Most of the top comments in this thread are badly missing the point. This is probably partly due to the title -- the point here is not whether connections and r

Most of the top comments in this thread are badly missing the point. This is probably partly due to the title -- the point here is not whether connections and reputation are important. The point is that at the very highest levels of US government, when they have brought in an academic advisors from elite universities, they have ended up presenting absurdly wrong child-like nonsense as their best attempt at analyzing Covid-19 data. Rather few people in this thread have managed to get beyond the title and the slightly opaque columbia.edu blog post to see this. An exception is ahdeanz. It is an extremely depressing and valid point. Yes, human connections will always be important, but we MUST as sensible democracies, ensure that when science needs to be done, it is not left to the those who have been so involved in the world of human politics and dinner-party-approved conversational topics that they can't even vaguely think about something technical. I expect he has many flaws, but Dominic Cummings in the UK Conservative party is on the right side of history here, in wishing for a new era in which politics is not dominated by those with law and humanities degrees. https://dominiccummings.com/the-odyssean-project-2/ https://dominiccummings.com/the-odyssean-project-2/