![\"hiv-spread.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/arxivblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/hiv-spread.jpg\" "\\"hiv-spread.jpg\\"")
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Modelling the spread of HIV is a difficult business for many reasons: many people are unaware that they are infected, HIV can take a very long time to manifest itself within the body, and researchers are still unsure to what extent different population groups are involved in its transmission.<\/p>\n
So it’s remarkable that Shan Mei at the University of Amsterdam and colleagues have been able to model the the HIV epidemic among the relatively small group of gay men in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
The trick they say is to master two approaches to modelling. First, create an agent-based model of human behavior and then create a realistic model of the network that links real people together in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
Mei and friends say they’ve done this for the gay population in Amsterdam and that their model shows a “good correspondence between the historical data of the Amsterdam cohort and the simulation results”.<\/p>\n
They even say the model can predict the future trend of HIV prevalence in Amsterda. That’s a much bigger claim that needs to ne matched with evidence which is sadly lacking from this paper.<\/p>\n
Mei and co demonstrate exactly what confidence they have in this claim by making no meaningful prediction whatsoever. Strange.<\/p>\n