5 ms·

Dr. Levitt: Your words have power. Use them carefully

55 points by Anon84 6y ago

troelsSteegin 6y ago
Quoting: "I’m concerned that people interpret your conjectures as facts.". Harris the author is a Phd candidate in biology at Stanford who is calling out Levitt, a Nobel Prize winning structural biologist at Stanford, for his evidently non-scientifically based popular COVID advice "in keeping with your hostility to epidemiology". Harris maintains Levitt is doing damage, real damage to public health, to his reputation, and the reputation of Stanford. I am just some random, but I was persuaded by her reasoned and pointed argument. Her article took some guts to write. I hope it is constructively received. I would be curious to understand what is driving Levitt. EDIT: adding a link to an interview w/ Levitt from 8/20: https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/02/qa-michael-levitt-on-why-there-shouldnt-be-a-lockdown-how-hes-been-tracking-coronavirus/ https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/02/qa-michael-levitt-o...
- elefanten 6y ago
  How can you be persuaded by one side of a debate, particularly when you’re someone uneducated in the field? That’s a startling outcome to me. Is it because she claims to hold the consensus view? Because it was well written? How do you conclude with being curious to understand “what is driving Levitt” rather than “what is Levitt’s reasoning?”
  - MyHypatia 6y ago
    The author of this article presented documented evidence of Dr. Levitt's incorrect and speculative statements which he has not bothered to clarify. I am persuaded by the article because it presents the evidence clearly and backs it up with citations of that evidence.
  - troelsSteegin 6y ago
    I was persuaded by the evidence cited by Harris in her editorial. I am categorically interested in Levitt's reasoning. Based on this article, his beliefs are miscallibrated, and that seems odd to me. A broader question is what should happen when a scientist voices a non scientific opinion? A famous scientist is more likely to get my attention than some ordinary scientist or some pundit. Maybe I am a sophisticated consumer, or may be not. Should I believe this person just because he or she is a scientist? Should the scientist issue a disclaimer - "this is my non scientific opinion"? I think a point Harris is making is that if one is going to opine while wearing the mantle of scientific authority - Nobel, Stanford prof - your arguments should be robust. Harris met that standard for me.
    - kestonis 6y ago
      It is very easy - all interviews, opinions, public speeches by all scientists are under "non scientific opinion". Only scientific articles on reputable scientific journals are scientific opinion. All other media is not, because even if you link your speech to specific article and you speak with journalist you use dumbed down terminology. During process of converting scientific article into layman terms there is loss of information. Sometimes it is crucial information or it becomes source of misinterpretation.
  - kestonis 6y ago
    Well it is very easy to check consensus view of science - it is published scientific articles. Why it is consensus view? Because it is peer reviewed and different journals have different reputation ranks. In scientific debate you always link the source - scientific article. If he cannot link sources, means there is no need to understand either “what is driving Levitt”, either “what is Levitt’s reasoning?”
- timr 6y ago
  She's loose with facts, herself: consider the four links provided at the end of the sentence "I was personally distressed to watch you tell the governor of Florida, where my high-risk family members live, that COVID-19 does not present a significant threat in terms of overwhelming hospitals. This is verifiably false." That's a pretty big, specific claim. What is the evidence she is providing? Every word in "this is verifiably false" links to a different article, only one of which provides even weak evidence that one might characterize as supporting the claim: * Link one is to an article about San Francisco from December 10, claiming that hospitals there will run out of beds in 17 days. Florida is not mentioned (incidentally, hospital capacity in SF has increased slightly since the article was written [1]). * Link two is to a an article about Miami-Dade from December 4, where they quote CEOs from two hospital chains, who say that they have enough beds to handle the current caseload, but "may" not have enough staff. * Link three is about cases nationwide. It does not mention Florida. * Link four is about a White House report from November. The article explicitly says: "The November 29 document showed a minimal change in total hospitalization from the week prior". The "evidence" here is that the document predicts a "post-Thanksgiving surge". To my knowledge, no hospital system in Florida has been "overwhelmed" by any conventional definition of the word [2]. Florida hospitals currently appear to be well below the peak seen in July [3]. The predicted "post-thanksgiving surge" does not appear to have materialized [4]. Reasonable people can certainly disagree and debate the current level of strain on hospitals in the US, and the appropriate trade-offs in our response to these strains. However, it's not fair or intellectually honest to attack another person for weaknesses in past speculation when you are yourself engaging in speculative, possibly misleading forms of arguments. [1] https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/Hospital-Capacity/qtdt-yqr2/ https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/Hospital-Capacity/qtdt-yqr2... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html [3] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronavirus-hospitalizations-climb-20201229-gnoc3xo4t5bnlowjinsy5sspgy-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronaviru... [4] https://covid-19.direct/state/FL https://covid-19.direct/state/FL
  - mkolodny 6y ago
    According to the New York Times' "How Full Are I.C.U.s Near You?", AdventHealth Ocala in Florida is currently at 97% capacity with 56 Covid-19 patients, and the average I.C.U. in Florida is at 82% capacity. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-near-you.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_aleph2c_ 6y ago
Mallory Harris is critiquing Dr. Levit because he is not agreeing with the scientific consensus. She is also holding him accountable for re-interpretations of his twitter stream. If this is true, then anyone with any authority or rank should stop using twitter or say anything at all; there is always a chance that someone else can twist your words and use your authority to back their case.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Successful public figures typically write with their particular audience in mind, and often hire others to help them do this effectively, and in a way their audience understands and does not misinterpret. There are entire career disciplines that focus almost exclusively on this skill.
  - sn 6y ago
    Public figures need to be sensitive to motivated reasoning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/motivated-reasoning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/motivated-reasonin... by the general public when they post. Looking at: https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/1301768370497482755?s=20 https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/130176837049748275... What if he had ended this tweet with "But: I will take any FDA approved vaccine." ? Except - he was at exactly 280 characters, so he couldn't have added this without removing other text, or doing a multi-tweet message. https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/69/4/345/5547032?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/69/4/345/55470... says "We show that doubling the permissible length of a tweet led to less uncivil, more polite, and more constructive discussions online." Maybe the character limits inherent in platforms like twitter cause many of the problems we're seeing right now, because people literally don't have the words to explain themselves.
- kestonis 6y ago
  Twitter is another form of public speech, like interviews, public lectures, etc. Scientists always were accountable for re-interpretations of their lectures, public speeches. Why it should change on twitter?
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Reading between the lines, I'm able to ease out just a tiny little bit of information...
nafizh 6y ago
I have been following Dr. Levitt since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have now count loss of how many of his predictions turned out to be wrong. Also he never fleshes out how he is doing his calculations. At this point, any reasonable person with some self-reflection would just shut up.
- xhkkffbf 6y ago
  There's plenty of "wrong" to go around. Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. In the US. But he's not shutting up. And gosh, Neil Ferguson, the famous epidemiologist in England keeps coming up with predictions based on the thinnest amount of data. Yet he's not shutting up. I think everyone who is devoting any time to shutting down or shutting up someone else would be better served spending the time generating better data. Censorship is a terrible impulse.
  - dumborlying 6y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron... Given that the 1M prediction was with no intervention, and interventions happened all across the country (and are approaching the prediction outlined in that article), are you repeating this misinformation out of ignorance or malice? Of course, denying that interventions played a big role in preventing this from getting even more out of control would be be table-stakes with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782
  - wwweston 6y ago
    > Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. This would be a considerably better prediction than the idea that asymptomatic spread can't be serious factor; it'd be merely off by a factor of 6 whereas I'm honestly not sure how anyone with a high school biology education could dismiss the possibility that a viral infection might be contagious and asymptomatic. And I don't know when Kristoff's prediction was made, but if it was before June, given a NYC-centric perspective it's a credible projection absent changes of behavior and treatment advances, both of which we got in modest degrees (probably around a factor of 6). Plenty of wrong to go around? Sure. Some parties seem to be carrying more of the plenty.
guscost 6y ago
A 21st-century struggle session. “Agree with the consensus or else.”
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  Bingo! Vague notions of “harm” forbid anyone from doing anything. There’s rarely anything that can be said nowadays without some activist finding a reason to take offense. It’s funny when it’s the activist themselves that get cannibalized by their own Puritanical brethren.
  - Crye 6y ago
    This is different. This is a scientist condemning another scientist for standing on the pulpit and proselytizing to a mass of people. The cirtique by Mallory is that Levitt is using his credentials to bypass the scientific process and undermines the work of many. This is, in my opinion, something we should all condemn.
    - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
      > to bypass the scientific process The scientific process isn't owned by anyone. People are free to speak words; those who say otherwise are speech police. The obsession of certain people with "the harms of words" is illiberal and authoritarian. It’s in vogue to complain about the bad people that say bad things. You are authoritarian insofar as you're appealing to the authority of science, only if you think it seems reasonable.
- augustt 6y ago
  struggle session / getting called out for saying completely stupid shit. Potato / potato right? How will this lowly Nobel laureate ever recover. If there's anything struggle session-like about this, it's you contorting the author's respectful opinion into some kind of public flogging.
golemotron 6y ago
I find it fascinating that people always object to others' speech not because they might be misled by it, but because they are concerned that others might. It's patronizing and arrogant.
- Crye 6y ago
  Mallory is not saying that his words are directly swaying people but that his words are being used as political tool to undermine the scientific consensus.
  - golemotron 6y ago
    'Political tool' is a fancy term for people talking about what someone said. If you read the essay, that is all that is happening.
dilippkumar 6y ago
Once the political climate around epidemiology settles down and allows for hard questions to be asked (and answered), there are some questions about a perceived loss of credibility that I would like to see be addressed. When a lay person first encounters an epidemic, the first questions are something like: 1. How does it spread? 2. How likely am I to catch it if I’m exposed to it? 3. How can I prevent the spread? How effective is it? 4. What should I consider if I have to risk an exposure? I think about HIV and these questions. With HIV, each question has an extremely clear answer, often with statistics attached (eg: condoms prevent transmission with 99% effectiveness), is clearly communicated and understood. For non-experts, the mental model developed by doing even a little bit of reading is sufficiently accurate to make reasonable guesses on how to behave to reduce risks with HIV. As a lay person who wants to understand how to reduce risks around covid-19, the epidemiology community has not been helpful. Even now, it’s hard to find straightforward answers from peer reviewed publications for questions like “Does covid spread through touch?” in a way that lets me model risks in my head. “Use hand sanitizers just to be safe” isn’t good enough from a field dedicated to figure out how infections spread and at what rates. It’s December 2020. A year since Covid-19 appeared on the world stage. What I want is a table that lists vectors of transmission, effectiveness of transmission along that vector. Something like | Vector. | Effectiveness | —————————————————————————————————————— | Breathing 10ppm | | | air for 5 mins. | | | Breathing 100ppm | | | air for 5 mins. | | ... Throw in some graphs, confidence intervals and what variables to adjust for (temperature, time of exposure etc) With the right data, it should be blindingly obvious that masks work or that 5 covid positive people breathing out viral particles inside a Costco can increase the viral concentration inside to dangerous levels in 40 mins (I’m making up all the numbers here). Instead, we have public announcements that 23 mutations in a new strain result in a 71% more transmissible virus with implications that some expert in the field without any data or details on how the 71% number was derived. Do the new mutations cause an increase in viral particles being exhaled by an infected person? How much increase? Are the viral particles somehow smaller and able to penetrate masks more effectively or survive longer in the air and thus travel greater distances downwind? What measurements have you made, what variables did you control for, what scrutiny has your observations seen? When LIGO announced the first observations of gravity waves, everyone believed that the people behind the announcement had done due diligence before making the announcement. The physics community holds itself to a very high code of conduct, and this lends them credibility. Even mistakes like the faster-than-light neutrinos are forgiven because of the credibility the physicists maintain. The absence of that credibility has been a disaster. I’m not going to forget the announcements that masks don’t work and shouldn’t be used earlier this year. That’s an irreparable damage to the credibility of epidemiology - and when covid is over, I would like to see a real post-mortem with actionable steps to fix the code of conduct and credibility.
ggm 6y ago
For a comparable case, Ian Plimer, an AGW denialist geologist, of repute in his own field, but now notorious for making completely outrageous statements to his side of belief in the climate science. He's off-piste, outside his competency, arguing outside of the peer review process. Why do senior scientists do this? Is this some form of relevance deprivation syndrome?

55 points by Anon84 6y ago

Quoting: "I’m concerned that people interpret your conjectures as facts.". Harris the author is a Phd candidate in biology at Stanford who is calling out Levitt, a Nobel Prize winning structural biologist at Stanford, for his evidently non-scientifically based popular COVID advice "in keeping with your hostility to epidemiology". Harris maintains Levitt is doing damage, real damage to public health, to his reputation, and the reputation of Stanford. I am just some random, but I was persuaded by her reasoned and pointed argument. Her article took some guts to write. I hope it is constructively received. I would be curious to understand what is driving Levitt. EDIT: adding a link to an interview w/ Levitt from 8/20: https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/02/qa-michael-levitt-on-why-there-shouldnt-be-a-lockdown-how-hes-been-tracking-coronavirus/ https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/02/qa-michael-levitt-o...

elefanten 6y ago
How can you be persuaded by one side of a debate, particularly when you’re someone uneducated in the field? That’s a startling outcome to me. Is it because she claims to hold the consensus view? Because it was well written? How do you conclude with being curious to understand “what is driving Levitt” rather than “what is Levitt’s reasoning?”
- MyHypatia 6y ago
  The author of this article presented documented evidence of Dr. Levitt's incorrect and speculative statements which he has not bothered to clarify. I am persuaded by the article because it presents the evidence clearly and backs it up with citations of that evidence.
- troelsSteegin 6y ago
  I was persuaded by the evidence cited by Harris in her editorial. I am categorically interested in Levitt's reasoning. Based on this article, his beliefs are miscallibrated, and that seems odd to me. A broader question is what should happen when a scientist voices a non scientific opinion? A famous scientist is more likely to get my attention than some ordinary scientist or some pundit. Maybe I am a sophisticated consumer, or may be not. Should I believe this person just because he or she is a scientist? Should the scientist issue a disclaimer - "this is my non scientific opinion"? I think a point Harris is making is that if one is going to opine while wearing the mantle of scientific authority - Nobel, Stanford prof - your arguments should be robust. Harris met that standard for me.
  - kestonis 6y ago
    It is very easy - all interviews, opinions, public speeches by all scientists are under "non scientific opinion". Only scientific articles on reputable scientific journals are scientific opinion. All other media is not, because even if you link your speech to specific article and you speak with journalist you use dumbed down terminology. During process of converting scientific article into layman terms there is loss of information. Sometimes it is crucial information or it becomes source of misinterpretation.
- kestonis 6y ago
  Well it is very easy to check consensus view of science - it is published scientific articles. Why it is consensus view? Because it is peer reviewed and different journals have different reputation ranks. In scientific debate you always link the source - scientific article. If he cannot link sources, means there is no need to understand either “what is driving Levitt”, either “what is Levitt’s reasoning?”
timr 6y ago
She's loose with facts, herself: consider the four links provided at the end of the sentence "I was personally distressed to watch you tell the governor of Florida, where my high-risk family members live, that COVID-19 does not present a significant threat in terms of overwhelming hospitals. This is verifiably false." That's a pretty big, specific claim. What is the evidence she is providing? Every word in "this is verifiably false" links to a different article, only one of which provides even weak evidence that one might characterize as supporting the claim: * Link one is to an article about San Francisco from December 10, claiming that hospitals there will run out of beds in 17 days. Florida is not mentioned (incidentally, hospital capacity in SF has increased slightly since the article was written [1]). * Link two is to a an article about Miami-Dade from December 4, where they quote CEOs from two hospital chains, who say that they have enough beds to handle the current caseload, but "may" not have enough staff. * Link three is about cases nationwide. It does not mention Florida. * Link four is about a White House report from November. The article explicitly says: "The November 29 document showed a minimal change in total hospitalization from the week prior". The "evidence" here is that the document predicts a "post-Thanksgiving surge". To my knowledge, no hospital system in Florida has been "overwhelmed" by any conventional definition of the word [2]. Florida hospitals currently appear to be well below the peak seen in July [3]. The predicted "post-thanksgiving surge" does not appear to have materialized [4]. Reasonable people can certainly disagree and debate the current level of strain on hospitals in the US, and the appropriate trade-offs in our response to these strains. However, it's not fair or intellectually honest to attack another person for weaknesses in past speculation when you are yourself engaging in speculative, possibly misleading forms of arguments. [1] https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/Hospital-Capacity/qtdt-yqr2/ https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/Hospital-Capacity/qtdt-yqr2... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html https://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/covid19/report-patient-impact.html [3] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronavirus-hospitalizations-climb-20201229-gnoc3xo4t5bnlowjinsy5sspgy-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronaviru... [4] https://covid-19.direct/state/FL https://covid-19.direct/state/FL
- mkolodny 6y ago
  According to the New York Times' "How Full Are I.C.U.s Near You?", AdventHealth Ocala in Florida is currently at 97% capacity with 56 Covid-19 patients, and the average I.C.U. in Florida is at 82% capacity. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-near-you.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

_aleph2c_ 6y ago

Mallory Harris is critiquing Dr. Levit because he is not agreeing with the scientific consensus. She is also holding him accountable for re-interpretations of his twitter stream. If this is true, then anyone with any authority or rank should stop using twitter or say anything at all; there is always a chance that someone else can twist your words and use your authority to back their case.

kube-system 6y ago
Successful public figures typically write with their particular audience in mind, and often hire others to help them do this effectively, and in a way their audience understands and does not misinterpret. There are entire career disciplines that focus almost exclusively on this skill.
- sn 6y ago
  Public figures need to be sensitive to motivated reasoning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/motivated-reasoning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/motivated-reasonin... by the general public when they post. Looking at: https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/1301768370497482755?s=20 https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/130176837049748275... What if he had ended this tweet with "But: I will take any FDA approved vaccine." ? Except - he was at exactly 280 characters, so he couldn't have added this without removing other text, or doing a multi-tweet message. https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/69/4/345/5547032?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/69/4/345/55470... says "We show that doubling the permissible length of a tweet led to less uncivil, more polite, and more constructive discussions online." Maybe the character limits inherent in platforms like twitter cause many of the problems we're seeing right now, because people literally don't have the words to explain themselves.
kestonis 6y ago
Twitter is another form of public speech, like interviews, public lectures, etc. Scientists always were accountable for re-interpretations of their lectures, public speeches. Why it should change on twitter?

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Reading between the lines, I'm able to ease out just a tiny little bit of information...

nafizh 6y ago

I have been following Dr. Levitt since the beginning of the pandemic, and I have now count loss of how many of his predictions turned out to be wrong. Also he never fleshes out how he is doing his calculations. At this point, any reasonable person with some self-reflection would just shut up.

xhkkffbf 6y ago
There's plenty of "wrong" to go around. Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. In the US. But he's not shutting up. And gosh, Neil Ferguson, the famous epidemiologist in England keeps coming up with predictions based on the thinnest amount of data. Yet he's not shutting up. I think everyone who is devoting any time to shutting down or shutting up someone else would be better served spending the time generating better data. Censorship is a terrible impulse.
- dumborlying 6y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/13/opinion/coron... Given that the 1M prediction was with no intervention, and interventions happened all across the country (and are approaching the prediction outlined in that article), are you repeating this misinformation out of ignorance or malice? Of course, denying that interventions played a big role in preventing this from getting even more out of control would be be table-stakes with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23116782
- wwweston 6y ago
  > Nick Kristoff at the NYT predicted we might have more than 1m deaths by the end of the summer. This would be a considerably better prediction than the idea that asymptomatic spread can't be serious factor; it'd be merely off by a factor of 6 whereas I'm honestly not sure how anyone with a high school biology education could dismiss the possibility that a viral infection might be contagious and asymptomatic. And I don't know when Kristoff's prediction was made, but if it was before June, given a NYC-centric perspective it's a credible projection absent changes of behavior and treatment advances, both of which we got in modest degrees (probably around a factor of 6). Plenty of wrong to go around? Sure. Some parties seem to be carrying more of the plenty.

guscost 6y ago

A 21st-century struggle session. “Agree with the consensus or else.”

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
Bingo! Vague notions of “harm” forbid anyone from doing anything. There’s rarely anything that can be said nowadays without some activist finding a reason to take offense. It’s funny when it’s the activist themselves that get cannibalized by their own Puritanical brethren.
- Crye 6y ago
  This is different. This is a scientist condemning another scientist for standing on the pulpit and proselytizing to a mass of people. The cirtique by Mallory is that Levitt is using his credentials to bypass the scientific process and undermines the work of many. This is, in my opinion, something we should all condemn.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    > to bypass the scientific process The scientific process isn't owned by anyone. People are free to speak words; those who say otherwise are speech police. The obsession of certain people with "the harms of words" is illiberal and authoritarian. It’s in vogue to complain about the bad people that say bad things. You are authoritarian insofar as you're appealing to the authority of science, only if you think it seems reasonable.
augustt 6y ago
struggle session / getting called out for saying completely stupid shit. Potato / potato right? How will this lowly Nobel laureate ever recover. If there's anything struggle session-like about this, it's you contorting the author's respectful opinion into some kind of public flogging.

golemotron 6y ago

I find it fascinating that people always object to others' speech not because they might be misled by it, but because they are concerned that others might. It's patronizing and arrogant.

Crye 6y ago
Mallory is not saying that his words are directly swaying people but that his words are being used as political tool to undermine the scientific consensus.
- golemotron 6y ago
  'Political tool' is a fancy term for people talking about what someone said. If you read the essay, that is all that is happening.

dilippkumar 6y ago

Once the political climate around epidemiology settles down and allows for hard questions to be asked (and answered), there are some questions about a perceived loss of credibility that I would like to see be addressed. When a lay person first encounters an epidemic, the first questions are something like: 1. How does it spread? 2. How likely am I to catch it if I’m exposed to it? 3. How can I prevent the spread? How effective is it? 4. What should I consider if I have to risk an exposure? I think about HIV and these questions. With HIV, each question has an extremely clear answer, often with statistics attached (eg: condoms prevent transmission with 99% effectiveness), is clearly communicated and understood. For non-experts, the mental model developed by doing even a little bit of reading is sufficiently accurate to make reasonable guesses on how to behave to reduce risks with HIV. As a lay person who wants to understand how to reduce risks around covid-19, the epidemiology community has not been helpful. Even now, it’s hard to find straightforward answers from peer reviewed publications for questions like “Does covid spread through touch?” in a way that lets me model risks in my head. “Use hand sanitizers just to be safe” isn’t good enough from a field dedicated to figure out how infections spread and at what rates. It’s December 2020. A year since Covid-19 appeared on the world stage. What I want is a table that lists vectors of transmission, effectiveness of transmission along that vector. Something like | Vector. | Effectiveness | —————————————————————————————————————— | Breathing 10ppm | | | air for 5 mins. | | | Breathing 100ppm | | | air for 5 mins. | | ... Throw in some graphs, confidence intervals and what variables to adjust for (temperature, time of exposure etc) With the right data, it should be blindingly obvious that masks work or that 5 covid positive people breathing out viral particles inside a Costco can increase the viral concentration inside to dangerous levels in 40 mins (I’m making up all the numbers here). Instead, we have public announcements that 23 mutations in a new strain result in a 71% more transmissible virus with implications that some expert in the field without any data or details on how the 71% number was derived. Do the new mutations cause an increase in viral particles being exhaled by an infected person? How much increase? Are the viral particles somehow smaller and able to penetrate masks more effectively or survive longer in the air and thus travel greater distances downwind? What measurements have you made, what variables did you control for, what scrutiny has your observations seen? When LIGO announced the first observations of gravity waves, everyone believed that the people behind the announcement had done due diligence before making the announcement. The physics community holds itself to a very high code of conduct, and this lends them credibility. Even mistakes like the faster-than-light neutrinos are forgiven because of the credibility the physicists maintain. The absence of that credibility has been a disaster. I’m not going to forget the announcements that masks don’t work and shouldn’t be used earlier this year. That’s an irreparable damage to the credibility of epidemiology - and when covid is over, I would like to see a real post-mortem with actionable steps to fix the code of conduct and credibility.

ggm 6y ago

For a comparable case, Ian Plimer, an AGW denialist geologist, of repute in his own field, but now notorious for making completely outrageous statements to his side of belief in the climate science. He's off-piste, outside his competency, arguing outside of the peer review process. Why do senior scientists do this? Is this some form of relevance deprivation syndrome?