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by johnp271
1593 days ago
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Does the McNamara Fallacy have any application to our response to COVID? I often hear pundits of all sorts, medical doctors, epidemiologists, politicians, CDC scientists, etc, make statements such as "the data shows this" and "the data says that" and then follow up with "therefore the science says we must all do such-and-such". I hold a rather narrow, rigorous - maybe closed minded - opinion of what is 'science' (so to me 'social science' is an oxymoron) thus I have a degree of skepticism when data analysis is relied on to heavily for making conclusions that are then called 'scientific'. |
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In my opinion, yes. Many politicians and media are fixated on stats like "Covid cases" whereas society depends on multiple variables to function including the health of the economy, mental health and social cohesion of the population, people having hope for the future, the freedom to make choices for yourself, and people being able to exercise and not living unhealthy lives, etc.
> "the data shows this" and "the data says that"
This kind of objective data is generally science.
> "therefore the science says we must all do such-and-such"
This kind of thing is a policy or risk-management decision being wrongly conflated as science.