I do think it should be clear that the model is from outside the mainstream Which model? Your article mostly dwells on the Oxford model in the FT which is as m

I do think it should be clear that the model is from outside the mainstream Which model? Your article mostly dwells on the Oxford model in the FT which is as mainstream as it gets. The Daily Mail article is about a prediction by an Imperial academic. There doesn't appear to be any "mainstream" in epidemiology. This kind of false-consensus argument is one I've seen before and frankly it undermines people's respect in both academic and journalism. How exactly is the "mainstream" established, in your mind? And don't talk about vague, easily manipulated non-metrics like reputation. Mainstream models should come from a single thing: success. Your insistence on rigid academic segmentation is the very thing that makes academia brittle and riven with non-replicable papers. You know which kind of modellers I respect the most? Actuaries. They have skin in the game. They don't try to predict pandemics or sell insurance products against them, implying they think pandemics can't be modelled. So far based on what I've read about the history of epidemiology, I can't disagree with them.