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Uhmm, no? Reality is way too complex for anyone to make a statement about what is "true" - even for domain experts and especially for journalists, whose, at bes

Uhmm, no? Reality is way too complex for anyone to make a statement about what is "true" - even for domain experts and especially for journalists, whose, at best, entire specialization is "public health". We may be able to state what is "true" for very obvious matters where there are clear dividing lines for a matter to qualify (e.g. forest fire, election results). But when it comes to the sciences, it is incredibly difficult to make any such statement, especially when it comes to emerging research and predictive modeling. Instead of journalists demonstrating the effect of Dunning-Kruger in a manner similar to what many computer scientists and engineers love to do about unrelated fields, they should rather listen to the experts and try to gather multiple opinions in order to triangulate what is probably correct.

deleted 7y ago
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cousin_it 7y ago
Given a choice between an engineer who did some calculations on an unfamiliar topic, and a journalist who triangulated expert opinions but didn't do any calculations, I'll listen to the engineer.
- Quanttek 7y ago
  1) The comment regarding engineers related to the tendency to assume, because one has specialized knowledge in one field, one also is qualified to comment on other topics, such as the ability to discern the "truth" in a highly volatile and complex social situation (e.g. COVID-19) 2) What you are describing is exactly what I mean: There are dozens of experts ("engineers") who have done their calculations but have come to different conclusions. To presume, as a journalist or expert, one's own calculations will provide the "truth" in such a situation is not only extremely arrogant but also, when it comes to a pandemic, extremely dangerous. It reminds me of that electrical engineer at Imperial College who thought epidemiology is a cake-walk and wrote a paper predicting 5000 deaths in the UK, which stood in stark contrast to that modeling effort by a large group of actual, renowned experts in the field (epidemiologists, virologists, public health scholars) also at the Imperial College, whose estimates have at least estimated 20,000 deaths. The electrical engineer had to quickly backtrack on his claims after hundreds of scientists wrote in. Now imagine, every journalist would do that and directly publish it. That would be far worse than an article that brings up that 5,000 deaths study but also mentions other estimates.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cousin_it 7y ago

Given a choice between an engineer who did some calculations on an unfamiliar topic, and a journalist who triangulated expert opinions but didn't do any calculations, I'll listen to the engineer.

Quanttek 7y ago
1) The comment regarding engineers related to the tendency to assume, because one has specialized knowledge in one field, one also is qualified to comment on other topics, such as the ability to discern the "truth" in a highly volatile and complex social situation (e.g. COVID-19) 2) What you are describing is exactly what I mean: There are dozens of experts ("engineers") who have done their calculations but have come to different conclusions. To presume, as a journalist or expert, one's own calculations will provide the "truth" in such a situation is not only extremely arrogant but also, when it comes to a pandemic, extremely dangerous. It reminds me of that electrical engineer at Imperial College who thought epidemiology is a cake-walk and wrote a paper predicting 5000 deaths in the UK, which stood in stark contrast to that modeling effort by a large group of actual, renowned experts in the field (epidemiologists, virologists, public health scholars) also at the Imperial College, whose estimates have at least estimated 20,000 deaths. The electrical engineer had to quickly backtrack on his claims after hundreds of scientists wrote in. Now imagine, every journalist would do that and directly publish it. That would be far worse than an article that brings up that 5,000 deaths study but also mentions other estimates.