Sorry, man, but that ain't chump change. Not to say she's a grifter but to suggest she's somehow slumming it at that salary is a bit much, especially considering we don't know how many hours she really "works" in a given day (and based on how long this has been in development, I'd guess nowhere near 8).
I didn't say it's chump change, what I said was:
This project is not the only thing she has going on at UMich. Professors in general work at least 40 hour weeks. I know lots of software bros making a lot more money and working a lot less, because capitalism is kind of stupid in terms of how markets value one thing over another, but what does that have to do with tinnitus?
I think so, it was only a 20 person trial -- 19 people within driving distance of UMich, and my dumb ass getting on and off an airplane every week all spring long
I got to find out some cool stuff about Ann Arbor and even considered moving there, though.COVID-19 slowed everything down (not just this effort, academic research across the board) but it does look like stuff is moving forward; one doesn't start forming named companies and naming other existing companies as tech partners until things are approaching some kind of market ready state.
) to have one in my hands right now.
Fortunately, I am pretty sure that the Capital forces behind UMich have their eyes on this as a moneyball in the air, and therefore even if shore got vaporized in a random solar flare tomorrow, the march towards Product would go on
It's not like she has secret knowledge, excactly because all of this has been run as a completely normal research product. Unlike secret corporate shit where the death of a couple deep-knowledge engineers could potentially derail a product, academia is fanatical about documenting results fully in a way that would let someone else repeat them. That's more or less the basis of the whole machine.
You make it sound as if I'm the only one on this board who is questioning her level of commitment to this project. Obviously you're biased because you directly benefitted from it, but meanwhile, the rest of us haven't, because it's been in limbo for years. I don't buy the idea that she has invested as much time in it as she should considering how compassionate and concerned she is supposed to be on this issue.
Apples and oranges but we got multiple COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year. I do not think the timeline of Shore's device reflects normalcy. It's been moving in slow-motion. The trial sizes have also been comically small. Lenire's trials, flawed as they may have been, were so much larger. Why? I don't like being a backseat driver but despite being a layman, this project doesn't seem to have been well run.
You can't compare a highly contagious and deadly virus with tinnitus, for starters. Those vaccines got the highest priority everywhere and lots of funding. Second, this isn't a vaccine.
Apples and oranges indeed, but I'd agree that we'd probably have much better tinnitus treatments if the entire global medical apparatus dropped most other things for a year and spent untold amounts of money nailing it down. This is likely true for a number of conditions.
What "normalcy" are you basing this on? Does anyone have other examples of novel medical devices which have had a faster evolution?
Again, compared to what? Doing a 20 person phase 2 on people already afflicted with something is a cheaper way (and easier to get past the ethics boards) than a larger phase 2, and the resounding differences in the data provided the necessary hook to get funding for the larger trials necessary for FDA. This all seems very normal to me.
These are non-FDA sanctioned trials run by venture capitalists, who are deliberately operating outside of the US because they are exploiting prior device approval from a UK regulatory body. They have been so far unwilling to publish full data sets, and as far as I can tell are further behind in the FDA process than UMich. Additionally the anecdotal data we have from here isn't very inspiring, and as someone who has worked in venture backed situations there's a lot of things that look wrong to me; I'll change my tune if they deliver results after clearing FDA hurdles. Apples and oranges again, though.
I don't know where the perception that it's "taking long" is coming from, or such interviews. Can you cite some examples? As I said above, they appear to be on the same timeline they originally laid out in my first conversation with them in late 2015, and may even hit that despite the COVID-19 bumpiness.
While I do have plenty of bullet points to offer to back up my frustration with this project--they aren't new arguments and I'm reluctant to run over old ground. I just think you haven't been keeping up on this thread. If you want to just ignore those points and simply say "this all seems normal to me" then there's nothing left to do but agree to disagree as we're just sharing our outsider opinions.
It's coming from just about everyone active in this thread.
Are you? If it already helped you, I take it the effect was only temporary? Why would you need to be treated again if this really rewires the brain as advertised?
Technology is changing and old timeframes don't necessarily predict the future anymore.
I didn't think this was supposed to to rewire the brain, I thought this was supposed to suppress the tinnitus precept, therefore when you stop using it the tinnitus precept comes back.
I am both sympathetic to, and vastly share frustration at knowing this technology exists, would be generally helpful probably, and helpful to me personally definitely. I'm just not actively upset by it, because it's tilting at windmills. There are reasons, good and bad, that these things generally and in this specific case don't move at a fast pace, but I don't think there's anything unusual or untoward happening here compared to any other normal research project, and a lot of the controls built in ultimately arise from concerns about safety and snake oil.
Er, who is "advertising" it as a permanent fix? I was explicitly told by the UMich staff to expect effects to be temporary if noticed at all; this is consistent with everything I've read.
I think the general sketchiness of Leneire is a pretty good example of why this particular space should not be disrupted. To the extent that FDA regulations aren't already written by the industry and lobbyists, they exist to protect people from either being maimed by unsafe treatments, or wasting money/time on stuff that doesn't work.
The idea is that (some?) tinnitus arises from a miswiring at the level of the dorsal cochlear nucleus, where several cranial nerves are integrated, and that precisely timed audio and somatosensory stimulation tricks this region of the brain into unwiring these maladaptive changes.
Neuromod certainly did in its initial trial hype, talking about how the effects were indefinitely long-lasting.
To me this is even more reason to be skeptical of Neuromod and I wouldn't really conflate them with UMich for all the reasons mentioned. Even if the tech is similar, having it emerge from the VC landscape vs a research institution is a significant difference that leads to silliness like Neuromod using Bluetooth, a protocol designed to transfer audio data among consumer entertainment devices, to try to synchronize timing. It's not that it couldn't work, it's just needlessly ramping the difficulty in the interests of advertising a "cool" feature. Wires are fine, timing is very very precise when a signal is traversing a known length of metal wire with known conductive properties.
And what was it like when the tinnitus came back? I like a glass of wine in the evening or a beer now and again. It doesn't seem to spike my tinnitus the following morning. But they say now that alcohol destroys your REM sleep --- not good if you are reduced to four -- four and a half hours a night. Another of life's pleasures destined for the back-burner?
The average improvement as measured objectively was a 6-10 dB reduction which means cutting the noise in half. That's probably consistent with my experience, but the more dramatic thing really was that it moved the sound from the forefront of my consciousness to the background (a thing which the Klonopin I now take also does, just not as well).
Can't you ask the CEO of Auricle like you did before? I wonder if Republic rejected their application?
I have been working in IT for 17 years. Everything from server administration to now security engineering. I guess I have never thought of myself as a computer toucher. It kinda sounds like the computer isn't consenting to what I am doing and I should be jailed. To be fair the operating system told me it was over 18. It just had a bunch of unpatched holes. Couldn't contain myself.I didn't say it's chump change, what I said was:
This project is not the only thing she has going on at UMich. Professors in general work at least 40 hour weeks. I know lots of software bros making a lot more money and working a lot less, because capitalism is kind of stupid in terms of how markets value one thing over another, but what does that have to do with tinnitus?
My point is $160K is not very much money if one is pursuing maximizing money as a goal, and additionally that someone with Shore's background could make more in industry. That's just a fact, and a reason it's very common for retired academics to take consultancy positions.
What are we arguing about, exactly? None of Shore's comp is based on the outcome of this research, per se, and the actual degree of funding the research has gotten, while much more than Shore's salary, is a tiny tiny slice of UMich research.
I'm unclear where your disagreement is. I understand people being skeptical of tech they haven't used, that's normal and seems correct, and also, as I have long said in this thread, these devices will not help everyone with tinnitus.
@GlennS, what are you upset about (if you are upset)? Do you think Susan Shore should make less money? Do you think you should be making more money?
I'm just not sure what we're even talking about at this point. $160K would have sounded like a shitton of money to me when I was working at a nonprofit for $27K a year; now I know people who make twice that and smoke pot all day touching computers and managing computer touchers, so, you could say my perspective is blown on that, but I also don't see what Shore's comp has to do with any of this unless someone is seriously suggesting she's a grifter which would be hilarious to me because going into academia to be a grifter would be like going into prostitution to practice celibacy.
As far as Shore getting rich -- she probably will if the device works and makes it to market, because she is the co-founder of the company that's going to be selling it (Auricle), as far as I can tell.
Does this upset anyone? That is, if this tech works for some percentage of tinnitus patients and substantially improves their lives, and that is built on the back of 20 years of research and fundraising efforts that Shore has driven, in a capitalist society isn't it correct that there be a financial reward for that kind of behavior?
I'm far enough left that I think all of this stuff (all medical research) should be publicly funded with the results publicly owned, but, we're nowhere near that world and we're not going to get there, so this capitalist dystopia is what we're working with. You don't wanna hear my real, deep opinions on any of this because I'll start screaming about universal base income and seizing the means of production away from the capitalist gang bosses.
Contrast what Shore has done (2 decades of published, peer reviewed research, animal models used to build new neurophysical model of tinnitus, which is then tested in animals, treatment devised, tested in humans, refined, tested in more humans, probably eventually marketed based on substantial body of evidence that clears FDA) to what Leneire has done (barely gotten approval for a device in the UK, then used that to market a basically different device that has almost no published research behind it, no peer review, and definitely won't pass FDA scrutiny in current state, also a bunch of questionable tech decisions like using Bluetooth).
In this light, the UMich effort looks like a completely normal research endeavor to me, like any number of other academic tech research endeavors I have followed over the years, and Leneire looks suspiciously scammy.
I understand people being upset with the generally slow pace these things move at, but I am at a loss about actual animosity towards Dr. Shore. I've spoken with her, she was a nice lady, she was willing to continue a dialog even when I made it clear I was attempting to replicate her work using DIY stuff, she has a full slate of responsibilities for UMich, her salary at UMich is $10K over the average for all UMich tenured professors, and she's done more to advance tinnitus understanding than all those other professors combined, even if Auricle never delivers a device.
I think so, it was only a 20 person trial -- 19 people within driving distance of UMich, and my dumb ass getting on and off an airplane every week all spring long
COVID-19 slowed everything down (not just this effort, academic research across the board) but it does look like stuff is moving forward; one doesn't start forming named companies and naming other existing companies as tech partners until things are approaching some kind of market ready state.
https://innovation.medicine.umich.edu/portfolio_post/shore/
https://rosenmaninstitute.org/portfolio/auricle/
The second link has a video which contains a graphic of what the current generation of device looks like. It looks more like a finished piece of tech than the prototype device I used in the Phase-II, but it's the same basic thing, it does not have wirelessness, it doesn't look like an iPad like leneire, and I would spend twenty thousand dollars instantly (the limit on my highest limit credit card
According to the patent filings it can help hyperacusis. Some of the DIY people who have created similar devices have reported a drop in hyperacusis along with tinnitus.
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