[baddox]

> Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight.

I'm not sure what you're actually proposing, but it sounds dangerously close to "pilots have been in control of airplanes for decades, and they've caused so many crashes, so maybe it's time to try people who aren't pilots."

> I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily.

Do you really look at history and conclude that, because some scientists are corrupt or dishonest, you'd rather have monarchs control things like safety regulations for medicine, industrial activity, architecture, food, etc.? Again, that sounds very much like the "let's give non-pilots a shot at controlling aircraft."

[keenmaster]

I'm not 100% agreeing with the OP, but I am horrified by the massive number of scientists, medical leaders, and medical professionals who:

1. Downplayed the role of masks as a public measure to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 early on (often out of a duplicitous desire to preserve PPE for the medical community, without considering that homemade cotton masks would not reduce PPE supply for medical workers)

2. Didn't advocate for the use of masks, beginning with cotton masks (this is actually a different point than #1. Spreading confusion and not providing clarity are two different bad things.)

3. Downplayed COVID in general, and publicly wondered whether a ton more people had immunity than we thought. That was with specious evidence and, damningly, it increased confusion and probably reduced compliance with mitigation measures.

[ummonk]

Also claiming that China's totalitarian lockdown measures would achieve nothing.

[baddox]

I agree with all those criticisms to some extent, but without some alternative I don't find the argument very useful, and I certainly don't find the original commenter's approach useful.

It's like listing the many many examples of plane crashes due to pilot error. That's not controversial. I don't think many people claim that individual pilots act without flaw, or that the entire system of pilot training and qualification is without flaw. But surely the proposal should not be to take comfort as more and more people "doubt the entire notion of an airplane piloting establishment that the population should 'trust' to make decisions without oversight."

[keenmaster]

Criticism moderates duplicity and complacency. The mere presence of widespread criticism would help. It would also serve as a foundation for a system to mitigate these problems going forward. You can't solve the problem until you:

1. First identify it as a problem (which I don't think we've done enough but you think the problem is apparent to everyone)

2. Direct the criticism to the right people (not just politicians, but medical leaders and the medical establishment as a whole - believe it or not, they have a halo effect and are not sufficiently criticized. The industry systematically weaponizes our high regard for the medical profession in order to prevent what it sees as adverse reforms)

3. and acknowledge that there is a way to mitigate the problem ex ante, instead of saying "sure it's a problem but it's unsolvable because of all the emergent complexity." Say what you want about Elon Musk, but the man thought "I'm going to shoot multiple giant rockets through the atmosphere and land them back on a moving boat simultaneously" then proceeded to actually do it. He didn't throw his hands up to emergent complexity. SpaceX took complexity by the horns. Synthesizing and amplifying non-duplicitous, high quality advice from medical leaders/orgs is not that complicated! Only they can lead you to believe that it's complicated, and then somehow deny that they did that. If they contradict themselves, it's because "we used the best available facts at the time." Laughable, and completely non-falsifiable.

As an aside, perhaps Americans would be less anti-scientific if a majority of them weren't scammed by the medical industry and charged $150-$200 for a tiny consultation with someone who is bribed by pharmaceutical representatives to shill for harmful drugs. Maybe Americans would be less anti-scientific if their government wasn't captured by medical lobbyists for over a century so that there isn't a faint hope for reforms like universal healthcare. The industry doesn't care, because they know that if America wakes up, and politicians aren't captured, total compensation for doctors and surgeons would eventually drop 40% with negligible or no impact on innovation and medical outcomes. To them, something is wrong if a huge chunk of your disposable income isn't siphoned to their wallets every year (part of which you never even see - that is, insurance premiums paid by your employer that you would otherwise receive as income).

[baddox]

The trouble with your example of healthcare is that Americans for whatever reason overwhelmingly approve of the American system of private health insurance plans, and even if they didn’t, I don’t think many would make an association between expensive health care and fundamental problems with the scientific community.

[keenmaster]

I'm highly skeptical of the "overwhelmingly approve" part.

Do Americans overwhelmingly approve of the deprivation of their disposable income and health due to the broken status quo? Of course not. It's just that many don't connect the dots because the debate isn't even happening. Democrats and Republicans are captured. The media doesn't seem interested. The system is too complex for people to even understand and know what to criticize. Most Americans don't even grok the fact that they would receive employer-paid premiums as salary under universal healthcare. They don't have a clue how well universal healthcare works in other countries and how widely approved it is (relative to a privatized system). Saying that Americans overwhelmingly approve of their private insurance plan is like saying Russians overwhelmingly approve of Putin...ya, ok, but I don't think the people who repeat that statement know how meaningless it is.

Do you know what American political scientists call foreign democracies with captured politicians, distorted media, and widespread corporate cronyism but...ostensible elections? Pseudo-democracies. There's a spectrum from democracy to pseudo-democracy, and we all know where we're headed.

As for the connection to trust in science, I already spoke about that from one angle (the exploitative interface between the average American and their medical care). Another angle is the following: the very same medical paternalism that broke our healthcare system also broke the institutional guidance regarding COVID-19.

[baddox]

I don’t really want to get into arguments of the form “they think they want X but they actually want Y,” because if you’re willing to use that mode of argument then it’s completely irrelevant to you what people think or say they want, and you might as well just argue for what they “actually” want without any regard for their input.

But the fact of the matter is that common proposals to overhaul the American health insurance system are extremely unpopular, and people overwhelmingly report being very happy with their private insurance plans.

[timr]

"Downplayed the role of masks as a public measure to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 early on (often out of a duplicitous desire to preserve PPE for the medical community, without considering that homemade cotton masks would not reduce PPE supply for medical workers)"

Or maybe you're being deceived now?

Honestly, the evidence for universal masking hasn't changed (recent papers on this have largely been terrible and/or meta-analyses of the same group of papers that were written before the pandemic). There are still a lot of informed, intelligent scientists who have been saying the idea isn't supported by data. The "consensus" on this issue appears to be driven by politicians and media, not by science:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/specia...

[keenmaster]

Thank you for inadvertently proving my point. The evidence for the efficacy of universal, compliant mask-wearing is extremely strong, but there will always be specious studies with contra-claims. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more those studies are amplified, the more confused people are, the less they wear masks, the less their politicians mandate that they wear masks, the more it becomes a political issue, etc...and the less masks do their job, leading to more death and injury. I can't understate the marginal economic injury either. All for what? Seriously, for what? So that people don't put a $5 chunk of cloth on their face to save lives? Good lord. We're talking about a nearly certain enormous gain with very little "cost." There isn't even a real trade-off.

[timr]

"Thank you for inadvertently proving my point. The evidence for the efficacy of universal, compliant mask-wearing is extremely strong,"

Indeed, thank you for providing a wonderful example of "scientism": a blind belief in the conclusions of "science", even when you're presented with ample scientific evidence that disproves your belief.

If your secret evidence is so strong, you should cite it, instead of merely asserting that it exists. I just gave you two incredibly well-sourced articles showing that the opposite is true, and your response is to insult me and claim I'm wrong (without proof).

Michael Osterholm (CIDRAP) and the Oxford Center for Evidence-Based medicine are not crackpot organizations, and the cited articles are reviews of all literature, not "specious studies". In all likelihood, these articles have already discussed the evidence that you believe is compelling.

[keenmaster]

Here is an excellent study with both theoretical and empirical results showing the efficacy and importance of universal mask wearing, even when cotton masks are used (PDF download is in the upper right corner): https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13553

Institutions involved: University of Cambridge, University College London, Ecole de Guerre Economique, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

As for Michael Osterholm, I don't have much patience for people like him so I won't cite this but you can easily look it up: he clarified his comments and said that people should universally wear masks. Of course, he followed up with strawman arguments, implying that many people have the illusion that COVID would be suddenly be "driven to the ground" if everyone wore masks. He also said that other measures are important. Of course they are.

As for Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine: simply put, they are like a hammer in search of a massive double blind nail. When it becomes more and more clear how tragically incorrect and misguided such organizations are during a pandemic, the "evidence" in their title will suddenly have a sardonic ring to it. Their example will demonstrate that sometimes expertise of a certain kind, if not properly adapted to a new situation, can become an impairment in the new context. Read the discussion at the following link: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

That being said, the University of Oxford in general is a top rate institution. The Oxford Vaccine Group might be first to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine. They're also home to professor and NIH senior investigator Dr. Trisha Greenhalgh, who sharply discussed the limitations of evidence-based medicine during this pandemic at the above link :) Of course, that's evidence-based medicine as a specific category, not the general idea of medicine backed by proof.

[timr]

"Here is an excellent study with both theoretical and empirical results showing the efficacy and importance of universal mask wearing, even when cotton masks are used (PDF download is in the upper right corner)"

This is not a study of masks. First, and most importantly, it assumes that masks work, and makes a model of a world in which they work. From the methods:

"A gradual increase in mask wearing was modelled using a linear increase in the proportion of individuals randomly allocated with a reduced rate of transmission. The factor by which β was reduced was conservatively set to 2."

And for their second model:

"Varying degrees of mask effectiveness are modelled by the mask transmission rate T and mask absorption rate A, which denote the proportion of viruses that are stopped by the mask during exhaling (transmission) versus inhaling (absorption), respectively. We set T = 0.7 and A = 0.7"

So when you make a model that assumes masks reduce infection by half or more, the model shows that infections are reduced. Shocking.

Then, when they say that their models have a "nearly perfect correlation" with reality...they don't actually compare their models to reality, nor do they calculate any correlations. They simply quote a bunch of numbers they cherry-picked from news sites (with no controls or normalizations) classifying countries into "mask-wearing cultures"...which is so obviously silly that any halfway rational person should see right through it. This is a "paper" only in the sense that it might someday be printed on paper by someone who was gullible enough to believe it.

Regarding your comments on the researchers I mentioned: perhaps you should spend more time reading the articles you cite, and less time judging well-established scientists who disagree with your opinions.

[cuspy]

I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance?

No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies.

All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is.

[baddox]

I'm sorry you don't view my interpretation as charitable, but I do think a charitable interpretation of your first comment is that you don't propose ways of fixing problems in the scientific community but rather broadly dismiss the scientific community without proposing a better alternative other than "elite families."

[white-flame]

Complaining about "the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise" does not read to me as dismissing the core scientific community itself.

Plus, one could easily distinguish between the terms "establishment"/"hierarchical structures" as entrenched leadership focused on power dynamics rather than the science itself, versus "community" which is involved in the science.

[godelski]

> Where is nuance?

The problem with language is we have to make certain assumptions. It is easy to read your comment in that way. Just as it could be easy to read

> cuspy 15 minutes ago | parent | on: Science and Scientific Expertise Are More Importan...

I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance?

No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies.

> All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is.

As promoting anti-vaxers. The reason is because these conspiracy groups mimic the same language (i.e. the anti-authority rhetoric). With so much dog whistling happening it is difficult to correctly interpret. Btw, I don't think that's what you're intending to imply and I didn't take it that way, but it is important to understand how it could be taken that way.

As a scientist, I care about many of the concerns that you are bringing up, but also be mindful that it is difficult to understand because these preconceived notions. It isn't so much that there is a uncharitable reading, but that it is hard to determine what you are meaning. There's "what you mean," "what you say," and "what is heard" and these can all the different things. This is specifically a problem because the division in our culture currently.

[cuspy]

When you come into a conversation not knowing your interlocutor's intentions, I believe it is deeply unethical, inefficient and really a complete waste of everyone's time and energy to assume based on some weak superficial heuristic rhetorical cues that they are simply repeating a divisive talking point that you've heard elsewhere.

Again it's this a priori assumption that the other person is dumb that has gotten us into this situation. It's also just bad manners. All else equal, I do not see how you can possible read what I wrote as specifically promoting anti-vaxers. I didn't say a word about vaccination. You're applying your own baggage to a simple message. Anti-vaxers are for the most part just frightened people who deserve compassion, not derision. They've simply overgeneralized a very rational fear of institutions that have indeed made some very careless decisions for profit.

If you treat every conversation as adversarial by default, you will continue making all your conversations worse. I recommend following the Gricean Maxims in your conversations. Be productive and cooperative with others until you are certain that they're not being productive and cooperative. That's when you leave the conversation. It's not as complicated as you're making it out to be.

[StandardFuture]

And here they are downvoting you simply because you offer an alternative to deriding people you disagree with.

There has been a steadily increasing mentality that outright hostility is the only way of disagreeing (or conversing at all) with someone else. Interpreting every statement of what other people have said via a binary classifier (for or against), etc. and making judgements rather than engaging intellectual conversation.

It is all very intellectually lazy and a classic identifying mark of the ignorant and stupid. People who know that they should not be engaging in actual intellectual discussion on a topic simply downvote and run away like cowards.

Sadly, even HN is devolving alongside the rest of society at this time.

[godelski]

I can't downvote them, but I don't think this is why it happened. I think it was because my comment was about the difficulty of language and that it comes with explanations (my sibling expands on this) and the parent attacked me with something that I didn't claim. Though my sibling comment addresses that I understand the miscommunication. But if you are going to accuse others of being ungenerous you should not respond in kind. I personally do not feel the response was a generous interpretation of my comment and missed the point. I'm not going to call them a hypocrite though because my thesis is that communication is difficult.

[godelski]

> I believe it is deeply unethical, inefficient and really a complete waste of everyone's time and energy to assume based on some weak superficial heuristic rhetorical cues that they are simply repeating a divisive talking point that you've heard elsewhere.

I'm sorry, I was trying to convey something else. That language itself has limitations and that we imply things naturally. I think Tom Scott did a good video[0] explaining the high level aspects of this, but it seems like you might be aware of this. But there's much more. Language is full of cues and a priori assumptions. You cannot avoid this. The idea that "what you mean, what you say, and what is heard" being different things is not a contentious statement in linguistics and communication. Lewis Carrol's Mad Hatter's tea party scene is all about this actually. For reference[1]. What I am trying to say is that communication is hard and emphasizing that it is even harder in our current cultural/political climate. An example is priming[2], which is the exact point of things like slogans. No one expects one to write a novel to discern all the nuance of their statements, so we naturally take shortcuts and a priori assumptions are a necessity. If you ignore that these shortcuts exist then communication is difficult. (As to dog whistling[3], that is exactly the point. To exploit this feature of language. Otherwise these phrases wouldn't be coded)

A perfect example is your interpretation of my comment. I can take it one of two ways. 1) Be upset that you didn't understand what I meant. After all I did say

>> Btw, I don't think that's what you're intending to imply and I didn't take it that way, but it is important to understand how it could be taken that way.

Why should I not be upset that you are accusing me of accusing you of promoting anti-vaxers when I said completely the opposite? At least that's what I meant. Or I can go with 2) try to refine my statement to clarify confusion. I am trying #2 because, well.. my thesis is that communication is difficult and I understand the misinterpretation. I intended to mean that anti-vaxers use similar language so it wouldn't be surprising if someone was primed to think you are implying something similar (this is where interpretation comes into play). I am trying to say that this is especially difficult because of the cultural and political climate that currently exacerbates this which unfortunately leads to us trying to be more clear and trying better to interpret. And I am not trying to treat this conversation as adversarial, I apologize if it comes off that way.

To clarify, the intent of my original comment was to say that communication is difficult and the breakdown in communication that is currently happening in the conversation. Not to accuse you of anything. Though I was trying to draw a parallel to illustrate why someone might confuse you (because you are toeing the line), but that I personally did not interpret it that way.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJEaMtNN_dM

[1] The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” “Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles. — I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud. “Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare. “Exactly so,” said Alice. “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!” “You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!” “You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_St...

[xkcd-sucks]

"Science" is the iterative loop of observing reality, modeling reality, and correcting the model based on observation. It's how children learn to walk.

Science doesn't require formal training in principle; in practice training in critical thinking is good, and training in specific techniques might be necessary to observe + interpret specific phenomena.

As an aside - Many practicing scientists don't fully understand all the techniques they use day-to-day, and almost certainly don't understand techniques several steps removed from what they do themselves. To understand everything is simply impossible.

Everything else a matter of faith: In the honesty of people reporting results, in the competence of people reporting results, in the similarity between model systems and the "real world", etc. Of course one might apply one's training in techniques to validate the consistency of stuff asserted by other things - people, instrument readings, etc.

[scottlocklin]

I realize HN sperdos have a hard time with this concept sometimes, but MUH SCIENCE isn't how we make decisions as a society, anywhere, ever.

Leadership is decision under uncertainty. The best thing most scientists can do for leadership is tell them the best guess and estimates of how big the uncertainties are. Recent events have shown how unbelievably shitty these guesses were, and, frankly, continue to be; and as far as I can tell, none of the important players over the last 6 months mentioned any of the uncertainties in a useful actionable way.

Putting scientists and operations research types in charge of anything more complicated than airline routing tables is basically the definition of madness; literally every time it's been tried in human history has ended up a disaster. Adam Curtis and that gasbag Taleb have made a career of documenting this obvious truism.

[dang]

> I realize HN sperdos have a hard time with this concept sometimes

Hey please don't do that here. Crotchety contrarianism needn't be a bad thing but the HN guidelines say "don't be snarky" for a reason, and there are other guidelines too: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Many of your comments are clearly based on knowledge, which we cut a lot of slack for, but if you would make our lives a little easier I'd appreciate it. This comment would be just fine if it started with the "Leadership is" sentence. "Gasbag" is name-calling but as part of a backhanded compliment, no big deal; we're not sticklers.