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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

I will get beat up for bringing this up, but I think that these facilities are operating in bubbles / silos. The reason I believe this, is that for months everything discussed in the article has also been discussed by an ER doctor in Riverside, CA that makes Youtube videos in his down time. [1] He is just reading the research available on nih.gov and a few other sites. What would it take to get all of the medical research groups to start collaborating on a common platform? Is the issue that they do not have a platform to share findings, theories, tests, or is everyone depending on the scientific review process and waiting for peer reviewed papers? Should we set up a forum for all the medical groups to share findings, theories, debate theories, etc?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos/videos

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The article is a summary of research findings over the course of the pandemic. What makes you think the research is happening in a silo? it's not. Medical researchers, just like, uh, that guy you saw on YouTube, are quite capable of reading the research on nih.gov and capable of discussing and sharing findings with each other.

The article even says "By June, clinicians were swapping journal papers, news stories, and tweets describing more than three dozen ways that COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, appears to manifest itself."

I see each group reaching the same or similar conclusions, but months apart. This suggest to me they are not collaborating with one another. It feels to me like there is a gap.

Think of it this way. If there were a giant asteroid heading towards earth and we have a limited time to solve this problem, would I want 500 teams all operating by themselves and using the incredibly slow process of sharing data via NIH / NIST and other research paper repositories, or would I want them all in a war room (virtual or physical) and someone coordinating the effort to risk rank all the solutions and quickly form action plans? My vote is the latter. It feels like the scientific community may have artificially painted themselves into a corner because of something like the banana ladder conundrum. [1] meaning, doing it that way because that is the way it has always been done.

[1] - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33470/what-tech...

Peer review is the heart and soul of scientific research. I do think there is room to speed up collaboration, but we should not compromise the rigidity of the scientific method, especially with as many unknowns as with the current coronavirus, establishing definite knowns is very valuable.

they're not _independently_ reaching similar conclusions months apart, they're strengthening (and writing about) the same conclusion from the same and more data.

This is a summary article. Those clinicians reached their conclusions months ago.

I think the issue here is less that they are arriving at the same conclusion months apart, and more that the reporting makes it sound like a sudden, recent revelation rather than a consensus that has been building for months and months.

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