3 ms·

Astrophysics does have pretty considerable on-going problems as a result of its inability to do real experiments. Even regular physics is heading the same way.

Astrophysics does have pretty considerable on-going problems as a result of its inability to do real experiments. Even regular physics is heading the same way. Dark matter is basically a giant admission that our models of the universe don't match reality and we have no idea why or how to fix them. String theory does trigger big debates about whether it's actually science or not. Astrophysics is saved as a science largely by the universe's close relationship with more testable on-earth physics - the motion of planets is Newtonian motion which can be experimented on locally, the physics inside a star is something that can be replicated in a Tokamak, and so on. Sometimes observations are all we have to go on, like with the light bending observation that cemented Einstein as right, but that's rare. Mostly physics yields to experiments. When it doesn't you do see decades without progress. those models are constantly checked against new findings I think I'll have to dispute that. My research into epidemiology and its history suggests that this part never seems to happen except by outsiders. Models produce totally failed predictions, in fact often reality falls outside even the uncertainty bounds that are already very generous. Scientists would at this point stop and say, hmm, there seems to be a problem with germ theory. Our predictions are wrong so we need a refined theory. They'd then design experiments to figure out what that problem is. Epidemiologists never do this, perhaps because they often don't have a medical background. They can't simply switch contexts and start doing lab experiments. So they simply declare themselves to be highly successful despite all the evidence they weren't, and wait for the next outbreak. Then they jump up and present often the same or very similar models to policymakers as "science", and inform them if they don't immediately implement the epidemiologists recommendations (which are always extreme) millions will die. COVID is a case in point. Imperial presented a model that was in the words of its author based on "thousands of lines of undocumented C written over 13 years ago to model flu pandemics": https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713?lang=en https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713... It's rather ironic that we've seen endless attacks on people who "claim it's just like the flu" when one of the world's leading epidemiologist literally used a flu model to predict COVID. But this statement implies epidemiological theories and models didn't really change in 13 years. And when you look at these models in depth, that isn't a surprise. They're astonishingly simple. There hasn't been any breakthrough in germ theory from these people, and their models always predict massive epidemics that don't actually happen. To explain this they'd need to do medicine, or at least honestly admit that current theory is inadequate to explain observed reality. They never do this, which is why in my eyes they aren't scientists.

notacoward 7y ago
> My research into epidemiology and its history I'm sorry, but you get an absolutely huge [citation needed] for that. You're making a lot of highly prejudicial claims, with just about zero data to back them up. > thousands of lines of undocumented C written over 13 years ago to model flu pandemics Is the fact that it's undocumented even relevant? That seems like severe bikeshedding, in the sense of judging what you know instead of what matters. Are there qualitative differences between how flu and coronaviruses spread? I don't mean do the diseases have different symptoms or prognosis, though I see you're conflating the two. Does the spread of the virus differ other than in the sense of tweaking variables like R0? It's not immediately clear why a model originally developed for flu would not be readily adaptable to COVID-19, just like a CFD model can be adapted to different problems. It doesn't require detailed medical or virological knowledge either - just empirical observation, of which epidemiologists are quite capable. BTW, let me ask you: do you consider economics a science? Because it seems like your opposition to epidemiologists' conclusions seems to be based in economic projections. How ironic.
- thu2111 7y ago
  I can give many citations, but they're also an easily Googled matter of public record. I'll provide some anyway. On current events: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-ferguson-should-be-asked https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-... https://judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imperial-college-uk-covid-19-numbers-dont-seem-to-add-up/ https://judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imperial-college-uk-covid... https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1245748387359711234 https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1245748387359711234 https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo... On a major prior disaster caused by listening to Imperial modellers: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51683518_Destructive_tension_Mathematics_versus_experience_-_The_progress_and_control_of_the_2001_foot_and_mouth_disease_epidemic_in_Great_Britain https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51683518_Destructiv... https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0076277&type=printable https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jo... http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ab5/c0d4699e499e9c99a20c8d7aece68f52c5f4.pdf http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ab5/c0d4699e499e9c99a20c8d7... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-sc... Here they are getting it all wrong on Zika: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/353/6297/353.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/353/6297/353.full... https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/zika-has-all-disappeared-americas-why# https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/zika-has-all-disappe... And finally, a page with many useful links under "further reading": https://lockdownsceptics.org/how-reliable-is-imperial-colleges-modelling/ https://lockdownsceptics.org/how-reliable-is-imperial-colleg... I hope that provides some interesting reading! Is the fact that it's undocumented even relevant? Absolutely. Ferguson asserted he couldn't reveal his code because nobody except him knows how to run it. That means nothing based on it could have ever been properly peer reviewed in 13 years. Over a month later he still hasn't uploaded his code anywhere, despite its outputs driving extreme social policies around the world. That's pathetic and deserves condemnation from anyone who cares about the scientific method. Being able to peer review and reproduce published results is critical - look at what happened in psychology when people tried to replicate famous papers - but this is one more way epidemiology doesn't even try to be scientific. Does the spread of the virus differ other than in the sense of tweaking variables like R0? ... It's not immediately clear why a model originally developed for flu would not be readily adaptable to COVID-19 Nobody knows, do they. If anyone understood these viruses their models wouldn't always be so wrong. We can easily assert that here because on this forum we have nothing to lose. At any rate, R0 and friends are the variables that define spread in these models. There don't seem to be fundamentally different models for different diseases. For instance SEIR models don't have any variable for different categories of disease and they aren't labelled as for use only with e.g. respiratory infections. Take a look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem... All viruses are treated the same same except for the initial starting variables. You can't exclude them whilst still asking if the spread of the virus differs in these models - the answer is no, but the models are wrong so that doesn't mean much about the real world. It doesn't require detailed medical or virological knowledge either - just empirical observation, of which epidemiologists are quite capable. That would require leaving their universities. The Imperial paper isn't based on fieldwork but second hand anecdotes (e.g. "Professor Nicholas Hart, personal communication" is cited as a source) and arbitrary guesses: "We assume that symptomatic individuals are 50% more infectious than asymptomatic individuals" This assumption is justified nowhere. It's for sure not based on empirical observation by the team. BTW, let me ask you: do you consider economics a science? No, of course not. As you note, economics has all the same problems as epidemiology. The public knows this and polls show economists aren't trusted. People have clocked that economists can't predict the economy even though they routinely claim otherwise. I hope epidemiology goes the same way quickly. it seems like your opposition to epidemiologists' conclusions seems to be based in economic projections I haven't mentioned economic projections anywhere in this thread. My opposition to their conclusions is based on the fact that they are treated as scientific when in reality they aren't. That this has led to economic disaster makes it a very important topic, but I can easily make the same case about less disastrous fields like nutrition 'science' or psychology. And if you browse my comment history (pre COVID), you'll see I have. COVID is also a social disaster, look at all the stories of the cops going full 1984 to see that.

notacoward 7y ago

> My research into epidemiology and its history I'm sorry, but you get an absolutely huge [citation needed] for that. You're making a lot of highly prejudicial claims, with just about zero data to back them up. > thousands of lines of undocumented C written over 13 years ago to model flu pandemics Is the fact that it's undocumented even relevant? That seems like severe bikeshedding, in the sense of judging what you know instead of what matters. Are there qualitative differences between how flu and coronaviruses spread? I don't mean do the diseases have different symptoms or prognosis, though I see you're conflating the two. Does the spread of the virus differ other than in the sense of tweaking variables like R0? It's not immediately clear why a model originally developed for flu would not be readily adaptable to COVID-19, just like a CFD model can be adapted to different problems. It doesn't require detailed medical or virological knowledge either - just empirical observation, of which epidemiologists are quite capable. BTW, let me ask you: do you consider economics a science? Because it seems like your opposition to epidemiologists' conclusions seems to be based in economic projections. How ironic.

thu2111 7y ago
I can give many citations, but they're also an easily Googled matter of public record. I'll provide some anyway. On current events: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-ferguson-should-be-asked https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-... https://judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imperial-college-uk-covid-19-numbers-dont-seem-to-add-up/ https://judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imperial-college-uk-covid... https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1245748387359711234 https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1245748387359711234 https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo... On a major prior disaster caused by listening to Imperial modellers: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51683518_Destructive_tension_Mathematics_versus_experience_-_The_progress_and_control_of_the_2001_foot_and_mouth_disease_epidemic_in_Great_Britain https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51683518_Destructiv... https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0076277&type=printable https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/jo... http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ab5/c0d4699e499e9c99a20c8d7aece68f52c5f4.pdf http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ab5/c0d4699e499e9c99a20c8d7... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-sc... Here they are getting it all wrong on Zika: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/353/6297/353.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/353/6297/353.full... https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/zika-has-all-disappeared-americas-why# https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/zika-has-all-disappe... And finally, a page with many useful links under "further reading": https://lockdownsceptics.org/how-reliable-is-imperial-colleges-modelling/ https://lockdownsceptics.org/how-reliable-is-imperial-colleg... I hope that provides some interesting reading! Is the fact that it's undocumented even relevant? Absolutely. Ferguson asserted he couldn't reveal his code because nobody except him knows how to run it. That means nothing based on it could have ever been properly peer reviewed in 13 years. Over a month later he still hasn't uploaded his code anywhere, despite its outputs driving extreme social policies around the world. That's pathetic and deserves condemnation from anyone who cares about the scientific method. Being able to peer review and reproduce published results is critical - look at what happened in psychology when people tried to replicate famous papers - but this is one more way epidemiology doesn't even try to be scientific. Does the spread of the virus differ other than in the sense of tweaking variables like R0? ... It's not immediately clear why a model originally developed for flu would not be readily adaptable to COVID-19 Nobody knows, do they. If anyone understood these viruses their models wouldn't always be so wrong. We can easily assert that here because on this forum we have nothing to lose. At any rate, R0 and friends are the variables that define spread in these models. There don't seem to be fundamentally different models for different diseases. For instance SEIR models don't have any variable for different categories of disease and they aren't labelled as for use only with e.g. respiratory infections. Take a look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem... All viruses are treated the same same except for the initial starting variables. You can't exclude them whilst still asking if the spread of the virus differs in these models - the answer is no, but the models are wrong so that doesn't mean much about the real world. It doesn't require detailed medical or virological knowledge either - just empirical observation, of which epidemiologists are quite capable. That would require leaving their universities. The Imperial paper isn't based on fieldwork but second hand anecdotes (e.g. "Professor Nicholas Hart, personal communication" is cited as a source) and arbitrary guesses: "We assume that symptomatic individuals are 50% more infectious than asymptomatic individuals" This assumption is justified nowhere. It's for sure not based on empirical observation by the team. BTW, let me ask you: do you consider economics a science? No, of course not. As you note, economics has all the same problems as epidemiology. The public knows this and polls show economists aren't trusted. People have clocked that economists can't predict the economy even though they routinely claim otherwise. I hope epidemiology goes the same way quickly. it seems like your opposition to epidemiologists' conclusions seems to be based in economic projections I haven't mentioned economic projections anywhere in this thread. My opposition to their conclusions is based on the fact that they are treated as scientific when in reality they aren't. That this has led to economic disaster makes it a very important topic, but I can easily make the same case about less disastrous fields like nutrition 'science' or psychology. And if you browse my comment history (pre COVID), you'll see I have. COVID is also a social disaster, look at all the stories of the cops going full 1984 to see that.