Slack / Private Message Drop — page 144

durations and thus facilitate controlling future outbreaks. Conclusions: Perhaps, surprisingly, incubation times of pathogenic RNA viruses can be accurately predicted solely from generic features of virus genomes. Elucidation of the biological underpinnings of the connection between these features and disease progression can be expected to reveal key aspects of virus pathogenesis``` Let me guess - the best predictor of what an incubation time is what was the incubation time of related viruses. But this will be an immensely complicated paper that will do my head in. [2020-08-24 04:11:05] [Andrew Rambaut] For BMC Biology so presumably on the way down the journal impact ladder [2020-08-24 06:55:56] [Kristian Andersen] How cares about plausibility or biological mechanisms when we have machine learning! [2020-08-24 15:17:32] [Eddie Holmes] Good grief. What BS. [2020-08-24 15:18:57] [Kristian Andersen] No Eddie, ML, not BS! Because, cool. [2020-08-24 15:21:21] [Andrew Rambaut] Particularly annoys me they have stolen the acronym for maximum likelihood too [2020-08-24 15:24:42] [Kristian Andersen] Haha, yeah - has confused the shit out of me on multiple occasions. Let's just call it #AI - way cooler anyway. [2020-08-24 15:44:13] [Eddie Holmes] I think reviewers just give up with Koonin's papers. They are so dense that people just go 'fuck it, it's probably fine'. [2020-08-24 15:44:33] [Eddie Holmes] In other news I think he's confused Bart for Homer: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/did-pangolins-start-the-coronavirus-pandemic [2020-08-24 15:56:30] [Andrew Rambaut] He was probably thinking - he couldn't possibly mean Homer. Must be Bart he thinks he looks like. With that triangular spiky hair. [2020-08-24 15:57:45] [Eddie Holmes] Not every day that you get lampooned in The New Yorker though. A keeper. [2020-08-24 15:59:54] [Kristian Andersen] Need to read this whole thing. But in terms of accuracy, it appears spot on - based on this "He has a quick wit and a perfectly round, bald head". [2020-08-24 16:00:14]