You criticize Dr. Ioannidis and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration for their tactics in saying that Covid had a lower IFR than the ridiculous early estimates used to justify lockdowns, and for saying that lockdowns have negative societal consequences, respectively. Yet you give little credit to these claims for being not only correct (as time has shown) but also rather obviously correct even at the time, appearing controversial only due to the intensely political nature of Covid policy. You criticize dissenters for being "hasty" yet the mainstream scientists were given *months* of essentially opposition-free time to impose unprecedented, near-total lockdowns on society. I wish the dissenters had been hastier. You talk about scientific quality, but ignore that the CDC regularly churns out non-peer-reviewed advocacy of the mainstream agenda on its MMWR channel, that gets picks up as "science" by the entire media apparatus. Finally you emphasize the importance of "scientific" debate, which is 100% needed, but most Covid policy is only marginally about science at all. Maybe cloth masks are 0% useful or maybe they are 10% useful, that's a scientific question, but in either case should they be mandated? That's a social and political question.
I am glad you are arguing for more vigorous and structured dissent in science and we do need it. But the dissenters on Covid were brave souls taking on a thankless task against a global hegemon. They were censored and shunned. Nitpicking their tactics is fair but kind of an odd thing to prioritize.
Agree that the broader consequences of school lockdowns were underestimated, but complaints of nitpicking? The ends of bad science (Ioannidis) and value judgements being passed of as scientific facts (GBD) do not justify the means.
Love the idea of the science court, but recommend that an inquisitorial procedure be used (more likely to get at the truth) than an adversarial procedure (perceived as more fair). In the case of science, truth may be more important than fairness.
Dr. Fauci, who holds more hard & soft power than all the dissenters combined, literally said on national TV that when people criticize him they are really criticizing Science, because he represents Science. Talk about passing off something else (credentialism I guess?) for scientific analysis!
The authors of GBD were subject to a full-on coordinated behind-the-scenes smear campaign by Fauci and the NIH - the "'There needs to be a quick and devastating take down" email.
Major social media sites colluded with the government to censor all sorts of dissenting opinion, from the effectivenss of masks to the side effects of vaccines, for two years now.
Under these conditions, no, I can't understand focusing on some mistakes of the dissenters versus the horrific mistakes and poor judgement of the "orthodox."
Do you think an institution that provides a more official avenue, outside of the press or obscure scientific journals, would likely help dissenters? I get that you disagree with which examples the author chose to hold up to criticism, but what do you think of the underlying idea?
My take is something similar to Michael Berkowitz's above: we have some mechanisms available to us today that should be able to function as the author describes, at least to some significant extent. Why didn't they?
One, the GBD came out before there was even a vaccine , and promoted a herd immunity approach to COVID. Two, Dr. Francis Collins (who wrote the 'take down' email, and was then the head of NIH, not Dr. Fauci, who leads one institute of the NIH) believed that the premises of the GBD were simply wrong and would result in more deaths than not. Why would he NOT want a vigorous response to that, at that time? Three, speaking of coordinated efforts, the GBD was sponsored by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, part of a Koch-funded network of right wing politico-ideological 'free market' and fossil fuel advocacy groups. Four, this article doesn't mention the competing John Snow Memorandum, originating in the UK. It would have been worth mentioning. Fifth, there was no 'suppression' of the GBD. It -- and the controversy around it -- got widespread media coverage, including hearty and wholly predictable endorsement by the Wall Street Journal.
I was really enjoying the article until this point. It's absolutely clear looking backward that nobody was making their decisions purely based on evidence, but based on judgement. And the authors of GBD were proven to have much better judgement than the actual policymakers.
These are good-faith suggestions for dealing with real problems, but in the spirit of the essay itself, allow me to take issue with it:
First, I don't recall any discussion of roles played by academic and professional institutions and by the media. A dissenting scientist who becomes unemployable or suffers other professional consequences will likely censor himself -- and even if he doesn't, how will we know? He'll have no platform. The media have the same sort of gatekeeping power. I don't see how any plan that doesn't account for these factors can have much effect.
Next, it's not clear why having opposing scientists duke an issue out in public is more "democratic" than having them do so before the public's elected representatives. That is the function of those representatives, after all. That said, the idea of organizing adversarial proceedings before those representatives seems a good one.
And attention should be paid to the supporting function of creating materials to help laymen understand the scientific arguments. Furthermore, the organizers should emphasize ideas such as level-of-confidence and effect-size, without which there's not much basis for decision-making. It should, for example, be significant for one side of a debate to demonstrate simply that the other side hasn't made a conclusive case -- even if the first side has no case to make at all.
Along those same lines, the public and its representatives need to be educated about basic statistics and probability, common cognitive biases and other factors that should inform their decisions. It's not that difficult, since we're not talking about calculation but a general sense of proportion, of what it means to know something and of common pitfalls.
Lastly (for now), we should work to make it socially unacceptable for academic and professional organizations to engage in anything outside their narrow purviews. There should be no letters signed by hundreds of doctors/lawyers/chemists/hairdressers on climate change, minority rights or immigration. All the members are encouraged to add their voices to the groups already organized around these topics, or to create new ones if it suits them, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. Not only can no good come of it, it automatically casts their professional opinions into doubt, as well it should. Judges should administer the law, doctors should maintain health, scientists should seek and disseminate the truth. If they're doing anything else at the same time, they're not really doing their jobs.
I like your take here, but I disagree (or only partially agree) with the last aspect, about experts staying in their lane.
I don't mind experts making policy recommendations based on the science in their field. I *do* mind the idea that their policy recommendations should be accepted uncritically, or that the expert shouldn't have to persuade the rest of the public that they are right, and *why* they are right. I hate the halo of authority many elites place around other elite experts, who act as if questioning them is evidence of one's ignorance (and, for some benighted souls, evidence of apostasy).
As a researcher with a background in epidemiology (i.e. a scientist) I'm tired of having to defend "science". In fact scientific methods are just good ways to find and use evidence. The process generates evidence and that changes as more is gathered. Three obvious points: 1. most people can understand the evidence (epidemiology is not quantum physics), 2. most people do need someone to explain the evidence - and particularly how reliable it is (i.e the ivermectin data) 3. a significant number of people do not give a s- - t. They have already made up their mind and nothing will change it (the anti-mask crowd being poster children for this group). This proposal will only work if the #3s stop dominating the conversation.
Science is certainly not static or "settled". The act of bleeding patients for infectious disease as in the time of George Washington is seen as barbaric now. The idea 20 years ago that it was OK to give pain patients large doses of opioids has resulted in the Opioid Crisis, now compounded by massive influx of highly potent illegal drugs. I suspect that in our zeal to appeal to the Transgender Community, we will have a crisis in 5-10 years of individuals who are regretting their transformations.
Science has been full of dissent ever since Science has been in existence. Have you ever wondered why in advertisements they claim "three out of four doctors recommend this product"? What's the problem with that fourth doctor?
The Covid virus is new and dangerous, and to imply that there is any settled science on it is fallacious. As with much of medical science, it is entirely appropriate to tell patients or the public what the current best information is and proceed accordingly, with the idea that particularly with a pandemic, things may change as more information becomes available.
To stifle or suppress dissent, further opinions or recommendation for further studies or discussion will only serve to increase public distrust and cause further rift in the scientific community.
When a physician is dealing with a single patient, the risk/benefit ratio must be explored to determine what treatment plan is worth the potential risk to the patient vs. that of the disease. When dealing with a pandemic, you have thousands or millions of potential patients with varying risk factors, varying social and economic supports and varying emotional or psychological health to deal with fear, isolation and potential mortality/morbidity of one's self or loved ones. It is for that reason that scientists or physicians must work with community leaders both local and national to come up with reasonable plans to cause the least damage.
It is also imperative that plans, policies and procedures be developed going forward, that allows frank and open discussions between medical/scientific personnel, leaders, and security organizations to prevent another fiasco like this one, because surely this will not be the last potential pandemic we will see.
I was not familiar about this idea and I like the proposal. It could bring more wisdom and team-think within the general scientific community around the world
You criticize Dr. Ioannidis and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration for their tactics in saying that Covid had a lower IFR than the ridiculous early estimates used to justify lockdowns, and for saying that lockdowns have negative societal consequences, respectively. Yet you give little credit to these claims for being not only correct (as time has shown) but also rather obviously correct even at the time, appearing controversial only due to the intensely political nature of Covid policy. You criticize dissenters for being "hasty" yet the mainstream scientists were given *months* of essentially opposition-free time to impose unprecedented, near-total lockdowns on society. I wish the dissenters had been hastier. You talk about scientific quality, but ignore that the CDC regularly churns out non-peer-reviewed advocacy of the mainstream agenda on its MMWR channel, that gets picks up as "science" by the entire media apparatus. Finally you emphasize the importance of "scientific" debate, which is 100% needed, but most Covid policy is only marginally about science at all. Maybe cloth masks are 0% useful or maybe they are 10% useful, that's a scientific question, but in either case should they be mandated? That's a social and political question.
I am glad you are arguing for more vigorous and structured dissent in science and we do need it. But the dissenters on Covid were brave souls taking on a thankless task against a global hegemon. They were censored and shunned. Nitpicking their tactics is fair but kind of an odd thing to prioritize.
Agree that the broader consequences of school lockdowns were underestimated, but complaints of nitpicking? The ends of bad science (Ioannidis) and value judgements being passed of as scientific facts (GBD) do not justify the means.
Love the idea of the science court, but recommend that an inquisitorial procedure be used (more likely to get at the truth) than an adversarial procedure (perceived as more fair). In the case of science, truth may be more important than fairness.
Dr. Fauci, who holds more hard & soft power than all the dissenters combined, literally said on national TV that when people criticize him they are really criticizing Science, because he represents Science. Talk about passing off something else (credentialism I guess?) for scientific analysis!
The authors of GBD were subject to a full-on coordinated behind-the-scenes smear campaign by Fauci and the NIH - the "'There needs to be a quick and devastating take down" email.
Major social media sites colluded with the government to censor all sorts of dissenting opinion, from the effectivenss of masks to the side effects of vaccines, for two years now.
Under these conditions, no, I can't understand focusing on some mistakes of the dissenters versus the horrific mistakes and poor judgement of the "orthodox."
Do you think an institution that provides a more official avenue, outside of the press or obscure scientific journals, would likely help dissenters? I get that you disagree with which examples the author chose to hold up to criticism, but what do you think of the underlying idea?
My take is something similar to Michael Berkowitz's above: we have some mechanisms available to us today that should be able to function as the author describes, at least to some significant extent. Why didn't they?
One, the GBD came out before there was even a vaccine , and promoted a herd immunity approach to COVID. Two, Dr. Francis Collins (who wrote the 'take down' email, and was then the head of NIH, not Dr. Fauci, who leads one institute of the NIH) believed that the premises of the GBD were simply wrong and would result in more deaths than not. Why would he NOT want a vigorous response to that, at that time? Three, speaking of coordinated efforts, the GBD was sponsored by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, part of a Koch-funded network of right wing politico-ideological 'free market' and fossil fuel advocacy groups. Four, this article doesn't mention the competing John Snow Memorandum, originating in the UK. It would have been worth mentioning. Fifth, there was no 'suppression' of the GBD. It -- and the controversy around it -- got widespread media coverage, including hearty and wholly predictable endorsement by the Wall Street Journal.
I was really enjoying the article until this point. It's absolutely clear looking backward that nobody was making their decisions purely based on evidence, but based on judgement. And the authors of GBD were proven to have much better judgement than the actual policymakers.
Have they now, really? Can you provide and estimate of what the toll would have been if the GBD plan had been followed in the USA?
These are good-faith suggestions for dealing with real problems, but in the spirit of the essay itself, allow me to take issue with it:
First, I don't recall any discussion of roles played by academic and professional institutions and by the media. A dissenting scientist who becomes unemployable or suffers other professional consequences will likely censor himself -- and even if he doesn't, how will we know? He'll have no platform. The media have the same sort of gatekeeping power. I don't see how any plan that doesn't account for these factors can have much effect.
Next, it's not clear why having opposing scientists duke an issue out in public is more "democratic" than having them do so before the public's elected representatives. That is the function of those representatives, after all. That said, the idea of organizing adversarial proceedings before those representatives seems a good one.
And attention should be paid to the supporting function of creating materials to help laymen understand the scientific arguments. Furthermore, the organizers should emphasize ideas such as level-of-confidence and effect-size, without which there's not much basis for decision-making. It should, for example, be significant for one side of a debate to demonstrate simply that the other side hasn't made a conclusive case -- even if the first side has no case to make at all.
Along those same lines, the public and its representatives need to be educated about basic statistics and probability, common cognitive biases and other factors that should inform their decisions. It's not that difficult, since we're not talking about calculation but a general sense of proportion, of what it means to know something and of common pitfalls.
Lastly (for now), we should work to make it socially unacceptable for academic and professional organizations to engage in anything outside their narrow purviews. There should be no letters signed by hundreds of doctors/lawyers/chemists/hairdressers on climate change, minority rights or immigration. All the members are encouraged to add their voices to the groups already organized around these topics, or to create new ones if it suits them, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. Not only can no good come of it, it automatically casts their professional opinions into doubt, as well it should. Judges should administer the law, doctors should maintain health, scientists should seek and disseminate the truth. If they're doing anything else at the same time, they're not really doing their jobs.
I like your take here, but I disagree (or only partially agree) with the last aspect, about experts staying in their lane.
I don't mind experts making policy recommendations based on the science in their field. I *do* mind the idea that their policy recommendations should be accepted uncritically, or that the expert shouldn't have to persuade the rest of the public that they are right, and *why* they are right. I hate the halo of authority many elites place around other elite experts, who act as if questioning them is evidence of one's ignorance (and, for some benighted souls, evidence of apostasy).
That's fair, but I still maintain that their 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 shouldn't be weighing in as such.
As a researcher with a background in epidemiology (i.e. a scientist) I'm tired of having to defend "science". In fact scientific methods are just good ways to find and use evidence. The process generates evidence and that changes as more is gathered. Three obvious points: 1. most people can understand the evidence (epidemiology is not quantum physics), 2. most people do need someone to explain the evidence - and particularly how reliable it is (i.e the ivermectin data) 3. a significant number of people do not give a s- - t. They have already made up their mind and nothing will change it (the anti-mask crowd being poster children for this group). This proposal will only work if the #3s stop dominating the conversation.
Duh! We learn this now? Where was the courage to write this article 2 years ago?
Science is certainly not static or "settled". The act of bleeding patients for infectious disease as in the time of George Washington is seen as barbaric now. The idea 20 years ago that it was OK to give pain patients large doses of opioids has resulted in the Opioid Crisis, now compounded by massive influx of highly potent illegal drugs. I suspect that in our zeal to appeal to the Transgender Community, we will have a crisis in 5-10 years of individuals who are regretting their transformations.
Science has been full of dissent ever since Science has been in existence. Have you ever wondered why in advertisements they claim "three out of four doctors recommend this product"? What's the problem with that fourth doctor?
The Covid virus is new and dangerous, and to imply that there is any settled science on it is fallacious. As with much of medical science, it is entirely appropriate to tell patients or the public what the current best information is and proceed accordingly, with the idea that particularly with a pandemic, things may change as more information becomes available.
To stifle or suppress dissent, further opinions or recommendation for further studies or discussion will only serve to increase public distrust and cause further rift in the scientific community.
When a physician is dealing with a single patient, the risk/benefit ratio must be explored to determine what treatment plan is worth the potential risk to the patient vs. that of the disease. When dealing with a pandemic, you have thousands or millions of potential patients with varying risk factors, varying social and economic supports and varying emotional or psychological health to deal with fear, isolation and potential mortality/morbidity of one's self or loved ones. It is for that reason that scientists or physicians must work with community leaders both local and national to come up with reasonable plans to cause the least damage.
It is also imperative that plans, policies and procedures be developed going forward, that allows frank and open discussions between medical/scientific personnel, leaders, and security organizations to prevent another fiasco like this one, because surely this will not be the last potential pandemic we will see.
Cool, let’s do it. Where do I sign?
I was not familiar about this idea and I like the proposal. It could bring more wisdom and team-think within the general scientific community around the world