7 ms·

Trust in scientists hasn't recovered from Covid. Some humility could help

28 points by hn_acker 2y ago

eimrine 2y ago
[flagged]
- itishappy 2y ago
  https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ https://fourthievesvinegar.org/
newsbinator 2y ago
> Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023 It's incredible public confidence in scientists is still that high. When the public turned to scientists with valid questions, they were met with "just trust me bro" and mockery for "doing your own research" in response to being dismissed. Even worse: the "just trust me bro" people kept being wrong about one thing after another, then pretending a year later the opposite position was their position all along. The general public isn't smart, but most people can remember life-and-death information they were given a year back.
moomin 2y ago
Honestly the results as reported mostly tell me that the positioning run by organisations that find certain scientific consensuses inconvenient to have been effective.
jerojero 2y ago
It's not really discussed why people have lost trust in scientists. I wonder what happened, maybe I'm a bit biased in that regard as I had a scientific background for many years. I think there's a big problem in science that a lot of of public facing is done by people who are not scientists or are the kind of scientists that no longer care about science. The reason for this is that people feel and scientists feel like they cannot communicate with each other. With this in mind, you end up in a scenario where there's a lot of miscommunication happening with the scientist side promising things that are impossible or reducing the complexity of things to a point where the science that was done doesn't make much sense anymore. I think there is really a need for better communication, humility might come from the perspective that scientists need to admit this is a problem. It's not that the people are dumb it's that academics are failing at educating them.
- indigo0086 2y ago
  Willing to bet most distrust in science is due to overexposure of "expert scientists" especially when their uncriticized recommendations lead to civilization regressing policies
- zero-sharp 2y ago
  It's related to self-censorship. Look at what happened to Martin Kulldorff. He was a statistician at Harvard that had some controversial takes during the pandemic. He got dismissed. Pretty sure you can find accounts from him about the pressure he faced. It became clear during the pandemic that you couldn't communicate nuance to the public and that people were just picking sides out of fear.
  - pixxel 2y ago
    >you couldn't communicate nuance to the public Censorship. >and that people were just picking sides out of fear. Propaganda.
- drewcoo 2y ago
  > It's not really discussed why people have lost trust in scientists. We also don't talk about why people trusted scientists in the before time either. The egghead smears and distrust have been with us for a long, long time. Here in the US, the GI Bill after WWII got a lot of people college educations they would not have otherwise had. The emerging post-WWII managerial class valued and applied many sciences. The Cold War elevated scientists to an important status as they were seen as a key to winning the war. In schools, science was stressed. There were children's science shows like Mr. Wizard on TV to encourage kids to pursue science careers! As the Cold War wound down, that status and the propaganda supporting it slipped away, too.
finnthehuman 2y ago
The replication crisis hasn’t helped either. When done correctly, science can provide invaluable information. But publishing a paper does not mean science was done. And science communicators have on occasion treated inferences made from research with the seriousness of the research, not with the frivolousness of an informed guess.
- eimrine 2y ago
  What fields except Psychology/Psychiatry suffer from replication crisis?
  - a_vanderbilt 2y ago
    You can consider the beta-amyloid fiasco as a prime example of biomed's replication issues. ML/AL replication issues largely stem from the source data used for training not being available. In my field, of psychotherapy, social and cultural factors change over time making perfect replication impossible. I'm working on a paper now and we are trying to account as much as possible for replication of our results.
  - DougN7 2y ago
    I’m in no way qualified to answer, but I recall reading about a slew of publications being retracted across all fields after the results couldn’t be replicated. If I remember right there was a team that has become infamous for simply trying to replicate studies and finding a very large number of them can’t be.
    - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
      Are you able to dig up that paper or the findings the team found around replication and share?
  - snovymgodym 2y ago
    Economics
  - aredox 2y ago
incomingpain 2y ago
>It's no secret that scientists—and the science generally—took a hit during the health crisis. Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023, Those are ridiculously high numbers that are completely unbelievable. I see the trick they are attempting. Covid lies damaged trust in public HEALTH and here they are polling 'trust in SCIENTISTS', poll trust in public health and you're going to get far different numbers. How to rebuild trust: 1. Acknowledge you screwed up big time. Apologize sincerely. Literally nobody from public health has done step 1 yet. 2. Root cause analysis of how all these lies, deceptions, and manipulations came to be. 3. Make those reports public and take the beating in the media. 4. Create an action plan to prevent these abuses from happening in the future. This has to be done with the people whose voices were censored. 5. Start obeying international law and arrest all people who violated these laws. That's right... significant arrests are absolutely necessary to rebuild trust. If you dont do this, not only are you refusing accountability you're encouraging exactly the same behaviours to repeat.
- techfeathers 2y ago
  significant arrests? What laws were broken?
  - incomingpain 2y ago
    Canada is a signatory for ICESCR, UNESCO bio ethics, nuremburg code, rome statutes, and the 2005 IHR. EACH of which are individually good enough for arrests and obviously these criminals would accept the plea deals for their crimes. The harms done are certainly far exceeding the thresholds to bring international legal mechanisms into play; but we need not go there. If Public health wants to restore trust, as they absolutely must and should be their highest priority by a huge margin. There needs to be significant arrests. 99.99% this wont happen and public health will never restore their trust.
    - consteval 2y ago
      Okay how did they do this? By requiring masks and social distancing, which both work btw? Not that it matters much - even if they didn't work, I don't see how you can argue that's breaking the nuremburg code or whatever.
clauderoux 2y ago
I fully disagree with many of the comments I read so far. This is my experience from France, but I guess it was quite similar in most countries. Every time a scientist would be invited to a debate about the status of research, the journalists would find some olibrius who would believe in stars or anything approaching, whom the scientists would have a hard time to counter. The result was utter confusion, and in some cases, some scientists would loose patience and eventually answer with awkward or strong comments. In this context, it was impossible to get any actual information, so much of it was diluted in pseudo-debates. Scientific discourses became an opinion in a sea of misinformation. One of my friend, who had been researching on vaccines for most of his life stopped participating in debates where he was accused to be a murderer or to propagate autism. Of course, there were some scientists with an agenda, but in this context, it is a little bit too easy to put all the blame on people who are not trained for public debates and who were manipulated by the media who played on fear and exaggeration.
- techfeathers 2y ago
  I've definitely noticed a retconning of where the signal was coming from and where the noise is coming from. All of this focus on sciences inability to communicate, and no mention of the dishonest framing of the data by the media/everyone. So many intentional attempts to misguide people. I had a few friends who were COVID conspiracy theorists, and so many of the articles they sent me were hilariously bad. Alex Berenson published a blog post that pulled one graph from a 50 page document that showed some counter-intuitive correlation, but only if you ignored 1 bar on the chart that he cut off in picture he put in the blog post! (Not to mention ignoring the entire other 50 pages of the report)
marginalia_nu 2y ago
Trust was harmed because people were asked to trust scientists who were in no place to make well grounded statements. Robust science takes years to produce. The whole "trust the science" mantra from the covid years was a complete publicity nightmare for science as an institution, as the scientists eventually ended up contradicting themselves when additional data came in. Science ultimately does not operate on faith, but on skepticism and doubt. This is its greatest asset, that you can question it freely and it will have answers to all your questions (though sometimes they are "we don't know"). Propping it up as dogmatic truth that must be trusted and never investigated is probably the most anti-scientific thing you can do.
- amluto 2y ago
  I think it’s even a little worse than that. A bunch of the people saying “trust the science” actually meant “trust a particular policy.” Science is not policy, and policy is not science.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    Oh yeah, it's been an ongoing problem for years. The name of science has been used to lend credence to all sorts of unscientific nonsense, usually by slapping some citations onto it and calling it facts-based or science-based.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    We began developing modern germ theory in the mid-19th century. We've gotten really good at retarding the transmission of infectious disease. We know what works. Just like we've known for well over 100 years that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. To your point, science is not policy - but policy that is not informed by science is just wishful thinking.
    - amluto 2y ago
      Let’s pretend for a second that we absolutely, unequivocally, know and knew what would prevent transmission of COVID-19 [0]. It still does not follow that anyone in the government saying “stay home” or “no non-essential travel” or “wear a mask indoors” is science. It’s policy. It may or may not be well informed by science and it may or may not be a good idea. Science might be able to determine how disease spreads, but deciding what to do with that information is outside the scope is most science. [0] At least judging by what various branches of the government said and still say, this requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
naming_the_user 2y ago
In general we seem to have a media/politically driven issue with "studies" being trotted out to try to influence a particular course of action rather than as pure information dissemination. It's not an issue with "trust in science/scientists" in as much as it's an issue with information flow being controlled in order to produce a narrative, and people can see through that. Science is - we've done the maths, we've done the study in the wild, if people drive at 25mph then we get N% fewer accidents and M% fewer fatalities from the accidents that do happen. Politics is - we're enacting a speed limit, putting cameras up and making the fines punitive in order to force you to do it. The former is far less controversial than the latter.
aredox 2y ago
Another case of a wide gap between what people say they want and what they actually want - but will never admit. By which I mean Americans say they want scientists to be more humble, and then in practice trust more aggressive loudmouthed cranks.
Workaccount2 2y ago
Let me paint a bit of a difficult conundrum from the pandemic: Masks work dramatically better when the person wearing the mask is the one who is sick. A grocery store where the one infected person is masked is better than the grocery store where the one infected person is openly coughing around 30 masked people. Everyone masked works best, but the heavy lifting is done by the sick persons mask. In short; You wear a mask to protect others from you, not the other way around. However, this creates a severe social stigma problem however: People wearing masks are outing themselves as being sick (whether or not they actually are). The result is people don't wear masks for fear of social retaliation. So now you, as a scientist, have to figure out what the messaging around masks is going to be. Wear a mask to protect others? Wear a mask to protect yourself? Everyone wear a mask all the time because we say so? It was a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. They went with everyone wear a mask all the time, alluding to the implication of masking being a tool of self preservation. Of course masks don't work great at stopping you from getting sick (outside of being specially trained in their use), which is easily proved, and half the country recognized they were being lied too (while never acknowledging that the sick person wearing a mask works great).
- katdork 2y ago
  it also depends upon the mask type who you're protecting? IIR surgical masks tend to only protect other people, whereas you can protect yourself with FFP2/FFP3/N95/P99/... but deciphering that is part of the problem, the layman had to come to terms with the difference between IIR masks and the other more protective to self standards. the messaging was unclear but it required the avg person to do their own research. imo, the real problem was the culture war? i don't think there's any problem with someone making it clear that they're sick; society needs to be more accepting of the sick and more accepting of call-outs of work due to illness. this would help everybody in the long run.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    >whereas you can protect yourself with FFP2/FFP3/N95/P99/... You can, but there is a procedure that 95% of people fail to follow.
koinedad 2y ago
Masks, social distancing (6ft, stickers, circles, plastic shields), 5% projected death toll, did not come from lab, don’t question, no alternate views allowed, mark and ban things on all major social media channels if they are deemed “harmful misinformation”. This was my life while living in SF at the start of the pandemic. Yeah I think we need some intellectual humility. And I definitely listen for intellectual humility when I’m reading or listening to something.
- 0x000xca0xfe 2y ago
  Yes and multiple 180 degree turns by official media did not help either. In Germany the messaging was: - It's just some Chinese flu, stop fearmongering - It's bad but masks don't work, stop panicking - Masks work but it cannot spread via air, just don't touch anything when you go shopping while infected - It is actually extremely infectious and only vaccines help, natural immunity does not count - All the dystopian vaccine passports, regulations, segregations and punishments did not even put a dent in the curve but now it's over thanks to Omicron and we no longer talk about it And today we still refuse to openly talk on what happened or prepare a plan to prevent it next time... unbelievable. Scientists should have refused to visit political talkshows because now they have to share the reputation damage caused by media and politics.
techfeathers 2y ago
I hope that over the next 10-20 years the more social media native Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha kids start learning how to mix hard science with good general public communication skills. But also I think the scientific community has to lean into the fact that communicating the truth is harder than communicating falsehoods. I think there's this somewhat justifiably lazy narrative that if you have the truth on your side you're job will be easier, and so we excessively blame scientists for not adapting faster to this new landscape. The idea that if you can't communicate the truth well, you must be doing something really wrong, rather than failing to do something right. The linked blog post really changed my perspective in this area. It made this argument that basically if the average person, even the average earth science major tried to have a debate with a flat-earther. The flat-earther would destroy that person in a debate. Counter-intuitively it's not that flat-earthers are uninformed, many of them have a perversely in-depth knowledge of physics and earth science. Much deeper than the average person would consider having on a topic like the shape of the earth. Edit, Found it: https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-i...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jhp123 2y ago
the science was like 95% right from the beginning. High seroprevalence heterodox theory was wrong. Natural immunity heterodox theory was wrong. Hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin theories were wrong. Lockdowns ultimately counterproductive was wrong. Great Barrington was wrong. The Covid truthers are eager to tear down our institutions but the alternatives they offer are much worse.
zero-sharp 2y ago
For future reference, here's a well articulated description of what went wrong in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1diXKxuoDOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1diXKxuoDOQ (see 22:35/23:00) The video is about the popularity/rise of RFK Jr, however at around 23:00, the author does a retrospective on covid policy in the US. You don't need to watch the entire video, just 5-10 minutes starting at the timestamp above. Here are a few of the points raised in the video: 1. The risk-benefit ratio of the vaccine was different across different age groups and there was a mandate for young healthy adults which was scientifically unsupported. 2. Transmission rates were unaffected by the vaccines (studies referenced in the video at 23:38), yet mandates remained in effect. The point he was making here is that the US was slow to respond, and this had detrimental effects to people's livelihoods. 3. Paul Offit, who is a well known figure in virology, himself didn't comport with the CDC policy regarding vaccination. The point here is that even well regarded experts disagreed with the CDC. The video goes on to describe how masking recommendations differed across countries, especially for young children. So yea, there's no need to wonder why trust in public policy has been eroded in the US.

28 points by hn_acker 2y ago

eimrine 2y ago

[flagged]

itishappy 2y ago
https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ https://fourthievesvinegar.org/

newsbinator 2y ago

> Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023 It's incredible public confidence in scientists is still that high. When the public turned to scientists with valid questions, they were met with "just trust me bro" and mockery for "doing your own research" in response to being dismissed. Even worse: the "just trust me bro" people kept being wrong about one thing after another, then pretending a year later the opposite position was their position all along. The general public isn't smart, but most people can remember life-and-death information they were given a year back.

moomin 2y ago

Honestly the results as reported mostly tell me that the positioning run by organisations that find certain scientific consensuses inconvenient to have been effective.

jerojero 2y ago

It's not really discussed why people have lost trust in scientists. I wonder what happened, maybe I'm a bit biased in that regard as I had a scientific background for many years. I think there's a big problem in science that a lot of of public facing is done by people who are not scientists or are the kind of scientists that no longer care about science. The reason for this is that people feel and scientists feel like they cannot communicate with each other. With this in mind, you end up in a scenario where there's a lot of miscommunication happening with the scientist side promising things that are impossible or reducing the complexity of things to a point where the science that was done doesn't make much sense anymore. I think there is really a need for better communication, humility might come from the perspective that scientists need to admit this is a problem. It's not that the people are dumb it's that academics are failing at educating them.

indigo0086 2y ago
Willing to bet most distrust in science is due to overexposure of "expert scientists" especially when their uncriticized recommendations lead to civilization regressing policies
zero-sharp 2y ago
It's related to self-censorship. Look at what happened to Martin Kulldorff. He was a statistician at Harvard that had some controversial takes during the pandemic. He got dismissed. Pretty sure you can find accounts from him about the pressure he faced. It became clear during the pandemic that you couldn't communicate nuance to the public and that people were just picking sides out of fear.
- pixxel 2y ago
  >you couldn't communicate nuance to the public Censorship. >and that people were just picking sides out of fear. Propaganda.
drewcoo 2y ago
> It's not really discussed why people have lost trust in scientists. We also don't talk about why people trusted scientists in the before time either. The egghead smears and distrust have been with us for a long, long time. Here in the US, the GI Bill after WWII got a lot of people college educations they would not have otherwise had. The emerging post-WWII managerial class valued and applied many sciences. The Cold War elevated scientists to an important status as they were seen as a key to winning the war. In schools, science was stressed. There were children's science shows like Mr. Wizard on TV to encourage kids to pursue science careers! As the Cold War wound down, that status and the propaganda supporting it slipped away, too.

finnthehuman 2y ago

The replication crisis hasn’t helped either. When done correctly, science can provide invaluable information. But publishing a paper does not mean science was done. And science communicators have on occasion treated inferences made from research with the seriousness of the research, not with the frivolousness of an informed guess.

eimrine 2y ago
What fields except Psychology/Psychiatry suffer from replication crisis?
- a_vanderbilt 2y ago
  You can consider the beta-amyloid fiasco as a prime example of biomed's replication issues. ML/AL replication issues largely stem from the source data used for training not being available. In my field, of psychotherapy, social and cultural factors change over time making perfect replication impossible. I'm working on a paper now and we are trying to account as much as possible for replication of our results.
- DougN7 2y ago
  I’m in no way qualified to answer, but I recall reading about a slew of publications being retracted across all fields after the results couldn’t be replicated. If I remember right there was a team that has become infamous for simply trying to replicate studies and finding a very large number of them can’t be.
  - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
    Are you able to dig up that paper or the findings the team found around replication and share?
- snovymgodym 2y ago
  Economics
- aredox 2y ago

incomingpain 2y ago

>It's no secret that scientists—and the science generally—took a hit during the health crisis. Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023, Those are ridiculously high numbers that are completely unbelievable. I see the trick they are attempting. Covid lies damaged trust in public HEALTH and here they are polling 'trust in SCIENTISTS', poll trust in public health and you're going to get far different numbers. How to rebuild trust: 1. Acknowledge you screwed up big time. Apologize sincerely. Literally nobody from public health has done step 1 yet. 2. Root cause analysis of how all these lies, deceptions, and manipulations came to be. 3. Make those reports public and take the beating in the media. 4. Create an action plan to prevent these abuses from happening in the future. This has to be done with the people whose voices were censored. 5. Start obeying international law and arrest all people who violated these laws. That's right... significant arrests are absolutely necessary to rebuild trust. If you dont do this, not only are you refusing accountability you're encouraging exactly the same behaviours to repeat.

techfeathers 2y ago
significant arrests? What laws were broken?
- incomingpain 2y ago
  Canada is a signatory for ICESCR, UNESCO bio ethics, nuremburg code, rome statutes, and the 2005 IHR. EACH of which are individually good enough for arrests and obviously these criminals would accept the plea deals for their crimes. The harms done are certainly far exceeding the thresholds to bring international legal mechanisms into play; but we need not go there. If Public health wants to restore trust, as they absolutely must and should be their highest priority by a huge margin. There needs to be significant arrests. 99.99% this wont happen and public health will never restore their trust.
  - consteval 2y ago
    Okay how did they do this? By requiring masks and social distancing, which both work btw? Not that it matters much - even if they didn't work, I don't see how you can argue that's breaking the nuremburg code or whatever.

clauderoux 2y ago

I fully disagree with many of the comments I read so far. This is my experience from France, but I guess it was quite similar in most countries. Every time a scientist would be invited to a debate about the status of research, the journalists would find some olibrius who would believe in stars or anything approaching, whom the scientists would have a hard time to counter. The result was utter confusion, and in some cases, some scientists would loose patience and eventually answer with awkward or strong comments. In this context, it was impossible to get any actual information, so much of it was diluted in pseudo-debates. Scientific discourses became an opinion in a sea of misinformation. One of my friend, who had been researching on vaccines for most of his life stopped participating in debates where he was accused to be a murderer or to propagate autism. Of course, there were some scientists with an agenda, but in this context, it is a little bit too easy to put all the blame on people who are not trained for public debates and who were manipulated by the media who played on fear and exaggeration.

techfeathers 2y ago
I've definitely noticed a retconning of where the signal was coming from and where the noise is coming from. All of this focus on sciences inability to communicate, and no mention of the dishonest framing of the data by the media/everyone. So many intentional attempts to misguide people. I had a few friends who were COVID conspiracy theorists, and so many of the articles they sent me were hilariously bad. Alex Berenson published a blog post that pulled one graph from a 50 page document that showed some counter-intuitive correlation, but only if you ignored 1 bar on the chart that he cut off in picture he put in the blog post! (Not to mention ignoring the entire other 50 pages of the report)

marginalia_nu 2y ago

Trust was harmed because people were asked to trust scientists who were in no place to make well grounded statements. Robust science takes years to produce. The whole "trust the science" mantra from the covid years was a complete publicity nightmare for science as an institution, as the scientists eventually ended up contradicting themselves when additional data came in. Science ultimately does not operate on faith, but on skepticism and doubt. This is its greatest asset, that you can question it freely and it will have answers to all your questions (though sometimes they are "we don't know"). Propping it up as dogmatic truth that must be trusted and never investigated is probably the most anti-scientific thing you can do.

amluto 2y ago
I think it’s even a little worse than that. A bunch of the people saying “trust the science” actually meant “trust a particular policy.” Science is not policy, and policy is not science.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  Oh yeah, it's been an ongoing problem for years. The name of science has been used to lend credence to all sorts of unscientific nonsense, usually by slapping some citations onto it and calling it facts-based or science-based.
- taylodl 2y ago
  We began developing modern germ theory in the mid-19th century. We've gotten really good at retarding the transmission of infectious disease. We know what works. Just like we've known for well over 100 years that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. To your point, science is not policy - but policy that is not informed by science is just wishful thinking.
  - amluto 2y ago
    Let’s pretend for a second that we absolutely, unequivocally, know and knew what would prevent transmission of COVID-19 [0]. It still does not follow that anyone in the government saying “stay home” or “no non-essential travel” or “wear a mask indoors” is science. It’s policy. It may or may not be well informed by science and it may or may not be a good idea. Science might be able to determine how disease spreads, but deciding what to do with that information is outside the scope is most science. [0] At least judging by what various branches of the government said and still say, this requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

naming_the_user 2y ago

In general we seem to have a media/politically driven issue with "studies" being trotted out to try to influence a particular course of action rather than as pure information dissemination. It's not an issue with "trust in science/scientists" in as much as it's an issue with information flow being controlled in order to produce a narrative, and people can see through that. Science is - we've done the maths, we've done the study in the wild, if people drive at 25mph then we get N% fewer accidents and M% fewer fatalities from the accidents that do happen. Politics is - we're enacting a speed limit, putting cameras up and making the fines punitive in order to force you to do it. The former is far less controversial than the latter.

aredox 2y ago

Another case of a wide gap between what people say they want and what they actually want - but will never admit. By which I mean Americans say they want scientists to be more humble, and then in practice trust more aggressive loudmouthed cranks.

Workaccount2 2y ago

Let me paint a bit of a difficult conundrum from the pandemic: Masks work dramatically better when the person wearing the mask is the one who is sick. A grocery store where the one infected person is masked is better than the grocery store where the one infected person is openly coughing around 30 masked people. Everyone masked works best, but the heavy lifting is done by the sick persons mask. In short; You wear a mask to protect others from you, not the other way around. However, this creates a severe social stigma problem however: People wearing masks are outing themselves as being sick (whether or not they actually are). The result is people don't wear masks for fear of social retaliation. So now you, as a scientist, have to figure out what the messaging around masks is going to be. Wear a mask to protect others? Wear a mask to protect yourself? Everyone wear a mask all the time because we say so? It was a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. They went with everyone wear a mask all the time, alluding to the implication of masking being a tool of self preservation. Of course masks don't work great at stopping you from getting sick (outside of being specially trained in their use), which is easily proved, and half the country recognized they were being lied too (while never acknowledging that the sick person wearing a mask works great).

katdork 2y ago
it also depends upon the mask type who you're protecting? IIR surgical masks tend to only protect other people, whereas you can protect yourself with FFP2/FFP3/N95/P99/... but deciphering that is part of the problem, the layman had to come to terms with the difference between IIR masks and the other more protective to self standards. the messaging was unclear but it required the avg person to do their own research. imo, the real problem was the culture war? i don't think there's any problem with someone making it clear that they're sick; society needs to be more accepting of the sick and more accepting of call-outs of work due to illness. this would help everybody in the long run.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  >whereas you can protect yourself with FFP2/FFP3/N95/P99/... You can, but there is a procedure that 95% of people fail to follow.

koinedad 2y ago

Masks, social distancing (6ft, stickers, circles, plastic shields), 5% projected death toll, did not come from lab, don’t question, no alternate views allowed, mark and ban things on all major social media channels if they are deemed “harmful misinformation”. This was my life while living in SF at the start of the pandemic. Yeah I think we need some intellectual humility. And I definitely listen for intellectual humility when I’m reading or listening to something.

0x000xca0xfe 2y ago
Yes and multiple 180 degree turns by official media did not help either. In Germany the messaging was: - It's just some Chinese flu, stop fearmongering - It's bad but masks don't work, stop panicking - Masks work but it cannot spread via air, just don't touch anything when you go shopping while infected - It is actually extremely infectious and only vaccines help, natural immunity does not count - All the dystopian vaccine passports, regulations, segregations and punishments did not even put a dent in the curve but now it's over thanks to Omicron and we no longer talk about it And today we still refuse to openly talk on what happened or prepare a plan to prevent it next time... unbelievable. Scientists should have refused to visit political talkshows because now they have to share the reputation damage caused by media and politics.

techfeathers 2y ago

I hope that over the next 10-20 years the more social media native Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha kids start learning how to mix hard science with good general public communication skills. But also I think the scientific community has to lean into the fact that communicating the truth is harder than communicating falsehoods. I think there's this somewhat justifiably lazy narrative that if you have the truth on your side you're job will be easier, and so we excessively blame scientists for not adapting faster to this new landscape. The idea that if you can't communicate the truth well, you must be doing something really wrong, rather than failing to do something right. The linked blog post really changed my perspective in this area. It made this argument that basically if the average person, even the average earth science major tried to have a debate with a flat-earther. The flat-earther would destroy that person in a debate. Counter-intuitively it's not that flat-earthers are uninformed, many of them have a perversely in-depth knowledge of physics and earth science. Much deeper than the average person would consider having on a topic like the shape of the earth. Edit, Found it: https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-i...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jhp123 2y ago

the science was like 95% right from the beginning. High seroprevalence heterodox theory was wrong. Natural immunity heterodox theory was wrong. Hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin theories were wrong. Lockdowns ultimately counterproductive was wrong. Great Barrington was wrong. The Covid truthers are eager to tear down our institutions but the alternatives they offer are much worse.

zero-sharp 2y ago

For future reference, here's a well articulated description of what went wrong in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1diXKxuoDOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1diXKxuoDOQ (see 22:35/23:00) The video is about the popularity/rise of RFK Jr, however at around 23:00, the author does a retrospective on covid policy in the US. You don't need to watch the entire video, just 5-10 minutes starting at the timestamp above. Here are a few of the points raised in the video: 1. The risk-benefit ratio of the vaccine was different across different age groups and there was a mandate for young healthy adults which was scientifically unsupported. 2. Transmission rates were unaffected by the vaccines (studies referenced in the video at 23:38), yet mandates remained in effect. The point he was making here is that the US was slow to respond, and this had detrimental effects to people's livelihoods. 3. Paul Offit, who is a well known figure in virology, himself didn't comport with the CDC policy regarding vaccination. The point here is that even well regarded experts disagreed with the CDC. The video goes on to describe how masking recommendations differed across countries, especially for young children. So yea, there's no need to wonder why trust in public policy has been eroded in the US.