Conspiracy theorists don't understand base rates and denominators. They make a list of deaths of people who seem vaguely STEM/"government secret" adjacent and forget to think about what their denominator is. Implicitly, it's "all employees (at all levels) of government labs, plus associate-director-and-up employees at STEM companies, plus all academics working in STEM fields, plus anyone who was formerly in one of these categories."
When you write it out like that, it's obvious that the denominator is ridiculously large and that it would be much more difficult to explain a lack of deaths in such a pool over a ~3 year period.
The missing worker here is typically included in the lists of "suspicious deaths" because she was an administrative assistant at Los Alamos (a government lab).
I don't know if you accidentally replied to my comment or not, but my comment was a question. I asked what's the implication? You replied here with a long text that seems to continue implying that something nefarious is going on, without specifying what the implication is (which is what I asked).
1. some people argue that the implication of this (along with other deaths of science-adjacent people) is that there's a murder campaign against scientists
2. but this "implication" is actually completely innumerate, and in reality the implication is something like "within a large population, you would expect some people to be murdered or commit suicide."
I looked at the whole context of responses to the post before my post, so (1) seemed obvious to me, and I was mostly following on with (2), but I see that it was confusing. :)
you have to have paid attention to a bunch of other news articles and their conspiracy theory dirivatives. This isn't a new item of any significant note unless you're into conspiracy theories.
You got the response you did because it sounds identical to naive-pivot conspiracy theorists who just 'ask questions' to try and expound upon the conspiracy theory.
i only see two options. either the state of research funding and support in america is so bad that people lose their mental health and die by suicide, or its a murder campaign. theres no way all these deaths are coincidence.
It is worth double-checking your intuitions on these things. How large is the pool of people that you are considering anomalous and what would the base rate of accidental deaths or suicides be for a subset of the general population that size?
Previously: Anthony “Tony” Chavez, William Neil McCasland, Steven Garcia, Monica Jacinton Reza, Nuno Loureiro, Carl Grillmair, Jason Thomas, Frank Maiwald, Michael David Hicks.
About five or six follow the 'went with nothing or just a handgun to the woods [or lake] and never came back' pattern. Those which fit that pattern are all 2025/2026.
Exactly what pool of people are we drawing from here? How big is our denominator?
- Anthony Chavez was a foreman supervising construction at Los Alamos. Retired in 2017.
- Melissa Casias (from this article) was an administrative assistant at Los Alamos.
- Steven Garcia was a "property custodian at KCNSC."
- Jason Thomas was associate directory of chemical biology at Novartis (pharma company) on cancer treatment.
- McCasland retired 13 years before he went missing.
- Nuno Loureiro was a plasma physicist at MIT.
So the denominator here has to include:
- current and former employees (at all levels, including clerical positions like Melissa Casias or construction workers like Anthony Chavez) of government research facilities
- management at pharmaceutical companies (or presumably, other STEM companies as well?).
- academics working in STEM fields (MIT plasma physicist Nuno Loureiro)
So you have to ask yourself two questions:
- how big is the pool that we're drawing these deaths from? and
- given a pool of this size, how many people in it would you expect to die in a ~3 year period?
To me the answer is really boring - this number of deaths is just utterly unsurprising. It honestly doesn't even rise to the level of being a "coincidence." It's a complete non-event.
The 2025/2026 subset is a bit more interesting than the full set. Also, only in America would 'walking off with a handgun and disappearing' be considered normal. But yes, no proof of foul play.
The Loureiro case doesn't explain things much better than a conspiracy theory does. At least, after a few minutes of research, I'm still wondering if someone could have manipulated the suspect into finally acting on a decades-long beef that does not appear to have been escalating steadily. Perhaps the hard part is why he shot the other people, but an angry suicidal person could do that, whether they were acting alone or triggered by someone else.
I guess what matters here is the definition of "top scientists". Because those are a bit more limited and if they would be really dying on both sides in growing numbers in suspicious cases - then a uncomforting explanation would be a secret dirty war going on behind the scenes. It was no secret that Israel killed top Iran scientists routinely. But if US and China would engage with that, it would be disturbing. But so far I don't see the data for it.
As I say elsewhere, don't shoot the messenger. This story has been getting a lot of publicity.
In the scheme of things, scientists are a lot less common in any society than, say, waiting staff or groundskeepers. Nuclear physicists are not common – I have met one or two in my time, and they were clearly way above the average in terms of personal intelligence, mathematical ability etc. I've met far more medical researchers. The same would apply to certain other scientific fields.
Lab assistants are more common than experts in any scientific field, and the main questions we should be asking here are which areas of scientific research etc they worked in, and how technically qualified they were.
https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/1squlrh/m...
What's the implication? Can someone provide context?
Conspiracy theorists don't understand base rates and denominators. They make a list of deaths of people who seem vaguely STEM/"government secret" adjacent and forget to think about what their denominator is. Implicitly, it's "all employees (at all levels) of government labs, plus associate-director-and-up employees at STEM companies, plus all academics working in STEM fields, plus anyone who was formerly in one of these categories."
When you write it out like that, it's obvious that the denominator is ridiculously large and that it would be much more difficult to explain a lack of deaths in such a pool over a ~3 year period.
The missing worker here is typically included in the lists of "suspicious deaths" because she was an administrative assistant at Los Alamos (a government lab).
I don't know if you accidentally replied to my comment or not, but my comment was a question. I asked what's the implication? You replied here with a long text that seems to continue implying that something nefarious is going on, without specifying what the implication is (which is what I asked).
Sorry for the lack of clarity.
1. some people argue that the implication of this (along with other deaths of science-adjacent people) is that there's a murder campaign against scientists
2. but this "implication" is actually completely innumerate, and in reality the implication is something like "within a large population, you would expect some people to be murdered or commit suicide."
I looked at the whole context of responses to the post before my post, so (1) seemed obvious to me, and I was mostly following on with (2), but I see that it was confusing. :)
you have to have paid attention to a bunch of other news articles and their conspiracy theory dirivatives. This isn't a new item of any significant note unless you're into conspiracy theories.
You got the response you did because it sounds identical to naive-pivot conspiracy theorists who just 'ask questions' to try and expound upon the conspiracy theory.
i only see two options. either the state of research funding and support in america is so bad that people lose their mental health and die by suicide, or its a murder campaign. theres no way all these deaths are coincidence.
It is worth double-checking your intuitions on these things. How large is the pool of people that you are considering anomalous and what would the base rate of accidental deaths or suicides be for a subset of the general population that size?
If I remember correctly, added up together the suicide rate is still lower than the normal peer cohort.
Personally, I’m finding it roughly equivalent to ‘aliens!’
Previously: Anthony “Tony” Chavez, William Neil McCasland, Steven Garcia, Monica Jacinton Reza, Nuno Loureiro, Carl Grillmair, Jason Thomas, Frank Maiwald, Michael David Hicks.
About five or six follow the 'went with nothing or just a handgun to the woods [or lake] and never came back' pattern. Those which fit that pattern are all 2025/2026.
Exactly what pool of people are we drawing from here? How big is our denominator?
- Anthony Chavez was a foreman supervising construction at Los Alamos. Retired in 2017.
- Melissa Casias (from this article) was an administrative assistant at Los Alamos.
- Steven Garcia was a "property custodian at KCNSC."
- Jason Thomas was associate directory of chemical biology at Novartis (pharma company) on cancer treatment.
- McCasland retired 13 years before he went missing.
- Nuno Loureiro was a plasma physicist at MIT.
So the denominator here has to include:
- current and former employees (at all levels, including clerical positions like Melissa Casias or construction workers like Anthony Chavez) of government research facilities
- management at pharmaceutical companies (or presumably, other STEM companies as well?).
- academics working in STEM fields (MIT plasma physicist Nuno Loureiro)
So you have to ask yourself two questions:
- how big is the pool that we're drawing these deaths from? and
- given a pool of this size, how many people in it would you expect to die in a ~3 year period?
To me the answer is really boring - this number of deaths is just utterly unsurprising. It honestly doesn't even rise to the level of being a "coincidence." It's a complete non-event.
The 2025/2026 subset is a bit more interesting than the full set. Also, only in America would 'walking off with a handgun and disappearing' be considered normal. But yes, no proof of foul play.
That is very concerning. Any chance this could be coincidence? Is there anything known that is not speculation?
It is a coincidence, some of the deaths have been already solved and not related with the conspiracy theory. Nuno Loureiro for example.
The Loureiro case doesn't explain things much better than a conspiracy theory does. At least, after a few minutes of research, I'm still wondering if someone could have manipulated the suspect into finally acting on a decades-long beef that does not appear to have been escalating steadily. Perhaps the hard part is why he shot the other people, but an angry suicidal person could do that, whether they were acting alone or triggered by someone else.
One entity is known for assassination of nuclear scientists..
It isn't just happening in the USA.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/its-not-ju...
"It's not just America, China's top scientists are dying and nobody's talking about it."
scientists dying in countries with a lot of scientists no way
I guess what matters here is the definition of "top scientists". Because those are a bit more limited and if they would be really dying on both sides in growing numbers in suspicious cases - then a uncomforting explanation would be a secret dirty war going on behind the scenes. It was no secret that Israel killed top Iran scientists routinely. But if US and China would engage with that, it would be disturbing. But so far I don't see the data for it.
As I say elsewhere, don't shoot the messenger. This story has been getting a lot of publicity.
In the scheme of things, scientists are a lot less common in any society than, say, waiting staff or groundskeepers. Nuclear physicists are not common – I have met one or two in my time, and they were clearly way above the average in terms of personal intelligence, mathematical ability etc. I've met far more medical researchers. The same would apply to certain other scientific fields.
Lab assistants are more common than experts in any scientific field, and the main questions we should be asking here are which areas of scientific research etc they worked in, and how technically qualified they were.