[elcritch]

Not everything is purely about money. People are highly motivated by a sense of power or prominence, by a sense of belonging in the "correct group", and by a sense of being useful or productive at their profession. A barber as much as money will believe their haircut will make you look good.

[Yoric]

As a thought exercise, I wonder to which group an epidemiologist would need to belong to have a sense of power? The group that says that there is a dangerous disease or the group that says that it's not particularly dangerous?

PS: For people who wonder, the H factor-style ranking mechanisms for researchers means that your rank is higher (which tends to translate to more interesting work and/or more money) if you're heavily quoted by other researchers.

Of course, the easiest way to be heavily quoted, unless you're already a highly established scientist, is by being contrarian/provocative, so that other people feel like they need to debunk your writings.

[elcritch]

I'd think in this case it's about the response. What group of epidemiologists wouldn't get a sense of power, prestige than having daily Whitehouse meetings, continual press coverage, and effectively setting public policy based solely on their subject of expertise? That essentially hits on all three points I gave.

The issue is that they'll fail to appropriately consider the broader long-term effects of lockdowns. Most of the advice and policy also wasn't scientifically based in that the effectiveness wasn't well researched, so H-factor scores wouldn't play much of a role.

[Yoric]

> I'd think in this case it's about the response. What group of epidemiologists wouldn't get a sense of power, prestige than having daily Whitehouse meetings, continual press coverage, and effectively setting public policy based solely on their subject of expertise? That essentially hits on all three points I gave.

That is definitely one possibility. The other possibility being that a group of contrarian epidemiologists would get power and prestige by claiming that the first group is biased. This has happened in France, with Raoult growing a cult-like following.

> Most of the advice and policy also wasn't scientifically based in that the effectiveness wasn't well researched, so H-factor scores wouldn't play much of a role.

Well, in that case, H-factor-style scores wouldn't play much of a role because this was not research but policy.

I seem to remember that the effectiveness of lockdowns on diseases has been pretty much proved way before covid. Of course, their effect on economy may not have been studied quite as well :)