Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Hard News: Psychedelic science:…, in reply to linger,
If the effects are generally weaker in men than in women (which is plausible simply on the basis of dose per body mass) a male-only pilot study could well conclude, wrongly, that there is nothing to see.
Quite - or even if the dose is done on a per kg basis (which I'd kind of expect), there could be some interaction with testosterone (since their previous research has demonstrated that hormones make a difference) that would be different in women because we have less of it.
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Hard News: Psychedelic science:…, in reply to Alfie,
When you’re designing the initial stage of a six week course in which you’re not sure you’ll even detect measurable results, it makes sense to choose candidates most likely to hopefully register on the scale.
Sure - but they make no mention of any reason to suspect that men would be more likely to register on the scale than women.
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Yes really. If they're worried about menstrual cycles, why is the default men rather than non-menstruating women?
I don't have an issue with their logic on the menstrual cycle affecting results. I have an issue with excluding women on the basis of menstruation when plenty of women in their target age-group don't menstruate.
If there is no effect, will they then test on women in some way, or just assume that because there's no effect for men there's none for women either? -
I got cross and stopped reading at the "we didn't include women becoz omg periodz" bit. Maybe I'll come back and read the rest later. Maybe I won't, because ffs.
If menstrual variations are a concern, there are plenty of women in the 25-65 age bracket (particularly at the upper end, but also some younger ones for various reasons) who don't menstruate. -
Late to the party I see, oh well.
I'm spending my lockdown (thank goodness for autocorrect, does anyone else keep accidentally typing lickdown?!) feeling tired and behind and wondering why exactly I put up my hand to work my uncommitted hours (and the rest of them) on the response, when I could be enjoying just working half time and hanging out with my family and pottering in the garden.
I mean, I know why, just feeling a little wistful about what it could have looked like. -
The next industry volley: http://www.mtianz.org.nz/press-release.html
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Hard News: We are, at last, navigating…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
If there were any recourse – any I’m not convinced there would be – I would expect it to be against the Ministry of Health, and/or Standards NZ; the former for not acting to dispel the misconception that the lab decontamination target was a threshold to trigger smoke residue "decontamination"; and the latter for including on their standard-setting panel people with a vested interest in a low threshold.
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Bart Janssen,
If you demand that government step out of the way of business and you insist that, if there is a market then the product is good, then this is where we end up.
So much this.
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Hard News: Behind those Herald…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The $11.1m doesn’t come solely from removal of the subsidy. It also comes from health (hospitalisation) and justice system cost differences between home owners and tenants. It underestimates health savings because it doesn’t include GP visits or prescriptions, nor (as far as I recall) ACC claims.
However, the data the economic modelling was based on came from the Housing Foundation Waimahia development, and did not include the effective subsidy provided to the home buyers, in the form of below-market purchase prices due to what I understand was a subsidised land deal, and not-for-profit building model.
The real flaw in the analysis, though, is the underlying assumption that the advantages of home ownership are somehow attached to the tenure type itself, rather than the things that in New Zealand go with home ownership – eg security of tenure, a capital base.
A more useful comparison for BERL’s study would be between home-ownership, and giving people entirely secure tenancies (only endable by the landlord if rent not paid or property damaged – though tenants could still have the right to give notice) along with the heavy budgeting, social and community-strengthening interventions provided at Waimahia.
Yes, we should be aiming to put home-ownership in reach of those who want it. But there are a whole lot of fixes we could do for people renting as well, which we would expect to bring a fair chunk of the economic (health and justice) benefits counted by BERL, and we could make those fixes now, rather than having to wait until enough houses are built for prices to come down.
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to Russell Brown,
I’m no expert (calling all experts!) but I think the particular problem here is the size of the baby-boomer cohort, which has basically reshaped society around itself by sheer force of numbers. Which is independent of arguments about the privilege that cohort has enjoyed.
I hear lots of people saying that the problem is the size of the baby-boomer cohort. But the date proposed for the eligibility increase won't affect any baby boomers at all - which does make it hard to separate the argument from that cohort's privilege.