https://www.luminaprobiotic.com/
Prompted by @Aella‘s tweet of the company and procedure.
Resolved YES if any major news outlet reports on the scam, or a decent dossie or exposed text appears online. Also resolved if @Aella changes her mind. Also resolved if the company shuts down or mysteriously disappears.
Resolved NO if the company publishes research demonstrating its efficacy in humans, or if it gets through any board of certification (like the FDA), or even if it demonstrates that it started clinical trials under any serious institutional oversight.
This market is specific for Lumina probiotics and will not resolve “no” if a similar or same procedure is approved through another company
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I think the finding that 1 in 7 people with cavities aren't even colonized with step mutans really blows the whole theory apart.
@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 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.
@Aboczjr Are they the same company? Aella said to use Lumina on her original tweet but Lantern seems more legit and seems to be leading the task of putting this idea/project forward.
@Aboczjr I think it is and aella changed the words to her manifold question to say lantern instead of lumina. Seems kinda sketchy.. maybe lantern created lumina to be able to do the procedure overseas without drawing attention to them. I’ll investigate more soon.
@t3ss That’s a good question. I think if the company publishes research demonstrating its efficacy in humans I would resolve it to NO. Also if it gets through any board of certification (like the FDA) or even if it demonstrates that it started clinical trials under any serious institutional oversight I would consider resolving it to NO.
@CertaintyOfVictory She also has a prediction market on whether she gets cavities or not in the next years so she can change her mind about the efficacy of the procedure
@IsaacKing Lol this market isn’t a scam bc I’m not taking real money from people, like the company itself.. My resolution terms are not random, I’m trying to find a way that would be convinceable to people that this company is a scam, whether it takes a big media outlet reporting (which honestly unlikely bc who cares), or some reliable source that is not mainstream coming forward with information (not just “one bad statement”) or aella which is the most prominent person I know sharing about this company and a person that went through the procedure and can attest to its efficiency or whether she spent money on something that does not work (a scam).
@drcat the problem is with your wording. It might turn out that this doesn't work — but a scam is an intentional setup to deceive people. If their intentions are honest but it turns out the procedure doesn't work as well as advertised, that's not a scam, that's merely disappointing.
I'd be fine with a market about whether the company will survive and show reasonable success. That's more or less what your conditions are about. But you're titling this market asking if it's a scam, which is very different.
The way you've made the conditions and the way you've responded here gives me strong vibes that you already think this is a scam and will interpret everything in that light. So now the market is at 86% because of that, you feel vindicated in your bias, and people coming in from the outside read "is it a scam" and "86%" and are misled by your bias and its downstream effects. This market makes me feel icky.
Please just change the wording of this entire market to be a more objective judgement — mainly not to mention "scam" since that's not what you're measuring. Maybe call it "will Lumina fail before 2026?" Or something in that vein.
@Mqrius I think advertising a product without known and proven efficacy could be considered a scam, yes. Do you think Elisabeth holmes just had a unsuccessful company or did they intentionally hide the inefficacy of their honestly intended product for profit? The law saw them as scammers.
You are right though that I do already have an opinion on this, the point of the market was to see whether that was shared by other people. I gave reasonable criteria to resolve it NO on the above comment though, and will be happy to do so.
I did change the question to be less misleading, and will still resolve it in 3 years time.