With methods research, the dataset is secondary. This focus is misaligned with broader goals of studying risk assessments (eg COMPAS). A paper can be high quality in a pure AI/ML methods sense, but irrelevant for criminal justice impact or worse. 1/
from arxiv.org/abs/2106.05498
"Placing data in subservience to optimization goals decontextualizes it – the objective is beating a measure of performance instead of gleaning new insights from the data." 2/
"Risk assessment in criminal justice is not a modular pipeline in which each component can be replaced with a fairer version the way you would replace a sorting algorithm with a more efficient implementation. It is a tangled mess drenched in an ongoing history of inequity." 3/
"The conference publication workflow & community norms in CS make appropriate use of risk assessment/criminal justice datasets difficult... Researchers are incentivized to continuously replicate even flawed experiments." 4/
The human immune system is impressive, but so are the mechanisms pathogens use to evade it. In my new post, I cover 5 surprising and ingenious ways that viruses & bacteria can subvert our defenses. 1/
Our cells contain microscopic motor proteins that transport cargo along microtubules. The virus (HSV-1) that is increasingly being linked to Alzheimer's Disease uses our motor proteins to transport its viral DNA to the nucleus, so that it can start replicating faster. 2/
T cells are a crucial part of the immune system. A single-celled organism (T. cruzi, cause of Chagas disease) blocks the signal which coordinates T cell response. With no T cell response to it, T. cruzi can survive 10-30 years in a person, before wreaking havoc or death. 3/
My daughter is constantly creating– her passions include making art, writing fiction, coding interactive games, and composing music. Some might say my husband & I are terrible parents… because she does all these things on screens 1/
I am concerned by how these false interlocking points are being repeated by politicians & pundits: that screentime is very harmful for children, that it is essential for kids to attend in-person school every day (even when sick), and that workers must return to the office. 2/
Overemphasizing in-person school attendance overlooks the many kids whose needs aren’t met by in-person school. It also overlooks the many online & screen-based options opportunities to build skills, express creativity, and form friendships. 3/
There is much confusion about the "hygiene hypothesis" (what kind of microbes are beneficial vs. harmful?)-- a clearer refinement of it is the framing of "old friends" vs. "crowd infections"
Our immune systems evolved in a different world, without 100,000 flights per day 1/
Some people compare the immune system to a muscle that gets stronger with use. Yet some infections leave lasting harm. Viruses are increasingly linked with multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, type 1 diabetes, cancer, & more...
Allergies are a misfiring of immune system– when it attacks harmless environmental substances, e.g. pollen or dust. Autoimmunity is a different type of immune misfiring– when it attacks our own cells. Both are on the rise.
All the diseases in below chart are autoimmune. 3/
Friends with no previous interest in AI ethics have been asking me about it recently, so I want to share several underlying concepts about AI & power that are important to understand. 🧵 1/
AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, & Scale
In Australia, automation was used to scale putting poor people into debt (often illegally). The govt went from creating 20,000 new debts PER YEAR to creating 20,000 new debts PER WEEK, many of them bogus, but hard for people to appeal. 3/
Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, Multiple sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Hashimoto's, & Psoriasis impact a range of body systems, but all are autoimmune diseases.
Developing a lifelong autoimmune disease is often first triggered by an infection. 2/
Medicine is very siloed, and autoimmune diseases have often been treated in separate silos, based on which body system they impact, limiting our broader understanding of common threads. 3/
Even common viruses can have long-reaching, surprising, & devastating consequences. Fortunately, there are simple steps we can take to reduce transmission. 1/
The idea that a common childhood virus can quietly hang out in your nervous system, reactivate decades later to cause shingles, and then months AFTER shingles blisters clear up cause blood clots & strokes is mind-boggling to me 2/
VZV (chickenpox virus) is not just linked to strokes, but also linked to multiple sclerosis or vascular dementia (my note: possibly through reactivating other viruses).