com/why-the-father-of-modern-statistics-didnt-believe/
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Gatsky
“All scientific work is incomplete," he said. "All scientific work is liable
to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a
freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action
that it appears to demand at a given time.”

This is a very salient point, and I think defines the right attitude to these
matters, eg climate change.

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danieltillett
Especially when you have very poor predictive models and some of the possible
outcomes are catastrophic.

As an aside it is impossible to calculate the net present value of a humanity
ending catastrophic event. When we are weighing up the financial cost of doing
anything about the release of more GHG into the atmosphere, we have have a
finite positive benefit on the release more side (i.e. coal and oil are
cheaper than renewals) added to potentially infinite negative extinction event
(i.e. the climate hits a runaway positive feedback rise that make human life
impossible). The sum is always negative no matter how low the risk of
extinction.

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slavik81
> The sum is always negative no matter how low the risk of extinction.

That makes this model rather useless for arguing what must be done. For
example, it's ridiculously, incredibly unlikely that making tea will lead to
extinction by nuclear armageddon. But it's not impossible. As such, making tea
would also have an infinite, negative expected value. It would be effectively
as bad as just pressing the nuclear button.

That being said, I think your only problem is in assuming that the human race
is infinitely valuable. It's not. There's definitely a limit to how much an
individual would give up to prevent extinction.

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danieltillett
I did say that the net present value is impossible to calculate ;)

More seriously what would you pay to avoid the extinction of humanity? If the
answer is everything then the price is infinite.

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intended
I would pay X-1 dollars, where X is the cost of creating a shelter for me and
the people I care about from the apocalypse.

There's a bunch of weird issues in this analysis when you pit morally good
outcomes vs economically good outcomes.

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danieltillett
Yes there certainly is. The best way to think about this I think is that the
price you are willing to pay is a finite amount close to the maximum you are
capable of paying. There might be difference between people in how close to
the theoretical maximum they are willing to pay, but the differences are
relative small in comparison to the total most are willing to pay.

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kazinator
That's the Fisher of the Fisher-Yates (a.k.a. Knuth) shuffle:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Yates_shuffle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Yates_shuffle)

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known
Sounds like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox)

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aab0
Long /r/statistics discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/53vpvy/why_the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/53vpvy/why_the_father_of_modern_statistics_didn%C3%A2t/)

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abpavel
"The debate is now over" ... I wish. On paper, maybe, but on the streets I
still see a sizable portion of population that believes smoking is not so bad
when combined with drinking, or that smoking thinner cigarettes is ok.

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ablation
Just because the debate is over, doesn't mean people will stop doing it.
People do things they know to be harmful every day, from drinking high-sugar
soda to eating large amounts of red meat. It's just people.

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weego
The red meat thing is false BTW.

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ablation
Replace with anything you fancy, then. The point still stands. People do bad
stuff to themselves fully aware of the consequences.

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npiazza83
Like eating too many, too few, or just the right amount of eggs high in good
cholesterol, bad cholesterol, or just the right amount of morally ambiguous
cholesterol.

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ablation
Whatever blows your hair back, bud.

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vorotato
So uh... did he die of cancer?

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samfisher83
isn't Gauss the father of modern statistics?

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StClaire
Gauss did some interesting work related to least squares and linear
regression, but Fisher came up with the null hypothesis and P-values, Maximum
Likelihood Estimation, the concept of a control and designed experiment, and
some other stuff.

50% of most standard statistics courses fell out of his head.

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mathiasrw
Follow the money...

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proteinbased
Short answer: because he was employed by tobacco firms.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher)

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brittonsmith
The section in wikipedia that discusses this mentions that it is not clear
that his employment by tobacco firms motivated his behavior: From wikipedia:
'To quote his biographers Yates and Mather, "It has been suggested that the
fact that Fisher was employed as consultant by the tobacco firms in this
controversy casts doubt on the value of his arguments. This is to misjudge the
man. He was not above accepting financial reward for his labours, but the
reason for his interest was undoubtedly his dislike and mistrust of
puritanical tendencies of all kinds; and perhaps also the personal solace he
had always found in tobacco."'

I believe this is thesis of the original article as well.

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DavidSJ
There is still an open debate among statisticians as to whether employment of
statisticians by tobacco firms causes statisticians to disbelieve in tobacco-
caused cancer.

