tr223344

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

Well said

[Trevor Klee @trevor_klee]

1. This is so bad. Not only is the underlying paper not good science, but that paper doesn't even support this product. That paper is about using saccades to diagnose active Alzheimer's, not prodromal (i.e. pre-symptomatic), and it uses a different technology to measure saccades, not VR, which has not been proven to measure saccades accurately. Everything about this is misleading to vulnerable consumers scared about dementia.
2. This is very clearly a medical device being sold without proper authorization, as it's being used to diagnose a disease and it has zero testing behind this device specifically (as opposed to the concept generally). I know Silicon Valley hates the FDA, but one of the main purposes of the FDA was to prevent snake oil salesmen from using fear to sell products.
3. You can't claim a product is "investigational and can't diagnose Alzheimer's" on the footer of your website and then claim it's "the world's earliest Alzheimer's test" on the front page. That's not a loophole. That's just trying to trick old people who won't read the whole website or will be confused by it. Same thing with stealing Nature's and NEJM's logos, slapping them on your website, and then saying "those are the logos of journals that published a paper related to our product".
4. There's a recent crop of Silicon Valley companies who just outright lie about their product's capabilities to diagnose diseases and health conditions, apparently taking their cue from Theranos (see also Clair Health, Nucleus Genomics). It's a damn shame to see YC supporting one of them.
5. My biggest worry is that these fake companies will be financial successes. Proving a test can diagnose Alzheimer's early would take a huge amount of money, time, and effort. It's a distraction from marketing and selling the product. Saccade could very well outcompete a legitimate Alzheimer's test, making everyone worse off.
6. I bought X Premium just so I could write this rant about this company because it made me so upset to see all the credulous boosters quote-tweeting this and saying this huckster "solved Alzheimer's".

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

That’s exactly how the bio community perceived it but somehow it’s getting lost in translation

[ProfessionalSkeptic @CarbonChemist1]

@neal_amin When “scientists” post SNL-level parodies like this, they invite all the vitriol they deserve. To pretend this is a serious endeavor and not an attempt to grab attention is ridiculous.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

Exactly

[nabajit (bio/acc) @TensorTwerker]

it's biotech for a reason, and not techbio

all the folks who recently started working with biology and biologists, please understand, biology is slow and there's a good freaking reason for it.

living systems are complex. experiments fail cuz tons of unpredictable variables.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 2) I could cherry-pick screenshots to construct a different narrative, too. That’s precisely the problem. You keep reframing legitimate scrutiny as hostility towards innovation to justify scientific naivety and ignorance. Where’s the evidence for the claims?

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 1) The four screenshots show legitimate concerns about a video actively selling a supposed innovation breakthrough: “Look how awesome we are, we built a lab in 30 days and achieved a breakthrough.”

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 5) Encourage the experimentation. But hold the science to the same standards we expect of everyone else. That isn’t hostility toward innovation; it’s the foundation of credible science.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 1) If you want to work in the life sciences, you need to be prepared for scrutiny and to back your claims with evidence. People have repeatedly asked legitimate questions about the validity of the data and the scientific claims being made.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 4) What’s frustrating is watching the discussion repeatedly get reframed as a battle between scrappy engineers and defensive biologists. That avoids the actual issue: what evidence supports the claims being made?

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 3) Nobody is saying young engineers shouldn’t experiment. But setting up equipment and building “a lab” are the starting point, not the scientific achievement. Nobody is entitled to praise for doing the bare minimum required to begin the work,particularly when making such claims.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@kenbwork 2) As far as I’ve seen, those questions still haven’t been directly addressed. Instead, the response has been to offer more predictions about experimental claims that have yet to be substantiated. Predictions are not a substitute for experimental evidence.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@RNAiAnalyst At this rate, they’re going to destroy every field of research with their hype..

[kache @yacineMTB]

90% of my feed is American start up slop, people promoting their fake startup by emulating something real (though entirely fake). "We made this big breakthrough, click here and read all about it". The breakthrough is fake. The startup is fake. The people are fake. So, so annoying

[Itai Yanai @ItaiYanai]

1. CRISPR came from basic research on bacteria.
2. Optogenetics started with a discovery in algae.
3. The GFP protein comes from jellyfish.
The biggest breakthroughs all trace to scientists follow their curiosity. This is one huge reason why we must keep funding basic research!

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@ItaiYanai Yes and uphold research integrity in industry and academia. We all have a responsibility.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@navvye @clpthom @Cas9Bandit Why so afraid to show real experimental data and only show predictions? The answer would be cause you have no data or falsified ones.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@eliblee @bimald Don’t feel bad you got played with another Theranos.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@eliblee @bimald All this shows is a high school summer program project that stitched ProtBERT to ChemBERTa and memorized random PDBbind splits. Framing a glorified molecular weight lookup table with zero pocket physics as "solving drug discovery" is wild, even for biotech Twitter.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@svangel @tylerarose0 @navvye Apparently, renting an existing lab doesn’t count as being serious about AI for biology. Nothing screams scientific innovation like buying equipment and fitting out a lab instead of demonstrating better science - the theatrics are reaching an all-time high 👏

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@abhijeetpatra88 You’re conflating rapid experimental feedback with model validation. Drug candidates undergo in-vivo testing during preclinical development; clinical trials test them in humans. And a 72-hour insect assay doesn’t establish predictive accuracy, selectivity or field efficacy.

[tr223344 @02457821tp]

@navvye @jazer I did and was shocked how people ate that but held off commenting. You are showing
very few data points, fitted curves rather than observed ones, and different IC50s. Let’s see the actual dose-response data, insect mortality results, and selectivity profiles. Integrity matters.