This should resolve to NO, given their honest concession that the product didn’t work as expected.

@nsokolsky do you have a link?

@Mqrius https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-440

@nsokolsky Thanks. I've always had issues with the wording and conditions of this market, but this is just another example; your link would suggest that yes, the colonization isn't effectively maintained which I guess could mean "Yes", but then also they are aiming towards an FDA study, which according to this market would explicitly resolve it "No".

Even the colonization not being maintained I personally wouldn't call a scam, but rather a failure of the product. Very different from a scam which to me means intentional misleading.

@nsokolsky If they make their v2 and send it to past buyers and it works, then it would definitely not be a scam. So it doesn't seem like this post can resolve this market.

@Mqrius strong disagree, but ultimately I suspect it'll be up to the mods to resolve this, so adding in some mana to the No camp

@nsokolsky What's the part you strong disagree with?

Oh I actually just realized I misread your initial post as that it should resolve "Yes" because it wasn't working.

But yeah my policy is not to bet at all on ambiguous or contested markets. I want to bet on facts, not on market resolution opinions.

@nsokolsky When exactly did they learn it doesn't work and for how long afterwards did they continue to offer it for sale? If they learned it doesn't work and continued to try to sell it for several months, surely you'd still agree they're a scam.

I personally think you're giving them too much credit for admitting their magic beans don't actually work after selling a bunch of them.

@WrongoPhD did Theranos ever admit anything before the Feds swooped in? Did SBF? Lumina was always one of those 'long shot' projects, they never said they're 100% confident or whatever. It's a startup! Of course it's not always going to work, that's the whole point of trying something out - to see if it does. I was a Lumina skeptic since Day 1 (and hence never bought the product), but me being a skeptic and me convincing them of fraud are two very different things.

@nsokolsky Pivot and delay is a common scamming tactic, which is what I think Luminos is doing. Even Theranos eventually admitted their Edison device didn't work and voided the results they had previously given but said their second version, the minilab, would work.

I also think it's noteworthy that they're not exactly saying the product doesn't work. They're saying it might work but it doesn't stick around long enough for them to prove it, but a version two might fix the problems with the original.

I basically think they had to make a pivot because we're reaching the time when a bunch of their customers are going to start reporting having dental carries

@mods Just preregistering that this market seems likely to be misresolved. Author seems to have an axe to grind and is looking for any possible reason to distrust them.

@IsaacKing 👍

Seems like decent criteria we can hold to. I make plenty of markets I have a preconceived notion on, sometimes that's the point! I also don't see any investment by the creator.

https://x.com/emmalsalinas/status/1991605566830252190?s=20

@drcat Oof. Does not bode well, though it's not too infrequent for dentists to scam people, claiming cavities exist when there are none.

I think the finding that 1 in 7 people with cavities aren't even colonized with step mutans really blows the whole theory apart.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-technology/reports-death-dental-cavities-are-greatly-exaggerated

@WrongoPhD 1/7..... 85.7% applicability would still be fantastic, would it not?

@JamesBaker3 You misunderstand. The finding that 1 in 7 people with cavities aren't even colonized with strep mutans doesn't mean that strep mutans is the cause in the remaining 6 in 7 people. It just means that saying strep mutans is the cause of all cavities is definitely wrong.

From the article:

"We went from calling caries an infectious disease that was specifically caused by S. mutans—much like how the influenza virus causes the flu—to gaining a more ecological perspective on the disease. S. mutans is not the only acid-producing oral bacterium that can cause caries: in fact, it forms less than 2% of all the bacteria that cause caries, and a little over one in seven people with caries do not have S. mutans in their mouth."

And

"The reason why S. mutans became the Big Bad of the 1970s dentistry world is because researchers were stuck studying the mouth bacteria they could grow in the laboratory, and S. mutansgrows well in the conditions scientists were selecting back then. But now, with DNA technology, scientists have been able to detect 800 different species of bacteria in the human mouth."

https://open.substack.com/pub/trevorklee/p/please-dont-take-luminas-anticavity?r=2ubzi0&utm_medium=ios I will resolve YES based on this if no one objects in 10 days

@drcat That post came out in May 2024...

@IsaacKing I’ve been really off this app for a while and I just saw it

@drcat I don't have a stake in this but imo this blog post does not conform to your criteria for "yes". In fact the blog post itself doesn't even claim lumina is a scam, just that it's not well researched and likely dangerous. This blog post is just... One guy's opinion after doing some research. Not even a biologist. Makes no sense to resolve based on this.

See more in depth discussion here: https://manifold.markets/Joshua/lantern-bioworks-lumina-probiotic-d#jiv4n6j4hde

@drcat The only reason I'm not betting a lot more to bring this back down farther is that you seem to have a strong personal bias towards YES. I hope you can stick to the definition of the market with enough objectivity.

@JamesBaker3 “Resolved YES if any major news outlet reports on the scam, or a decent dossie or exposed text appears online” for me the substack is a “decent dossie or exposed text”. You’re right that I have bias on YES that’s why I created the market on the first place (if I believe in the company from the beginning I would even ask that). I am in no rush to close the market, I would like to keep seeing evidence on all the ends and I am open to be convince otherwise. But the evidence doesn’t look good tbh. Aella even deleted the market that she was keeping track whether she had cavities after doing the procedure.

@drcat Please don't rush it. It is barely started to reach the buyers. There would be troves of real world data rather sooner than later.