On election night, Fox News called Arizona very early. This surprised pretty much everyone. The Fox News team had improved their election model in 2020, and was confident their call was correct, even if unconventional.
Conservatives love to complain about the media.
But there's an inside baseball media that reveals how destructive the conservative media criticism environment can be to the conservative movement.
Enter, Fox News:
On election night, Fox News called Arizona very early. This surprised pretty much everyone. The Fox News team had improved their election model in 2020, and was confident their call was correct, even if unconventional.
Who stole the election changed over time. Fox News. Some rando in Atlanta. Poll workers. China.
There was less true uncertainty about who would win at 11:20 PM on election night than in any election ever, because sooooo many votes had been cast early.
Analysts in finance get paid lots of money for that kind of call!
1) Fox News recruited high-quality analytic talent into the conservative movement
2) That talent delivered, providing accurate results faster than competitors
3) Those results didn't fit "The Narrative" that the Trumpist echo chamber wanted
4) Fired
But our media critics really need to pay attention to stuff like this. It's open hostility on even *irrelevant* truth claims.
It didn't matter what Fox called! The results weren't influenced by that!
But in the media-and-commentary-addicted mind of politics-overdosed Trump supporters.... it really mattered what The Media said.
.... but we don't really fund "data stuff." We're more interested in commentary. Do you want to repackage this as some op-eds?
Not quite. They got rid of two people responsible for *reporting* that decision. But the guy who actually *made* the decision - Arnon Mishkin - is still there, afaik. Decision Desk is still sacrosanct, apparently.
— Ezra Glinter (@EzraG) January 22, 2021
More from Lyman Stone 石來民
So a few days back I was tweeting about SSRIs. The big question with these drugs is: why do controlled trials routinely show such small effects when practitioners and patients report life-changingly-large effects?
So first off, at this point the evidence is pretty clear that SSRIs and other anti-anxiety/anti-depression drugs truly don't do very much. Their average effects are beneath clinical significance, as I tweeted about here:
Basically, the problem these drugs face is that while they actually see relatively LARGE effects.... but that placebos in those trials ALSO see large effects (and most untreated depression improves within a year anyways).
So basically you have this problem where:
1. The condition tends to improve on its own in a majority of cases
2. Placebo effects for the condition are unusually large
Which means the large crude effects of SSRIs get swamped.
So that raises two new questions.
1. (Not my focus here) Are we treating these conditions appropriately given their untreated prognosis is usually (though certainly not always!!) "goes away in a few months"?
2. Why are placebo effects so unusually large?
So first off, at this point the evidence is pretty clear that SSRIs and other anti-anxiety/anti-depression drugs truly don't do very much. Their average effects are beneath clinical significance, as I tweeted about here:
What's the best recent empirical assessment of SSRI/SNRI effectiveness which deals with heterogeneity and long-term effects in a plausible way?
— Lyman Stone \u77f3\u4f86\u6c11 (@lymanstoneky) December 4, 2020
Basically, the problem these drugs face is that while they actually see relatively LARGE effects.... but that placebos in those trials ALSO see large effects (and most untreated depression improves within a year anyways).
So basically you have this problem where:
1. The condition tends to improve on its own in a majority of cases
2. Placebo effects for the condition are unusually large
Which means the large crude effects of SSRIs get swamped.
So that raises two new questions.
1. (Not my focus here) Are we treating these conditions appropriately given their untreated prognosis is usually (though certainly not always!!) "goes away in a few months"?
2. Why are placebo effects so unusually large?
