mattcaywood

This number is likely too high by a factor of 10, and there are more reliable sources.

Derek Lowe's rebuttal to the article is here: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/500-000-excess-dea...

and a medical press article from 2019 estimates 60,000 excess deaths: https://www.statnews.com/2019/10/09/vioxx-relaunched-treat-h...

Some people might enjoy the pre-war colonial grandeur and optimism, but the 11th is mostly notable for the quality of its authors including:

Ernest Rutherford, Bertrand Russell, T.H. Huxley, James Jeans, Peter Kropotkin

Before or after 1911, this level of scholar would not typically be found writing encyclopedia entries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_E...

viaLibri (https://www.vialibri.net/) includes ABEbooks and the other major US marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Biblio, Alibris) and international marketplaces. It's far more comprehensive than bookfinder4u, which doesn't do well for books published before ISBNs were introduced (~1970).

Schiff seems to assume a design must always communicate on first glance. However, a design like this has many chances to make an impression.

The multiplicity of nonsense words the logo could encode is irrelevant to its quality. Having seen and correctly interpreted 'mitp' once, top-down visual priming guarantees you will never again see 'imlji,' 'nnlji,' 'uolp,' or 'oulji.'

It's like those "can yeu raed tihs" memes. Of course you can read it. Especially the second time.

(I do think Cooper's original logo is brilliant, and the MIT Media Lab logos are overly systematized.)

I'm criticizing the approach of starting the analysis in a vacuum and coming up with a hypothesis that fits the abstract pattern, when simple domain knowledge (from looking at a website, or a Caltrain station notice board) would have put them on the "right track" from the start.

What the authors did falls into the trap of a very stereotypical criticism of data science and doesn't do data science any favors.

The data is very much consistent with the bridge work hypothesis. The website indicates a series of bridges are being replaced. Starting 9/28/15 with Tilton Ave. and proceeding northward to Monte Diablo Ave then Santa Inez Ave.

Data scientists blog about Caltrain data, come up with convoluted hypothesis about bias in sensors at two stations.

Commenter on blog notices that Caltrain is occasionally single-tracking between those stations due to a bridge replacement. [1]

"Data science" ends up with a bloody neck from Occam's razor.

[1] http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/Projects/Caltrain_Capi...