
Eric and Bret Weinstein: The Prediction and the DISC [audio] - liamcardenas
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kast-media-2/the-portal-2/e/66665404
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Barrin92
I really looked forward to the Portal series when it was announced but
honestly, this episode just has the same issues I had with many of the ones
before.

Constant meta talk about what is allowed to say and what not, Eric framing
himself as a sort of outcast and renegade as if he's a north Korean dissident
mostly because there's some schism within arcane academic or public
intellectual circles and so on, and on occasion almost venturing into
conspiracy territory.

It's good when he's talking to someone about issues leaving all the constant
drama out, the episode with Tyler Cowen was quite good mostly because Tyler
has a very good sense of shutting this stuff down and just focussing on
interesting stuff.

~~~
Bo0kerDeWitt
You've stated exactly why the Tyler Cowen episode was so good. Cowen said a
couple of times, look, if you think you know something about the market that
everyone else doesn't, then construct a fund that can outperform everyone
else. Actions speak louder than words. You can talk about theories all day
long, but if you have the courage of your convictions, why not prove it. Eric
just didn't pursue that train of thought.

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swarmsoftrees
This is my favorite podcast.

Eric has a personality that is very disagreeable. So he can be hard to listen
too at times. He is probably hard to work with. I suspect a lot of his trouble
in his scientific career stem from this.

But his disagreeableness also what makes him a good dissenter. The world need
people that will say what they believe to be true and important, even if
everyone in the crowd don't want to hear it.

The peer review discussion was interesting. Peer review sounds so good in
theory. But it really just gate keeping. No wonder controversial or
revolutionary ideas don't get through. Better is for some kind of system where
peers can have their say after publication.

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TheUndead96
I found listening to Eric call out his brother a bit difficult to listen to.
There is most likely rapour between them as brothers that makes the "you are
boring me" segments less egregious.

Even still I found the points of discussion very interesting. I think Eric is
raising some very important points of discussion, and I listen to The Portal
regularly, but I find his personality to be a bit abrasive (on the podcast and
on Twitter).

~~~
c1b
I took it as him trying to encourage his brother to be more proud of his
accomplishments and not undersell them, I think his hearts in the right place.

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AzzieElbab
In case you did not listen till the end, there is a clear and sound accusation
of either plagiarism or serious breach of ethitics against a nobel winner
Carol Greider

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Gatsky
Yeah so this was an interesting podcast, if you have listened to previous
episodes.

Eric claims that he, his brother, and his wife have all made important
scientific discoveries in theoretical physics, biology and economics which
were either ignored or stolen by the establishment. Most of the episode is
about his brother who found that selective breeding practises in laboratory
mice produced animals that due to long telomeres, were more likely to get
cancer and were better at repairing tissue damage. The implication being that
mice are not good animal models for medical research. One of the world's
leading researchers on telomeres, who won a novel prize for the work allegedly
helped Bret Weinstein in the initial stages of this telomere study, then tried
to block publication of Bret's article through peer review suppression (which
didn't work, the article was published anyway), and also published on the same
data, interpreting it differently but not acknowledging Bret at all.

I can tell you that the idea that mice are not great models of disease is
hardly a groundbreaking realisation. Eric and to a lesser extent Bret try to
inflate the significance of this discovery as much as possible, which gets
quite cringeworthy at many points.

Eric berates scientific peer review as a highly flawed system, which obstructs
science and stops people with good ideas that aren't part of the establishment
from making important contributions. This fits into his broader narrative that
the boomer generation holds all the power and aren't interested in letting
anyone else thrive. This is hardly anything new. His personal example doesn't
actually involve peer review per se. He says he discovered something important
in theoretical physics as a graduate student, but some senior physicist
brushed him off, so he didn't work on it or publish anything. Some time later
Ed Whitten apparently came up with the same thing, which was lauded as a
brilliant discovery. I mean, doesn't everyone have a story like this? Science
just isn't a system which rewards people commensurate to their cleverness.
Many clever people don't do science for this reason I suspect, going off to be
chess masters or quant traders (which is fine).

Of course you could say to Eric, well, you shouldn't have been deterred and
published your work anyway. He tries to see off this quite legitimate
challenge by saying that because of peer review, there was no point in trying
to do this. This is a fairly circular argument. The Portal is a very
interesting podcast and I will keep listening, but hopefully there aren't too
many more self-entitled diatribes like this one.

~~~
Ziggy_Zaggy
Disclaimer - I'm a bit of a fanboi of the podcast.

With that being said, until there's further context into the research
published by Carol and that of Bret or if Carol comes on to speak explain her
side it'll be difficult to ascertain this version of events.

However, just from reviewing the podcast version (prior to Carol defending her
position) it seems rather grim for Carol atm.

