An epidemiologist and a psychologist come down from the ivory tower to lecture us on “concrete values like freedom and equality” . . . What does that even mean?? The challenge of criticizing policies without considering their political and social contexts:

Flavio Bartmann writes:

I don’t know if you have seen this, the latest from John Ioannidis (together with Michaela Schippers this time), Saving Democracy From the Pandemic, an article at Tablet magazine. In spite of its grandiose title, it is a content free diatribe, mercifully short. It promotes skepticism in science, which is mildly ironic given his sensitivity when the skepticism is directed towards his work. Might merit some comment.

My reply: I took a quick read and couldn’t make much sense of the article. The authors talked about “concrete values like freedom and equality”: I have no idea what they’re talking about. It seemed like word salad.

Bartmann responded:

I believe that unexpected, material events lead many people (including some very smart ones) to strange places.

To return to the article under discussion: The topic of societal and governmental reactions to emergencies is important, very much worth writing about. I think where the article went wrong was in its framing of “health authorities and politicians” as the bad guys, without recognizing that these decisions are made in a larger context, in this case with lots of people being afraid of spreading covid, parents pulling their kids out of schools in March 2020, etc. As with other controversial government policies such as tax cuts and mandatory criminal sentencing laws, there’s a complicated push and pull between government, political entrepreneurs, and public opinion, and it’s a mistake to try to collapse this into a model of governments imposing policies on the public.

Also the authors could think a bit more about the context of their statements. For example, they write, “It is critical in free, democratic societies that media never become a vessel for a single, state-sanctioned, official narrative at the expense of public debate and freedom of speech. Removing content considered ‘fake’ or ‘false’ in order to limit the ability of ordinary people to judge information for themselves only inflames polarization and distrust of the public sphere.”—but we live in a social media environment where political and media leaders such as Ted Cruz and Alex Jones spread dangerous conspiracy theories. The example of Cruz illustrates that the “state” is not unitary; and the example of Jones illustrates issues with “media.”

I’n not saying that the authors of this one piece need to engage with all these complexities. I just think they should be aware of them, and if they want to make suggestions or criticisms of policies or attitudes, it would help for them to be specific rather than indulging in generalities about freedom and equality etc.

P.S. I clicked through the Tablet site and saw that it describes itself as “a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.” I didn’t see anything Jewish-related in the above-linked article so maybe I’m missing something here?

P.P.S. Regarding the title of the post: Yes, I too am coming down from the ivory tower to lecture here. You’ll have to judge this post on its merits, not based on my qualifications. And if I go around using meaningless phrases such as “concrete values like freedom and equality,” please call me on it!

50 thoughts on “An epidemiologist and a psychologist come down from the ivory tower to lecture us on “concrete values like freedom and equality” . . . What does that even mean?? The challenge of criticizing policies without considering their political and social contexts:

  1. I think you are correct to highlight the ill-defined use of words in the article. I read it and think the overriding theme is about what they consider “basic” or “concrete” rights of individual freedom. They are entitled to their opinion, and I don’t mean to dismiss it too quickly. Many government actions taken in the name of protecting public health in this emergency, did trample on some people’s individual freedoms to do what they want. It is dangerous to ridicule these rights as I can imagine this leading to all sorts of restrictions on my future actions in the name of public health or public values (for example, will I have a right to buy a gas-guzzling ATV and what say will I have on future regulations that affect that? What rights will I have as an instructor if my words cause someone in my class distress?). What the authors of the article seem to ignore completely is that we live in a world where our individual freedoms conflict – my freedom adversely impacts other people’s freedoms. As a result, there is no simple way to declare one right as more “basic” or “concrete” than another. In the case of COVID, these conflicting rights were evident. Rather than address this thorny and critical issue, the authors simply sweep it under the rug through the use of value-laden and ill-defined words.

    I think I am just agreeing with you here.

    • “Many government actions taken in the name of protecting public health in this emergency, did trample on some people’s individual freedoms to do what they want. It is dangerous to ridicule these rights as I can imagine this leading to all sorts of restrictions on my future actions in the name of public health or public values”

      Oh come on. The house was on fire, and you’re complaining because the fireman put hands on you to drag you out. “I should be free of assault in America!” THE HOUSE WAS ON FIRE.

      Your example of an ATV classically misses the point. ATVs are regulated in all sorts of ways, including licensing, emissions control, and noise. You’re already NOT free to buy one that isn’t affected by this government intervention. As always, it’s a negotiation between oversight and freedom and always has been. To suddenly throw up one’s hands about it smacks more of partisanship than good sense.

      • There’s no need to be incendiary. When I read Dale’s comment it doesn’t seem to disagree with yours, to me his point is that these trade-offs exist and there’s often not an easy way to deal with them. Few people are advocating for “maximum freedom”, whatever that means.

        • Indeed. In many instances, the arguments about relative freedoms seem very lopsided – I have little sympathy for ATV owners who object to government regulations on their “freedoms” and I personally find the COVID shut-down objectors to have a weaker argument than the public health emergency advocates. But my point is not to pick sides – it is getting harder and harder to find any issue where the conflicts seem even (gun ownership, abortion, social media use,???). Rather my point is that we live in a world of conflicting rights, and believing that there is a simple set of fundamental rights that take precedence over competing claims won’t get us very far. The article appears to appeal to just such a set of rights and I think that is an illusion.

      • THE HOUSE WAS ON FIRE.

        I was concerned until we got the age distribution data from China along with data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. That is when we knew this virus was similar to other coronaviruses where most don’t notice much but it can wipe out 20% of a nursing home when it gets in.

        Oddly enough, as soon as I stopped being much concerned the hysteria began.

        Then untested medical interventions were unleashed on the elderly like preventing them from meeting with family and friends, blasting scary virus stuff on the news 24/7, treating them like the plague if they had a symptom of a panic attack, etc.*

        Then mortality rates fell drastically in Feb/March 2022, exactly when covid got pushed out of the news by Russia/Ukraine and the governments started rolling back all the NPIs.

        If these practices still seem acceptable to anyone, then there should be an RCT. Take a sample of nursing homes and have half treat the residents like during 2020-2021 and half normally. Does anyone think that would be an ethical experiment?

        * I’m not even talking about stuff like ventilators, nosocomial infections, and giving them methemoglobinemia via HCQ overdose.

        • “That is when we knew this virus was similar to other coronaviruses where most don’t notice much but it can wipe out 20% of a nursing home when it gets in. Oddly enough, as soon as I stopped being much concerned…”

          This perfectly sums up the attitudes which led to the US having such a high mortality rate. In Asian countries, there is deep respect for elders, and so those countries took very effective steps to save their lives. Here, most folks could not possibly care less about old folks who are unrelated to them. Sucking resources and producing nothing, right? These are the same folks still claiming that we shut down schools for nothing because how many kids died?

          “Then mortality rates fell drastically in Feb/March 2022, exactly when covid got pushed out of the news by Russia/Ukraine and the governments started rolling back all the NPIs.”

          So no more suicides from despondency about having our freedoms taken away? is that what are you claiming? This is pure clown car stuff.

        • So no more suicides from despondency about having our freedoms taken away? is that what are you claiming? This is pure clown car stuff.

          For the future, let us run the safety trial I suggested to see what effect these interventions are having on people. If the plan is to ever do stuff like that again, then there should be data collected on the safety that meets the criteria of the evidence-based medicine philosophy.

          To most of us with common sense, we never imagined how inept the response could get. I know what the results of such a trial will be. The ones in the treatment group will die at something like twice the rate of control.

        • It’s certainly true that old people were, and are, at much much higher risk than younger people.

          According to https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.16.22278800v2 excess mortality in the US in the first two years of the pandemic was about 1.2 million people. 68% were 65 and over, and although 65 is very young for a ‘nursing home’ these days, Anoneuoid is certainly right that mortality skewed towards older people.

          But of course, this means about 360,000 of those deaths were in people under 65 years old.

          And, interestingly, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8142665/ says _relative_ risk was about the same for young adults as for the very old. Not many people age 15-25 die in a typical year, so increasing that by 25% doesn’t make a huge difference in the number of deaths…but its still a disaster, comparable to losses in a fairly major war.

          In short, I share the disdain of other commenters here who think Anoneuoid is nuts about this issue.

        • Phil,

          What is the problem with collecting evidence on the health effects of preventing the elderly from visiting with their family/friends, sitting around watching scary virus news all day, and being treated by people in hazmat suits if they have panic attack (which looks like covid).

          I don’t require a study to know that this is very bad for peoples health of all ages, and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. But it appears some people do, so then there should be a study.

          Take a sample of nursing homes and treat half as close to 2020-2021 conditions as possible (this includes stressing out the staff). Treat the other half normally. If you believe these interventions are not dangerous, then you shouldn’t have any ethical problems with it.

          And by the way, these methods didn’t keep covid out of the nursing homes anyway:

          Nursing homes had a surge of COVID-19 cases during the spring of 2020 and a greater surge during the fall, well after they were known to be vulnerable. More than 1,300 nursing homes had extremely high infection rates—75 percent or more of their Medicare beneficiaries—during these surges. These nursing homes were more common and geographically widespread during the second surge. Nursing homes with extremely high infection rates experienced dramatic increases in overall mortality (not limited to deaths of beneficiaries who had or likely had COVID-19). Specifically, these nursing homes experienced an average overall mortality rate approaching 20 percent during these surges—roughly double the mortality rate of other nursing homes during the same time periods. For comparison, in 2019 the average mortality rate in these same nursing homes was 6 percent.

          https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-20-00491.asp

          I mean, I disdain dangerous medical interventions that don’t work.

        • Anon,
          Some of the nursing home restrictions were ridiculous. I’m not defending them.

          But your continuing denial that COVID was worth taking serious acting on…it’s just crazy. I see no point arguing this with you.

        • But your continuing denial that COVID was worth taking serious acting on

          I took action though. I lost 30 lbs, mostly hung out outdoors and left my windows open (improved ventilation).

          My action did not involve what looks exactly like elder abuse. And as soon as the policies that look like elder abuse stopped, then the mortality rate dropped like a rock and stayed there.

          Since so many people seem to think this was acceptable, I think there should be a study into how bad these interventions really are for the health of the most vulnerable in our population. And I am confident it would show very close to as much harm as getting infected (which was not prevented by the interventions anyway, so they suffered from both), if not more.

  2. Interesting. This discussion reminded me of something I wrote ten years ago in an appendix (“Markets and Freedom”) to a microeconomics textbook:

    “To conclude this all-too-brief discussion, it is useful to consider the larger context. We have been examining different conceptions of freedom, but freedom, as precious as it is, is not the only thing of value. People also place value on a wide range of other qualities, such as health, general economic well-being, personal and social justice, and the quality of the culture and natural environment we pass on to future generations. For instance, consider the aggressive measures sometimes taken in a public health emergency, like the outbreak of an epidemic. Restrictions are placed on people’s movements in order to prevent the spread of disease. You could try to make an elaborate argument about health and positive freedom, but in fact the justification is not about freedom at all; it’s simply to safeguard our health. If the health benefits are large enough, it would be a good idea to ignore modest infringements on freedom, at least temporarily. It would not be difficult to come up with many other examples from other spheres of life, involving not only the avoidance of harm but also opportunities to achieve substantial gains.”

    I point out a bit later that saying one value supersedes (trumps?) another doesn’t make the lesser value disappear. The costs are still the costs, and it’s good to be reminded of them. But not commanded by them.

    Separately, I’m sympathetic to JI’s criticism of the policing of public discourse to root out misinformation. My preferred approach would be to try to greatly minimize the influence of the profit motive, directly and indirectly, on the creation of memes, so that patently false claims were more matters of error than manipulation. That’s another discussion. But, based on his own history, JI holding himself up as a credible arbiter is rather over the top.

    • Yes, there was half a dozen people who argued with me on this blog when I explained why an IM vaccine was not going to protect against infection and transmission. And even infection was only going to offer short term protection.* Thus, these “vaccine passports” made no sense at all. If anything they contributed to spreading the virus.

      Then 11 days after retiring, Fauci published a paper saying the exact same thing. If you remove the references to covid, it could have been written 10, or even 20, years ago:
      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36634620/

      The people “policing misinformation” had no clue what they were talking about.

      * protection against severe covid is a separate issue.

  3. I think highly of Ioannidis, who was one of the few in medical profession to point out exaggerated claims in most published med. research. We are all aware of the issues in a (select few) branches of Psychology, but biomedical sciences deal with things that affect us much more.
    He was right, in my view, when he pointed out that the consequences of over-reacting to a disease that has a 97% or so survival rate, even if left unchecked, would create more harm than benefit.
    What passed for science during covid time was downright dangerous.
    Have we all forgotten various virologists, pediatricians, etc. who were in the limelight at that time, mentioning and ‘interpreting’ statistical significance and p values? I still go back and watch old youtube videos, just for good laughs.

    • Navigator:

      Yes, agreed. Lots of overreaction all around. I still remember when the cops locked the basketball courts, and then a few weeks later they came back and removed the hoops to stop people (including me!) from climbing the fence and playing. This article gives some sense of our perspective on all of this (not the basketball bit, but the scientific challenges).

    • From Navigator:

      “I think highly of Ioannidis,”

      While he was right (as were many others – a big pharma company Pfizer or AZ or someone spent big $ to try to replicate from academic work and founds that >50% (IIRC) of the work could not be replicated) about much of biomed literature being overblown/irreproducible, his reaction to any criticism from his COVID policy making proved he’s just as prone to hype and as thin-skinned as any.

      Also from Navigator:

      “the consequences of over-reacting to a disease that has a 97% or so survival rate,”.

      Would you think differently if you had a loved one as one of the 3%? Or might you wonder why, as a society, we valued someone’s economic interests over real lives? It’s a little different when it’s theoretical vs. personal.

      And all I know is, the unwillingness of a substantial part of our society to take simple measures to try to help others was and still is disappointing.

      • Economic interest involves real lives. For example, policies chose certain businesses to stay open and others had to shut down. These aren’t just ‘big business’.
        Most people probably don’t wish for a large number of mostly elderly people to die. Everybody has parents and grandparents. It’s a bit tiresome when people frame their opinions in such a way that they imply that people who disagree with them are just mean people who are happy to let others die. It could be they don’t agree that the simple measures are at all useful for their intended purpose.

        • A problem in talking about this is that there are two types of people. Almost everyone objects to some aspect of local public health policy since COVID arrived and if we live in the same area we can happily chat about what alternative policy might look like. But there are also people who object to one measure after another and have the basic view that their local public health authorities should let COVID rip now that vaccines are available. I have a hard time being charitable to that second group, because it seems that they are choosing to trade a lot of deaths for a little convenience. I have even more trouble being charitable to the people who want to let-it-rip while removing policies which let people estimate their risk (like measuring the prevalence of the virus) and reduce their risk (such as options to participate in things remotely or requiring infection control measures in places people have to attend).

        • Sean, today in 2023 however, it’s clear that we are past the “pandemic” phase, defined as when a significant fraction of the population is immunologically naive to the virus. The COVID death rate has barely changed at all for about 1 full year in the US.

          https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Biweekly&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~USA

          Essentially everyone in the US has either had the virus, had the vaccine, or both.

          Whatever you’re doing for COVID today, you should be willing to do it for the rest of your life, because in all likelihood, like the flu or the common colds it’s going to spread through the population at a steady somewhat oscillating pace forever.

          There’s no “let-er-rip” now, it already ripped, pretty much a year ago when Omicron hit the vast majority of people who didn’t have it up til then. It would shock me if a good survey study showed that less than 80% of the US has had the virus itself.

        • Daniel Lakeland: I can see two or three things which may improve the COVID situation in coming years. First is a campaign to improve indoor air quality. Second is a vaccine which provides immunity (that sounds like a hard problem, but the third leading cause of death for all ages in the USA is a problem that will pay a lot to whoever solves it). Third is a campaign to do individual measures like wearing high-filtration masks and not sneezing into your hands effectively, similar to handwashing campaigns in hospitals and safer-sex campaigns after AIDS arrived.

          My comments on the let-it-rip crowd in 2021 and 2022 are not suitable for a family blog.

    • “He was right, in my view, when he pointed out that the consequences of over-reacting to a disease that has a 97% or so survival rate, even if left unchecked, would create more harm than benefit.”

      I would think that the definition of “over-reaction” would be a reaction that creates more harm than benefit, so this is something like a tautology.

      There were indeed overreactions to the pandemic, by local, state, and federal governments as well as by corporations and individuals. Some of these caused a lot of pain, economic or otherwise. I have a friend who wasn’t allowed to visit her mother in the nursing home for something like the last six months of her mom’s life; that’s just tragic.

      I’m on board with calling nonsense nonsense. Closing the parks so people wouldn’t touch the water fountains was ridiculous. I had someone complain to me because I drove to the start of a bike ride, at a time when we weren’t supposed to be traveling more than 10 miles except on critical business (or something like that, I’ve already forgotten the details)…although, to be fair to the people who promulgated those rules, they weren’t just worried about people spreading the virus, they also had emergency rooms clogged with COVID patients and didn’t want to also have to deal with accident victims etc. But yeah, fine, we all agree some of the reactions didn’t make sense and you can call them overreactions if you want.

      But if what you are trying to imply is that it would have been better to do nothing than to do something — just leave the pandemic unchecked — that’s utter nonsense. For crying out loud. Have people already forgotten what the New York City emergency rooms looked like in early 2020, and how many doctors and nurses were becoming seriously ill and sometimes dying because the viral load they were exposed to was so high? Well, yes, clearly people _have_ forgotten, or else have convinced themselves that this was somehow exaggerated.

      There were countries (like Peru, for example) where governments tried to “leave the pandemic unchecked” because they thought action would be worse than inaction. As far as I know virtually all of them either backtracked and took belated action, or ended up with extremely high death rates as well as crippled economies.

      Also, the trope that only old people died is just wrong. About 30% of the deaths were in people under age 65. Even the age 25-44 age group saw lots of excess deaths (check out https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm, select ‘weekly number of deaths by age’, click ‘update dashboard’, then select this age group from the ‘select age groups’ dropdown). Roughly 1000 excess deaths per week starting in spring 2020 and going all the way through the present, except for a couple of two-month surges in the virus that led to doubling or tripling that rate. That’s hundreds of thousands of non-old people…pretty much the same as a couple of years of a major war.

  4. I realize that this blog has a time lag, but the original article by Ioannidis and Schippers is dated January 23, 2022. I am reliably informed that much has happened since then. For example, Alex Jones has had new guests–medical and otherwise–to inform us of the continuing plot by the Illuminati to depopulate the planet.

    • Paul:

      A few months ago I was cleaning out my inbox and so I wrote a bunch of posts on delay responding to old emails. I guess this was one of them. Fortunately for the blog, if not for the world, the problems we complain about here don’t go away in relevance.

      • I left my inbox for a couple of hours today and when I came back, there was Stella Immanuel being interviewed by Jones about God, the devil and covid. In case your audience has lost track of her, from the Wikpedia article:

        “She has said endometriosis, infertility, miscarriage, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are caused by spirit spouses, and has also endorsed a number of conspiracy theories that include the involvement of space aliens and the Illuminati in manipulating society and government.

        “she believes many gynecological illnesses are the result of having sex dreams with succubi and incubi, and receiving demon sperm; and that endometriosis, infertility, miscarriage, and sexually transmitted infections are caused by spirit spouses.”

        I would not necessarily put any money on it, but I wonder how often the terms “succubi” and “incubi” have appeared previously on this blog.

      • Actually this is a great time to revisit this issue. It’s surprising no one has mentioned inflation or the current wave of bank collapses, as these are direct results of pandemic policy. Business are still closing due to the crime wave triggered during the pandemic, which as far as I know hasn’t ebbed.

        Many school districts are in a state of upheaval because parents actually saw what was being taught during the pandemic. But schools have found a way out!! Now we have learned through several lawsuits that, although many schools were closed for somewhere between a year and two years, it’s pretty much Mark Zuckerberg’s fault that no one learned anything during that time!

        IMO the really interesting period is dawning now. The longer term repercussions of various forms of “shut down” and other policy responses have become more apparent in the last six months or so, and the officials who were responsible for those policies are scrambling to shift the blame to anyone but themselves. The open question is: how successful will they be?

        • You are becoming a master of hindsight. Revisiting is a double-edged sword: yes, we can and need to learn from it, no, we shouldn’t infer that what happened was what we knew would happen. The banks you are talking about had plenty of opportunity to attempt to forecast what would happen (and they did) and take appropriate actions. You say that inflation and bank collapses were “direct results of pandemic policy.” “Direct” is misleading. It seems to imply that it was inevitable and known with certainty. I guess the flip side is “knowing” that the pandemic would “only” kill X people. If there had been no shutdown and the death toll had been 10x larger (I’m not saying that would have been the result, but it was certainly among the possible scenarios), would you now be saying the deaths were a “direct” result of failing to shut down?

          Note that I am not proposing that this would have happened. I am pointing out the dangers of revisiting the issue – we should revisit the actual state of knowledge at that time, the actions taken, and what we can learn from what transpired. We should not, in the process of revisiting, assume that our knowledge was perfect and the results were inevitable.

        • ” The banks you are talking about had plenty of opportunity to attempt to forecast what would happen (and they did) and take appropriate actions. ”

          Yes, I agree with that. My view is that SVB’s management failed miserably.

          Just the same “direct” is fair: “pandemic policies” include highly unusual activity by the Fed, which first engaged in dramatically cutting rates then was forced to dramatically raise them. So, while individuals should be held responsible for their management practices, the wild fluctuations in the financial environment induced by pandemic policies are clearly a major factor in the problems in the banking industry.

          The fact that no one foresaw and enumerated every repercussion of the wild policy reaction to the pandemic doesn’t mean that those policies were advisable or excusable. If one is totally ignorant of potential outcomes, it seems obvious that severe reactions are the wrong thing to do, since they create unpredictable outcomes. First grade. Anger management.

          We’ll never know the alternative outcome, and we’ll never be able to accurately *calculate* the what the optimum response would have been – even if we can determine it purely from common sense*. But it **is** true that, at the moment, some of the things that were forecast by the anti-lockdowners are coming to pass, like problems in education. The scapegoating is just getting going. You can expect that to explode if financial problems compound and grow heading into ’24.

          *the bane of statistical analysis is that it’s often worse than common sense, as evidenced by the hot hand fallacy fallacy.

        • I would take issue with your characterization of the Fed actions. With Covid, the Federal Funds rate was reduced from 1.58% in February to 0.65% in March, 2020 – I wouldn’t call that a “dramatic” cut, particularly when viewed over a longer time period (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS). The very low rates existed for almost the entire 2010-2020 decade. I have real issues with the Fed policy over that decade, but the COVID reaction would not be my focus.

          The rest of your comment makes little sense to me. The fact that some of what the anti-lockdown community predicted is now coming true tells us little. It might lead you to think these were true visionaries – I certainly hope you don’t apply the same logic when choosing an investment analyst.

          I’m not going to defend many of the COVID policies that were taken, but I’m also not willing to cherry pick the evidence to selectively support past predictions. What bothered me most about the COVID policies was not their substance, but the way decisions were reached. There was too much herd behavior (particularly in the US) for my tasted – and this is indicative of the way many (I’d say most) politicians make decisions. They follow the herd (in the US, they seem to follow one of two herds) rather than trying to think carefully about their decisions.

        • Dale:

          I don’t see the COVID policy critics as great visionaries, but they had some valid points that were shouted down for obviously wrong reasons. Now that’s becoming obvious. The COVID policy critics have already eaten their crow. Now the “lock down” establishment is getting a chance to eat some crow, too, and they’re passing the buck as fast as they can.

  5. From the Tablet article: “The idea of arbitrators who select what is correct and dismiss what is incorrect is the most alien possible concept to science.”

    Also known as the peer review process.

    • John:

      Ahhhh, that must be the elusive connection to “Jewish news, ideas, and culture.” What could be more Jewish than a bunch of people poring over an ambiguous text and finding all its contradictions?

      • I don’t think Ioannidis is a fan of peer review. From the famous “Why most published research is false” paper:

        Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma. Empirical evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely unreliable [28].

        https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

        I did look into the research on effectiveness of peer review around 5 years ago and found that pretty much all the studies concluded it was a net negative if anything. Why was it adopted without evidence of effectiveness ~1950, but remains after almost only evidence of ineffectiveness or harm according to the same standards used to filter publications? I have no idea.

        Obviously getting feedback on your work from others is useful, this is about the institutionalized peer review process.

  6. At least viewed from the UK, there appeared to be noticeable difference in UK vs US approach, where I favour the UK approach. The UK Scientific and Medical experts repeatedly and explicitly followed the “on tap but not on top” tradition of UK Scientists in government, in that they said it was their job to describe the science but the job of politicians to make public policy decisions on the basis of this. Furthermore, they did not claim that issues were black and white. For instance, as far as I know, they never said that the vaccine was “safe” – they said that all medicine was a process of balancing risks, and that the relative risks favoured taking the vaccine – and when there was evidence that the vaccine was greatly reducing deaths, they pointed this out. Admittedly they did go through the same process of first discouraging and then encouraging masks, but in less strident terms than seemed to be the case in the US, despite Jonathan Van Tam having the gift of coining memorable metaphors – and I remember from the early days the phrase “there is no mask as good as your front door”. As far as I know in the UK the politicians may have given orders, some of them ill-advised, but “The Science” never did.

    • In some parts of Canada, governments hid from responsibility behind an appointed public health officer who is theoretically independent and in charge of public health policy. One problem was that it was very hard to judge how independent the Public Health Officer really was; another was that if you disagreed with how the PHO was balancing different people’s preferences, it was not clear what to do about it (ie. no legislator to appeal to or vote out)

  7. “It seemed like word salad.”

    Athough it might be hard for some to stomach and digest, I think producing word salad might be bread and butter for many social scientists.

  8. I think the two most remarkable things in this covid thing were:

    1) “two weeks to flatten the curve”

    2) “follow the science”

    The entire thing might make for a great case study one day for those interested in public opinion, public policy, social engeneering, or manipulation, or whatever term or word you think might be most appropriate. Or maybe it already was/is a study of some sort.

    • “The entire thing might make for a great case study one day (…)”

      Maybe video material depicting Fauci saying one thing at one point in time, and just about the opposite at another point in time about things like masks and other covid related stuff might be interesting study material for this possible study.

      Or video material of Fauci saying one thing about vaccination and being able to get or spread covid, and then changing that statement gradually over the course of the following months might also be interesting and useful to include in all of this.

      What could possibly go wrong when we all just “Follow The Science” (or “Only Follow Certain Specific Science And Scientists” if you think that might be a more appropriate description of reality in this case).

    • “2) “follow the science””

      Maybe the “follow the science” people are like kids playing “Simon Says”.

      These kids are all only paying close attention to Simon, and only following certain orders Simon gives.

      Perhaps these kids need to learn that they can also play another game.

      • I am sympathetic to this view as it seemed to me that many decision makers were just following their chosen herd. Still, I worry about the reasoning in some of these posts. Do we want to blame people for changing their minds when new evidence becomes available (sounds like a good Bayesian to me)? Do we want to congratulate people for sticking to their initial assessment, regardless of what new evidence becomes available? More precisely: how much should we blame Fauci for changing his mind? I’m not proposing his actions as exemplary, but I still worry about using hindsight to judge people’s actions without putting ourselves in the state of knowledge that existed at the time they made their decisions. This is hard to do, but necessary if we are really to learn from this experience.

        • Dale:

          Changing one’s mind in the face of evidence is being a good Bayesian. Where the “bad Bayesian” thing is happening is not at time 2, when the mind is changed, but at time 1, when the priors are too strong.

          To put it another way, if someone strongly recommends X, then in the light of evidence turns around and strongly recommends Y, then, sure, that can be ok, but it calls into question the strength of that original recommendation.

        • If you are asking these types of questions, maybe you are still playing “Simon Says”.

          You could think about whether “Simon” plays by the rules.

          You could think about whether it might be possible and better to listen to “Garfunkel” instead of “Simon”. Or to “Simon and Garfunkel”. Or to someone else entirely.

          You could think about whether it might be possible and better to play a different game entirely.

        • Anon:

          Even if you don’t trust “Simon” at all, it can make sense to understand his motivations and process of reasoning. After all, lots of other people are listening to “Simon.” Or they are listening to “Garfunkel” singing the songs that “Simon” writes.

        • When to challenge the strength of the original recommendation isn’t clear to me – it also runs the risk of using hindsight to make that judgement. I might have liked it if Fauci/CDC/etc had admitted the range of uncertainty at the beginning (more than they did), but as you suggest, the context of their actions might have made that unwise or politically and socially unacceptable. I’m still not sure if it is fair to criticize Facui as expressing undue confidence in his recommendations – as far as I can recall, almost everyone expressed strength in their recommendations, even though those recommendations differed greatly (to that point, Ioannidis seems to have had strong priors from the beginning and still does). Perhaps everyone expressed too much certainty. If so (and I think I’d go along with that), then there is no reason to single out one particular view to criticize – they were all guilty. I attempted my own modeling early on in COVID but abandoned it because I couldn’t find any model that gave useful predictions from the available data.

        • Yes it takes courage to change one’s views in the face of growing/changing evidence especially in a politically-charged arena. In reality it would be highly remiss not to do so and we’re actually pretty lucky that respose to Covid was done largely in response to scientific evidence (rather than being driven by ideologues and conspiracy theorists, for example).

          IIRC Fauci/CDC initial advice (in Feb/early March 2020??) was that individuals didn’t wear masks and this would help ensure that healthcare workers didn’t have mask shortages. However, once evidence accrued of non-symptomatic transmission of Covid the recommendation changed to promote mask-wearing to limit community transmission.

          Surely you have to change advice when things change or as understanding grows…remember that this is that part of science that requires assessment of evidence and responses in real time.

        • “Covid was done largely in response to scientific evidence (rather than being driven by ideologues and conspiracy theorists, for example).”

          Perhaps “conspiracy theorists” are in some ways like scientists: noticing patterns, combining evidence from different sources, putting forward hypotheses, etc.

          Perhaps some “conspiracy theorists” are scientists.

          Perhaps some conspiracies become “facts” and then sort of stop being seen as “conspiracy theories”.

          Perhaps it’s, at least partly, a matter of perspective or attitude.

  9. What I am starting to wonder more and more is whether (some) scientists think they have the right to nudge or steer people and societies.

    In my view, science leads to (tentative) findings which could be taken into account in decision making, but should not be the only things to take into account (e.g. see the article mentioned in this blogpost about individual freedoms and rights). It sometimes seems to me that (some) scientists 1) think that their (tentative) findings are the only thing to take into account in decision making, and 2) that the whole world is just one giant experimental lab and if they just keep track of how things develop then that all is sufficient and good because they then “have the data”, “that’s how science works”, and “how would we know otherwise”. These are perhaps some of the “Follow The Science” folks.

    F#ck your “data”. Maybe science is about more than “data”. Maybe science is also about other “data”. Maybe it’s about careful thought as well. Maybe it’s about tentative action as well. Maybe it’s about being skeptical. Maybe it’s about looking back at history to see how things might go in the name of “science”. Maybe science is about thinking about things without any “data”. Maybe the best thing to do sometimes is nothing. Maybe that view can even be supported by scientific findings, by reasoning, etc. Just because you havent got “the data”, doesn’t mean something is not true or that something is not going to happen. Maybe being a good scientist is about coming up with good hypotheses before any new “data” is even available.

    Maybe part of science is also about a continious assessment of the people and entities involved in science. I am becoming more and more annoyed with what I view might very well be narcissistic and psychopathic elitist scientists whose possible psychological immaturity, possible psychological unbalances, and possible unresolved issues might very well lead to incompetent and immoral and irresponsible behaviour, and ultimately to disastrous consequences for society at large.

    Maybe Covid came from a deliberate or accidental lab leak in Wuhan, or maybe it came from some exotic animal. I very much like the new recent raccoon-dog story by the way, that all of a sudden seems to have replaced the bat-soup story just at a time when talk about a possible lab-leak was not immediately shot down because it was viewed as “misinformation” and a crazy “conspiracy theory”. Regardless of the origin, perhaps there might already be enough here to ponder concerning the behaviour of certain scientists in certain labs and what they research. Perhaps not everything that can be studied should. And perhaps someone needs to think and state some more about the environment, processes, people, and entities involved in present-day science at different levels. Perhaps the science, and the scientist, of the past is no more…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *