It depends on whether the paper is simply wrong for some reason, or if there is either fraud or a fundamental mistake in the procedure. But in general you're right, retractions are not the way to handle most scientific disputes.
Your point about consensus unfortunately doesn't quite work in cases like this were the people using the paper are not scientists. They're not continuing work in the same area, people are using this paper to support their arguments.
She should have been tied to a wooden post and shipped out of DC on an uncovered railcar for labelling a peaceful protester assassinated by ICE a "domestic terrorist".
Her scandal was not being subtle enough with the theft of government funds for Trump's taste, and he found a way to get rid of her that he could claim he had no part in.
I dont see the us empire recovering. This is in the starting / middle of a collapse. If any additional crises pop up inconjunction to this we are going to fall like the bronze age collapse
I think the argument here is a bit of a strawman, though there is a good point in there as well. AI will not automate all customer support, but it has the potential to automate a large fraction of it.
The anecdote in there is about complex B2B enterprise software. That's not the majority of customer support, and is very heavy on escalating to actual experts.
You don't have to remove 100% of the jobs to have huge effects. Automating large parts of a few sectors would already create significant disruptions.
The article literally addresses this point. The easily automated stuff doesn’t save that much money. The big costs of support are the hard things you can’t automate.
I think this mentality must have its own imminent apocalypse. Gifted with an enormous increase in potential productivity, the decision is to do the same but cheaper? Who allocates capital to such spiritless commodification? It all feels like using a printing press to make one bible a month.
There must be a role that can be more productive. It might not necessarily be our skillsets that fit those roles - and the roles might be more stratified - but someone is going to be able to be do more, be paid more.
I don't know the details here for PFAS (and they likely would vary enormously for the different molecules that fall into this broad category). But in general a molecule doesn't have to react to be accumulated. Inert usually means it doesn't react with other substances in a normal environment. It doesn't mean you can't make it react if you add enough energy. For example nitrogen gas is considered inert. Bacteria (or chemical plants) can make it react and produce different nitrogen-containing molecules from it.
Inert doesn't really say anything about toxicity, it's not directly related to that. The opposite is though, pretty much any strongly reactive chemical is dangerous or toxic in some way since it will react with stuff humans are made from.
With PFAS the inert example is also usually Teflon. That is also a solid polymer, so not many individual molecules. There isn't much you body could do to process a macroscopic chunk of Teflon, so you'd almost certainly just excrete it.
As far as I understand the nomenclature, PFAS covers both the inert final products like Teflon and reactive intermediates, degradation products and reactants. It's a very broad category of chemicals.
My understanding is that the bigger danger is e.g. a Teflon-producing plant than the final Teflon products (assuming the Teflon isn't damaged and heated too much). Because the plant has to handle the reactive ingredients, and those can leak into the environment.
However Qatar stopped production before the straits were officially closed and their stated reason is "due to military attacks", also Russian or Chinese ships can pass
There is no such thing as "officially closed". The moment people start shooting there, driving a ship across becomes dangerous. This was an absolutely predictable consequence of the attacks on Iran, you didn't need to wait until several tankers were burning to know these attacks were likely to happen and the strait would become essentially too risky to pass.
Back then there were only two ships attacked in the straits, and one was an Iranian shadow fleet ship. I am not sure that is "closing the straits" in any shape or form
So if there's an active shooter on the one alley to your workplace you should still be at work in time, right? :)
Or let's make the analogy clearer: if your Uber driver cancels the ride because there's an active shooter on the only road between him and you, it's their fault not the shooter's?
no, but if two ships were hit, while one clearly by mistake, it is very early to say the straits are going to be closed as opposed to incorrect targeting
your analogies have went past me though, generally although a common misconception, countries are not people and wars are not comparable to crime
You don't even have to scare everyone. You just have to scare the insurers. Without insurance ships won't sail. The exposure is huge, so a small blip in risk makes all the modeling go kerplooie. Traffic stopped when the insurers said drop the anchors.
To restore traffic, we need that risk to return to previous levels, which requires diplomacy and trust. I don't expect resolution any time soon.
I thought Vance was the actual isolationist America first guy? Not Trump kind who's opinion changes based which authoritarian he last had a phone call with.
In this specific case maybe Vance is least worst option.
Are Russian or Chinese ships actually passing? Junior just released a decree saying not one liter of oil will pass. It didn't have an asterisk allowing Russian or Chinese ships.
I also find it funny that we just decided to allow Russia to pad its coffers by temporarily lifting sanctions on sale of Russian oil. Sorry Ukraine!
The problem is systems like that have a failure rate.
Self deactivating land mines exist - and sometimes fail to do this (3/100 was the rate I heard a few years ago).
Same problem with cluster munitions: it's not how they work. It's that a bunch of the bomblets fail to work, then leave UXO around which explodes a child's hand later.
It is disconcerting to see that quite a few of the well-known billionaires seem to have just outright insane beliefs. And those are people with real power and the ability to influence events on a larger scale.
I would say it is natural that humans with so much power go crazy. What is not natural is allowing them to have that power in the first place. If a society allows that, it deserves anything that could happen to it, whether it's Armageddon, climate change, pollution, idiocracy, or whatever.
How does it work with dictators? I suggest it's a spectrum: the more powerful you are, the more you can surround yourself with yes-men. Of course there are a lot of different people, there's probably very grounded dictators and billionaires too, you probably don't hear much about them.
Europe is a big place, but my understanding is that the US is the outlier here and Europe is relatively similar in this regard.
The only time I really saw checks used was when I was a child ~30-35 years ago and my parents used them. I did once cash a check from an elderly relative, but that was very unusual and only happened once. I didn't even know it was still possible to do that, my reaction was more like if someone had handed me a stack of punch cards to run on my computer.
There hasn't been anything an average person used checks for in the last decades in Germany. Except a few elderly people, nobody uses checks and there are no rebates via checks at all.
We'll see if the markets are still too optimistic here or not. I don't see how this will resolve quickly, so the Strait of Hormuz will likely remain essentially closed for quite a bit longer. I don't see any escort plans by US military ships as working, if Iranian troops actively try to disrupt this.
Your point about consensus unfortunately doesn't quite work in cases like this were the people using the paper are not scientists. They're not continuing work in the same area, people are using this paper to support their arguments.
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