That's not an aside. The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben. People invoke it without ever asking themselves if its true because they think of it as the hard won wisdom of a great man.
> The quote is pernicious because of its attribution to Ben.
It's not pernicious for any reason because it's absolutely true in general, Franklin was simply using a general piece of wisdom to justify particular government actions.
Yes, using it that way was an improvisation and a bit of a stretch, but the real issue here is why he needed to resort to it - that's a rabbit hole that pretty much goes to the bottom of today's problems which we're handling in a much worse manner than him back then.
Meanwhile, tracking consumption involves error bars that span a factor of 2. Go figure out how many calories are in an avocado. Is that per gram figure amortized for the weight of the pit, or is this just for the flesh?
Counting calories precisely was invented by the processed food industry.
The American public schooling system in action yet again here. 3rd grade reading comprehension in no way stops them from loudly proclaiming some of the dumbest shit possible.
Skepticism is healthy. You've found that the numbers don't make sense at face value. The problem is that you stopped there, you haven't even made any attempt at reconciling them with the original claim.
What if the US number of 1 in 400 figure is that high precisely because it includes people exposed to pesticide? In other words, maybe the number would be 1 in 500 if it weren't for Paraquat? You'd have to look at concentration maps or at the very least check what's the diagnosis rates in other countries before you can truly dismiss the claim, imho.
>The problem is that you stopped there, you haven't even made any attempt at reconciling them with the original claim.
What are you talking about? I've done all the diligence that is due. If you want to convince me, you have to actually present your evidence. When you do present evidence, I'm free to assume that the evidence you've presented is your best evidence.
The article starts with a story about an 83 year old farmer with Parkinsons. I'm not going to continue reading after that point. An 83 year old with Parkinsons is not an anomaly, his existence is not evidence of anything. I'm not required to look beyond this point, and I'm absolutely free to comment about that. This is reasonable skepticism. I am not claiming evidence of absence, I'm claiming absence of evidence.
But fine, if you want to look for evidence of absence, then as you say, We need look no further than a random country where paraquat is banned. Paraquat is banned in germany, and there are 80 million people in germany, go google how many of them have Parkinson's disease.
If you are trying to convince me of an effect so small that you cannot even come up with one anomalous Parkinson's case to write a story about, then I don't care.
The article already talks to the numbers they mean and what scale they believe it to be:
> More than 6,400 lawsuits against Syngenta and Chevron that allege a link between paraquat and Parkinson’s are pending in the U.S. District Court of Southern Illinois. Another 1,300 cases have been brought in Pennsylvania, 450 in California and more are scattered throughout state courts.
> “I do think it’s important to be clear that number is probably not even close to representative of how many people have been impacted by this,” said Christian Simmons, a legal expert for Drugwatch.
I'm not saying you have to believe it, just that rhetorically asking if it's more than 5,000 in the US is redundant when the article already says there are more than that many individual cases about it in a single district court.
My grandfather was a crop duster pilot in the 60s-70s. He died of Parkinson's almost 4 years ago today. He is the only one in my family to succumb to this disease. For a brief moment I was relieved to know there was some explanation for his suffering.
Then I read the HN comments.
It is beyond infuriating to read a well researched paper with 1300 open cases legal with overwhelming evidence only to be met with "zero chance this is real."
The article mentions epidemiological studies showing that people living or working near farmland where paraquat is used have a higher incidence of Parkinson's.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it, there could be a link.
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