Stephan Seiler

GLP-1 drugs are the ultimate validation of the techno-solutionist approach to society's most challenging problems. The obesity crisis seemed liked it would just get worse and worse forever. Scolding from public health officials didn't work. Proposals to completely overhaul our food systems were dead on arrival. Instead, we invented a weekly shot (based on Gila monster venom!) that fixes obesity directly. And now, thanks to the economic incentives in our biomedical industry, we have follow-on drugs that will be cheaper, even more effective, and easier to administer (by taking a pill instead of a shot). Policymakers should be focused on figuring out how we can get more breakthrough drugs like GLP-1s (and faster). They also should think hard about which slopulist ideas might inadvertently kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

How I would reform the system: 1. Referees make suggestions. 2. Author revises however they want. 3. Ed makes a final decision, and the referees write the limitations section together. It’s win win, the authors publish the paper they want, the readers get to see a high quality critique that is normally hidden. Yes the reader has to think for themselves, this is a good thing, we shouldn’t treat articles as sacred texts. It’s good for science too bc it generates ideas for future authors on how to fill the holes, test the weak assumptions etc. There’s so much excellent knowledge generated in the conversation between authors and referees and it is all buried and forgotten when the paper is published.