[skymer]

It seems as though the authors of this paper were vocal critics of the government response to Covid-19, and faced the full "obsessive" wrath of criticism (although, unlike many others, they don't seem to have lost their jobs). The same thing happens to non-conformist scientists in other highly politicized areas like man-made global warming. I think it is similar to what happened to Galileo 400 years ago.

[Ensorceled]

I think you are talking about inter-science criticism, where the entrenched science community is often hostile to the outliers in the science community.

This article appears to be talking about the attack on the science community from outsiders, both political and otherwise, with or without support of members of the community.

[ZeroGravitas]

Vocal critics of which government response, and in which direction (too little or too much response)?

All the way through I felt like they might have been talking about anti-vaxx 'scientists', especially when they mentioned 'cancelling' and cited someone who was very anti-lockdown, but they managed to keep it general enough I couldn't be sure which side they ware taking.

[skymer]

I think the authors feel the government response (lockdowns, vax mandates, etc) was too strong. But the article makes it hard to determine whose criticism of which scientists is considered "obsessive".

[bee_rider]

We likely disagree with them on the specific issue if that is the case (IMO the lockdowns were insufficient, not too strong) but I think we've all seen anecdotally that science is being drawn too much into the public debate. And their altmetric table seems to point to something quantifiable.

Science should serve an advisory role in public decision making, not act as a load-bearing structure. Science involves argument, full consensus is never achieved, and "it's only a model, really." (maybe science-communicators need to start repeating this like investing companies -- "investment involves risk, past returns don't guarantee blah blah blah...")

[Cupertino95014]

So you have to decide which tribe he's in before you can decide if you agree?

[ZeroGravitas]

Yes.

Things have context. Without that context you have no real idea what you are agreeing with or supporting. If someone is intentionally hiding that context then it's probably for a bad reason.

[Cupertino95014]

As opposed to just responding to what they said. Or not saying anything, if it's incomplete. OK.