Microcompetition with Foreign DNA and the Origin of Chronic Disease. Hanan Polansky, Phd. CBCD Publishing, Rochester, NY, USA, 2003. ISBN: 0974046302
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dr Hanan Polansky's book presents a theory by which viruses are held as causative agents of a number of chronic conditions including obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, apnea, and autoimmune diseases, conditions which otherwise appear unrelated. The correlation is intriguing. First, I congratulate the author for putting together such an insightful theory and impressive collection of supporting evidence, and most importantly for being able to delineate functional links between seemingly distinct sets of observations. This is a well-organized, highly rigorous presented theory. The concept of microcompetition will change our approach in the study of chronic diseases and will furthermore give scientists a higher degree of understanding in biology. Presentation of this concept undoubtedly provides a new set of opportunities for attacking chronic diseases. The idea that viruses are the cause of chronic diseases is not new, but the underlying mechanism, the evidence put forward, the molecular observations, the analyses, and conclusions certainly are. It will lead the way to new approaches in chronic disease treatment. This is a very good theory, one that makes a lot of sense and one that helps a lot in terms of trying to identify possible causes for chronic diseases. In my opinion, this work might have served a higher number of people, for example students, if the concept of microcompetition had been presented in a more ‘casual’ way. At times, I had the feeling of reading an extensive PhD thesis, with explanations and multiple references for almost every concept presented. While there is no doubt whatsoever that explanations are rigorous and well-documented, most of them were written in such a way that only the people who are already familiar with these concepts will understand. Usefulness of a book can sometimes be found in presenting a concept that only a few people understand and explaining it to a larger, less-specialized audience. This book is more ‘from-expert-to-expert’. This is not to say that the structure of the book is not good; far from it, it is a superb piece of work, just less open to masses than it could have been. The current paradigm concludes that a latent viral infection does not cause disease. However, considering microcompetition, this conclusion might be misdirected. Moreover, because viruses, such as cytomegalovirus or Epstein–Barr virus, latently infect 50–90% of the population, we ought to seriously research this effect. Time will tell, but regardless of being proved right or wrong, the present theory has the merit of changing our current way of thinking, and this is probably the greatest contribution a new theory can bring.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.025 | 0.012 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".