[Mistletoe]

I need to see stats on how many would be expected to die or disappear from natural causes and I’m never seeing that on these stories. Weird things happen all the time to people in any field of work, it’s only concerning if this is rising above the natural noise. The fact that the current administration, which has proven time and time again it is ignorant about statistics and pretty much all things science, is raising the alarm does not bode well for this being an actual issue.

[zimpenfish]

Via [0], "Well, there are about 2 million researchers in the US. There are about 25 deaths per million people per day in the US, that’s 50 scientists dying each day, or 73,000 scientists over a four year period. Finding 11 that have some vague connection does not seem unusual to me."

(there's more detail at the link, obvs.)

[0] https://www.stevennovella.com/neurologicablog/whats-with-the...

[abcd_f]

Show some rigor.

> 25 deaths per million people per day

That's not the same age range as actively practicing researchers.

[zimpenfish]

> Show some rigor.

Yes, perhaps by reading the link.

"I should point out I am using numbers for the general population, which may not match the rate for scientists. [...] I also looked at CDC data – about 800,000 people in the US between 25 and 65 die each year [...] About 6% of the population work in the science field, which would be 192,000, or half that if you use a narrow definition of 3%, so close to the 73,000 figure I calculated the other way."

He also looks at how that compares with the individual institutions.

But yes, "show some rigor" indeed!

[abcd_f]

> by reading the link

The link didn't inspire any confidence given the quote you provides.

[zimpenfish]

Should I have posted the full text?

[notahacker]

But then if we're doing age ranges, the 10 people "tied to sensitive research" who have disappeared or died are 59, 61, 60, 68, 53, 60, 78, 47, 67, 39 (with the two youngest identified as homicide and suicide). How does a cohort with an average age in their 60s compare with the age range of actively practising researchers?

[zimpenfish]

I should imagine you could look at the CDC data for those cohorts and perform the same kind of analysis as he has.

[notahacker]

I agree, my point was more along the lines the poster demanding rigour wanted to use the death rates for the entire age range of "actively practising researchers" as a comparison baseline for a group of people averaging in their 60s. Don't even need the look at CDC data to know that they die more than the average working age person...