Two smart people I read, who probably don’t know each other, and work in disparate fields, both have a post today about using a distributed collection of data and analysts to answer problems that we’re just now being able to address.
Here’s Jon Udell talking about distributed communities of climate scientists studying CO2 fluctuations.
Here’s Steve Hsu talking about the quantitative finance firm Horton Point, and how they’re assembling teams of academics from diverse fields such as psychology and data mining, to come up with dynamic models of how markets work.
What forward-thinking brilliant scientist am I talking about? Why, none other than Jenny McCarthy, the renowned autism expert, who contends that “autism is an environmental illness.” Interestingly, but entirely unrelatedly, CNN has another article up next to hers, about a sperm donor who donated to 6 women, 3 of which bore autistic kids.
McCarthy:
Evan is now 5 years old and what might surprise a lot of you is that we’ve never been contacted by a single member of the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, or any other health authority to evaluate and understand how Evan recovered from autism.
Not a single one of the other experts on the subject will even give you the time of day? You’re so misunderstood, Dr. McCarty. One day you’ll show them all, but until then, it’s a good thing we have the media to vet important health claims.
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