With Metal Hurlant [known in the US as Heavy Metal] also being popular in France at that time, plus the arrival of first role playing games (both US ones and french ones), it was a high time for us, the geeks.
Does anyone know if they were liked by the public? I doubt they were much loved in the scientific community based on what I read in the wikipedia entry. Their history seems patchy per wikipedia.
Also I am trying to understand their relevance / importance in the grand scheme. Why is this getting traction?
They were used in crypto as a sort of bogeyman representation of the old guard financial world keeping down crypto. Locked in mortal combat with Sminem, the representation of the little guy trying to make it in the current world of extreme wealth inequality.
French here. Lately they weren't that much loved by the public and mostly mocked because of their weirdness but they were still pretty famous and respected by geeks because of their successful (and pretty influential) show about sci-fi back in the 80s. I guess they were still benifiting from that golden era of them, but the consensus is that they were freaky.
I don't think that is true at all for "geeks" that witnessed first-hand[1] their manipulative and deceptive attempts at defending their PhDs and scientific papers in early 2000's. After that they doubled down on the intelligent design bullshit, used any opportunity to promote their books (fair enough), while attacking the few journalists that actually tried to expose the fraud.
They should have sticked to sci-fi, but even in their early days they couldn't help but try to vulgarize proper science, even though they weren't really qualified. Good intentions don't make up for peddling pseudoscience, plagiarism, and the constant smoke and mirrors. And it seems they were also facing some pretty serious legal issues in their personal life.
Thanks two both of you for the comments - have a better understanding now of their relevance to the greater conversation. Add in their meme nature and I have the full story.
Charlatans and pseudoscience are like moths to a flame. :(
You are right. I should have specified they were still respected for their contribution to sci-fi in France, but scorned for all their scientific frauds.
Talking about sci-fi on mainstream French TV was indeed pretty novel in the 80s. And they also brought up real R&D topics and scientific research, I remember one episode of Temps X when they talk about Dennis Meadows' limits to growth.
I was too young but I'm still not convinced their TV show didn't raise a few eyebrows back then too, since they didn't hesitate to invite crackpots and talk about stuff like telekinesis.
I loved them as a kid but they lost everything when they became fraudsters. Instead of being interesting journalists they wanted to become Great Scientists without the brains for it.
To my children they are just a fascinating case of botched cosmetic surgery
I think that Bogdanoff twins invented a time-machine, traveled to 2021 and used GPT-3 to generate their Ph.D. theses with correct Quantum Field Theory jargon but nonsensical otherwise :-)
</joke attempt>
I am French, I was interested in the brothers when there was the controversy. Their "phd" was a translation error in their bio. To silence the controversy, they decided to actually pass a phd. Neither brother claimed to be a genius, but while they have many other activities, they passed their phd with work similar to an average student. They deserve their phd.
Their books are generally intended to popularize the scientific work of real researchers. They are well written. Their public appearances on TV are not without humor and self-mockery. They have deserved the sympathy of many french people.
If this summary is correct, they seem to have deserved their PhD in the sense that they managed to bluff their way through it. A bit like getting the gold medal for a marathon as a consolation price when you've managed to do just 10 metres of it (on a unicycle, for reasons unclear to anyone observing).
Their PhD are absolutely not "work similar to an average [phd] student"
It was utter nonsense, and a quick read of any page in any of the papers supporting their PhD thesis from someone with working knowledge of the area will show it to be word salads.
Others linked to John Baez's analysis of the case, which stands correct 20 years later.
What you claim is truly insulting to PhD students in hard science, especially in a country like France where academia is underfunded.
Universities don't hand out PhDs to just anyone who can spare a few years writing non-sensical papers for free.
Try to get into a half-decent MSc program, let alone doctoral school, without the relevant undergrad degree. If you aren't TV famous, good luck with that.
Not every student who graduates will become a world-renowned researcher. In assessing the quality of their work, I trust more what their reviewers have said publicly, than a researcher who is so far above the rest of the world that he will be able to critique most of the papers in his field in the same way.
> Not every student who graduates will become a world-renowned researcher.
Nobody claims the opposite. But that doesn't imply that PhD grads who don't become top researchers have just spent 3-6 years of their life writing non-sensical papers. Many PhD students drop out if they reach a dead-end, even though they were perfectly qualified otherwise. If you can't produce research that gets cited, you're a net negative to the lab and its staff, any supervisor that has skin in the game won't just let you go on for years.
> a researcher who is so far above the rest of the world
Except it's not just one professor but literally everyone who tried to engage with them in a reasonable discussion. Hell, I was an undergrad student at the time, and one of my calculus TAs was part of these people trying to make sense of their claims (there was no shortage of online forums where the brothers would try to defend themselves). Not a world-class researcher or even someone who made an academic career, just a competent PhD student in quantum groups.
The CNRS has written a 30+ page report that explains why their work is completely devoid of anything of scientific value, and for the few parts that make sense, not even at the standards of an MSc thesis. Do you think the typical CNRS researchers have enough spare time to read two PhD theses, multiple papers and write a comprehensive report, for fun?
And that's not even the worst part. If they had been acting in good faith, they wouldn't have sued several newspapers and regularly misquoted/mistranslated renowned physicists.
They were fraudsters, and just paid the ultimate price of their lack of scientific integrity.
The CNRS was condemned for defamation. The brothers are not fraudsters. The phd in mathematic was well deserved. The other phd was just the minimum to get a pass.
Their faces had been butchered and begging for attention. Exactly the same that Jocelyn Wildenstein did to herself.
I always think that there must be a component of drug addiction in people that undergoes so much extreme transformations, and still go back for more. Maybe Painkillers applied in those surgeries have something to do with that. Is a trap for rich people affected from personal insecurities
More notable is actuarial data that shows that all cause mortality remains stubbornly elevated. Actuaries study death for a living and they need to get it right or the life insurance companies they work for go bust.
What the data suggests is that in aggregate we're largely moving death around. From who to whom is the question.
I am not in the figures but I understand "moving death around" this way:
If you do not properly hospitalize serious Covid patients, you get more Covid death...
If you properly treat them, you postpone the treatment of other sicknesses and increase death count in another population.
Then you keep an excess mortality that just moves around.
But excess mortality is the total. It's not the slice of the pie where if you grow one, the other shrinks, it IS the pie no? There was an huge bump in excess mortality year-over-year. If it was moved around you'd expect the total of all the dips to come close to the bump? That's not what has been observed.
So something caused more people to die than usual. What is it? (rhetorical question not asking directly).
With a large population of unvaccinated people, and the virus affecting record numbers of people, what did you really expect to happen to all cause mortality??
"Several friends told them to get themselves vaccinated but they felt because of their lifestyle and their [lack of] comorbidity, they weren't at risk of Covid."
Imagine being over 70 thinking you aren't at risk.
There are likely many, many commentors on HN who have family members in that (somewhat open-ended) age bracket who insist that they are not at risk. Either because they don't trust vaccines, or feel perfectly healthy, or feel that 'it is just a flu'.
I do (just the one thankfully, whose 'intuition' tells them that it will be quite alright, despite having frequent contacts with other people), and it's really not great knowing that there is very real risk of seeing them on the ICU at some point.
As time went on and the numbers showed that I would probably be fine if I caught it given my age and health. I started to worry a lot less about it. But I still got vaccinated. Can't really relate to this kind of thinking, and I hope your friend remains healthy.
I can relate but don't agree with them. I found it helpful to try to put myself in their shoes.
In their peer group they have many very unhealthy people and seen a lot of friends die. Some died from botched unnecessary medical interventions or were causalities of medical bureaucracy or malpractice. Some have also been screwed over significantly by government authorities at different points in their lives. This leads to hesitancy and skepticism for new treatments, and authorities.
That is to say, they need to be convinced that the health authorities promoting vaccines now are different from the ones that promoted treatments that killed their peers. They need to be convinced that the same government authorities promoting or requiring vaccines are now more trustworthy than when they fucked them over in the past.
This isn't necessarily a good reason with respect to the vaccine, but I hope it helps you relate
Oh I mean thinking that just because you aren't at risk you don't need the vaccine. I think the twins were mistaken of course, given their age. But for example, myself being younger and healthy I believe I'm also low risk. But I am still relieved to be vaccinated. I know people who still have breathing issues because they caught it and it continues to impact them months after recovering from the virus itself.
I read "this kind of thinking" as relating to the quote from the parent comment, talking about the mindset of people who avoid the vaccine because they insist they are not at risk of severe illness or death, despite being members of a population who demonstrably are.
TL;DR version not antivax but choose not to vax because feeling healthy at 72.
"die of Covid"
"the brothers had not been vaccinated against Covid-19."
"Their friends said they were convinced their healthy lifestyle would protect them"
"Asked why they had chosen not to have the Covid vaccines if they were not themselves anti-vaxxers, Luc Ferry said on Monday: "Like Igor, Grichka wasn't antivax, he was just antivax for himself.
"They were both athletic, with not an inch of fat, and they thought the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus.""
> It's a pretty contradicting statement to say in the same sentence "I'm not antivax but I think the vaccine is more dangerous than the virus"
In more general terms, outside of covid for a moment, do you think so? If you have been vaccinated for X, Y, and Z, but think the risks of vaccinating for R out weigh the benefits, does that make you antivax?
I'd say anyone who buys into the wave of fearmongering against vaccines is antivax, even if they've had previous vaccinations. Two twins in their 70s choosing not to get vaccinated would fall into this camp.
Conversely, if there's someone for whom medical consensus agrees is legitimately better off without vaccines (e.g: due to some immune system condition), then I wouldn't call them antivax.
It's not an unreasonable opinion where small children with no comorbidities are concerned. Extremely low risk from COVID; tiny but not non-existent risk from the vaccine. It's a different matter when you're in your early 70s though.
It's a valid opinion that for most people the vaccine is beneficial, but for some people the vaccine is more dangerous than the infection. Usually the plausible example are young children, not people over 70 though.
Until recently we didn't vaccinate children under 12, we still don't vaccinate children under 5. I'm sure there are other groups of people we will never vaccinate. Therefore it's not completely bonkers to believe that you personally don't need the vaccine because you're in a very special group of people while also believing that almost everybody should get vaccinated.
The fact that health authorities have not been vaccinating young children on the basis of the data we do have has made some contribution to the fact that young children haven't had reactions to it.
They are vaccinating children older than 5, you are talking about below this?
There's no evidence you have for this assertion that for children the vaccine is more dangerous than the illness. Neither are particularly dangerous at all for young children, but the disease has been linked to deaths in children.
The chances of myocarditis didn't seem to decrease with age as fast as the chances of a serious case of the virus, so maybe there's an inflection point somewhere... Could be at three weeks before birth though for all I know.
In the UK, back in July 2021 the government's scientific advisers said, based on the evidence at the time, the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks [1].
Subsequently better evidence became available, and it was decided to extend vaccination to under-18s.
Perhaps whatshisface is merely recalling six-month-old official advice?
I don't know the statistics and generally believe that everybody should probably get the shot, I just wanted to point out that it's not a lunatic position to simultaneously believe that the vaccine is good and refuse to take it because you yourself might be in a group where the risk of an infection is lower than the risk of the vaccine.
Because for your body to fight a virus, it needs to have a good working immune system. Some people lack that for various reasons. A vaccine helps in this case but it's not 100%.
Being "fit" certainly helps your immune system. But as we see here, it doesn't make you invincible.
I'm not someone who believes in conspiracy theories, but one could come to the conclusion, that this massive campaign against vaccinations, and the general downplaying of the pandemic is a conspiracy to get rid of dumb people.
I could have been on-board with your cynicism until the "good riddance" part. Aren't we ashamed that the climate is so divisive that people don't even trust life-saving vaccines? Plenty of the blame goes to people such as OP, really. Sush disdain.
The more high profile cases of antivax deaths due to covid the better. It will help public perception that the vaccine is useful and may convince skeptics. And for every antivax death, we get closer to 100% vaccination rate and finally get back to a normal life.
But saying "the more antivax deaths the better" just isn't OK. Those are human beings with parents, kids, siblings, extended families, and co-worker who may have made huge positive contributions to their communities and society.
Dehumanizing people isn't the answer. You can do better.
I'm not defending the prior poster's statement, but the first part of their statement specifically mentions high-profile anti-vax deaths. There are interpretations of that argument that have nothing to do with de-humanizing, but do raise legitimate ethical questions.
For example, one might argue that a prominent anti-vaxxer's lies convincing many people not to get the vaccine is extremely harmful; meanwhile the injection of reality by way of that anti-vaxxer's death could reverse some of that harm; and therefore hoping for high-profile anti-vaxxers to die in a high-profile way from the disease whose vaccine they decry is an ethical act.
Squinting a bit, we've just stumbled on something that looks a heck of a lot like a trolley problem! which of course is a famously difficult ethical dilemma with seemingly no good answer---or, at least, no one answer that satisfies everyone. Consequentialists might agree with the grandparent; deontologists would likely agree with you.
The point is: your "shame on you" response is not really engaging with the grandparent's argument, and is presupposing a not-entirely-uncontroversial view of ethics. Again, I'm not claiming right or wrong. The issue is that a "shame on you" argument has the effect, intentional or not, of obscuring your assumptions about the world and demonizing those who disagree with you.
First, I don't want to belong to a community where extolling the virtues of human death is OK. I've been around HN for over a decade and it's easily the most civil large online community I've ever run into.
Second, I'm fine engaging with the trolley problem on a conceptual / philosophical level. But based on the tone and content, it seemed the poster was happy that antivaxxers are dying: "for every antivax death, we get closer to 100% vaccination rate and finally get back to a normal life."
That's not a philosophical discussion about a real-world version of the trolley problem; that's hoping for more antivaxxer deaths so s/he can be happy.
After reflection on your post, I still think a gentle rebuke for the poster's very real schadenfreude is an appropriate response.
At some point soon, I hope we drop most of the theatrics and fear and get back to life, whether the vax rate is 68.29% or 100.00%. Once the vaccine is widely available, if you choose not to take it, that's your choice/problem, not mine. I don't need a 100.00% population-wide to go outside. I just need 100.00% within my loved ones (which, by choice, we have).
I feel a slight sadness for any early death, but even as a devoutly introverted person, I feel greater sadness for the years of social and family activities and living in fear of other humans. That's its own loss of living, even if it's not a loss of life.
I wish it worked that way too, and we could all just care about ourselves. But others refusal to vaccinate / take precautions when necessary allows it to continue to spread (killing innocent immunosuppressed people along the way) and ultimately mutate into new variations, beginning the cycle of isolation and fear all over again. It’s a catch 22 unfortunately. We can’t ever get to 100% vaccination / precautionary isolation in order to eradicate the disease, and we also can’t stop caring or trying to because if we don’t it will never end and we will continue to need to develop new vaccines (if possible) trying to catch up to new variants. It seems we just have to play this game until the dominant variant(s) really are as weak as the flu, and just hope it doesn’t mutate the other direction into a more deadly strain that sends us back to square one repeatedly (or into mass extinction). Man this blows.
If anyone wants to prove me wrong please do, I find my view of this extremely depressing.
