> > you can at least try to account for the ways in which your sample is likely to be different from a truly random sample. > Right, as all legitimate researche

> > you can at least try to account for the ways in which your sample is likely to be different from a truly random sample. > Right, as all legitimate researchers in this area do. Yeah, obviously we agree here. So: how do you effectively control for them in this case? That's my point. It's hard, and you haven't offered any mechanism for this particular case, just assurances that people who know what they're doing do in fact know what they're doing. Are you one of those people? Please fill us in on what they're doing to address sample bias. They "try to control for it" -- how in this case? So far you've offered nothing specific, just that experts control for it, and you're implying that it's illegitimate to question whether there might be a systemic bias because all the cited studies seem to select populations more likely to be infected. > OK, so how do you get them in their homes? If you solicit them on the internet, then there's sample bias because you're telling them they'll be tested. If you knocking door-to-door, it's the same thing: you have to tell them what you're going to do, so you're "selecting for people who want to be tested". You can't win. Am I understanding correctly that you're saying that because you can't get a perfectly random sample you shouldn't try to minimize selection bias? You can't "win", but you can get closer than these studies did. There's a clear difference between a Facebook ad "Stanford seeks people for COVID-19 tests" and "Your number was chosen at random and we'd like to test you for COVID-19 in the interest of science." One should absolutely try to minimize selection bias, in addition to controlling for its inevitability. In Germany, as you propose, they are selecting people at random from a central database of residents, which is not correlated with whether they have symptoms, feel comfortable shopping in public, etc. That is better than showing up at a grocery store, clearly, right? As for people who agree to be selected, yes, there's nothing we can do about that in liberal societies. I'd like to know what this rate is. In Germany, I recall that it was low. > this is all just a highbrow way of rejecting studies for lowbrow reasons OK, this is the second time you've implied that I'm uninformed, or am acting in bad faith or with bad motives (or whatever "lowbrow reasons" means). None of these are true. I've ignored the personal nature of your vague dismissals up to now in the interest of conversation, but I'm done doing so.