I would agree with that. And I assume most participants here would agree.
Of course, the “tended to make things worse and not better” refers to the ways in which it tends to lead to totalitarianism and madness as a counter-reaction. And that is what we are observing every day from those leaders and their followers currently in charge of the federal government.
Meanwhile, here’s a retrospective on how Americans react when having to live under the reckless decisions of the ruling elite:
Those are not mutually exclusive.
Still not unreasonable, and he has already clarified.
As I said… this not mutually exclusive. I didn’t say it was unreasonable.
The scientific consensus isn’t solidified based on how long a given idea has persisted. A consensus is reached based on the preponderance of contemporary research. E.g. effectiveness of vaccines and the fact of anthropocentric climate change are as much “settled science” as the spheroid shape of the earth and it orbiting the sun.
That is part of it, but I would agree there is a much bigger underlying issue (see next section).
I would agree that the scientific community should improve their communication and public outreach. Although, most scientists are experts at their field, they tend to be piss poor at talking to the public. And they are often buried in their work. The problem here is that this void is filled by the likes of Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr. Those people have experience to speak very confidently and convincingly to an audience, but are nonetheless full of sh*t.
You mentioned Covid-19 here, for which there was a supposed “monolithic” official response to it. Like no… there wasn’t only one response. There were (at least) TWO. You had virologists (even outside the USA) sounding alarms of a pandemic that could kill millions … an you had people like Trump and Musk who were constantly down playing the severity of the situation. That’s not to say that the virologists and other experts did not make mistakes. That’s definitely true. (I recommend this interview with Dr. Mike and Dr. Paul Offit). However, in addition to this we had bullsh*tters like Trump who do not care about accuracy. It’s all about appearance and they never will admit mistakes.
A good example, look at hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Early on there were some studies that hinted to the effectiveness of this drug but these were not comprehensive enough to draw a firm conclusion. At the same time you had Elon Musk and Trump promoting it. There was even an example of a couple in Arizona ingesting something that contained HCQ but it was meant to be used to treat fish aquariums against parasites. The husband died of cardiac arrest, and the wife was hospitalized stating that they took it after listening to Trump’s speeches promoting HCQ. Later, more comprehensive studies concluded that HCQ provided no benefit in treating Covid-19… meanwhile I have not seen much admission of error on the Trump side. Yet, the majority of the flak was levied against the health officials, but next to nothing against the latter… especially not from the MAGA crowd. Even to this day, a significant proportion of MAGA will maintain that HCQ is effective against Covid-19.
You continue to point to the widespread mistrust against the scientific community, but you need to consider the additional fact is that their trust has not dissipated all together. Their trust has simply moved over and/or narrowed in focus and/or strengthened towards of pseudoscience hucksters and political pundits. They stopped trusting the “expert class” in favor of the “bullsh*t class”. These two things are not disconnected.
Sorry for my delay in replying.
Maybe we’re talking about two different things. I was talking about “settled science”, you’re using the phrase “scientific consensus”. If for you those are synonymous, I don’t fully agree with the statement above. There have been any number of scientific questions where the position supported by “the preponderance of contemporary research” at a given snapshot in time ended up being incorrect. I think a number of examples could be cited, but one that comes to mind is the question of the luminiferous aether. Back in the day it was broadly (universally?) accepted in the physics community that light needed a medium in which to propagate, a not unreasonable assumption. When it came down to trying to detect this medium, my understanding is that the early results of the Michelson-Morley experiment and its derivatives appeared to give positive, albeit somewhat confusing, results. These results eventually came to be seen as compatible with a null outcome, but at the time it looked like there was some signal there, some detection of the aether. I understand that this was all the more true of the Michelson-Gale experiment and its derivatives, which did indeed give positive results, but these eventually came to be understood as manifestations of the Sagnac effect and not the existence of aether. During those decades “the preponderance of contemporary research” did seem to support the existence of the luminiferous aether and it took quite a while for the implications of Einstein’s theory of special relativity to be worked out first theoretically and then applied to the experimental data. Eventually the explanatory power of Einstein’s theory, combined with refined experiments which increased the certitude in a no-fooling “null” result, eventually resulted in the overthrow of the luminiferous aether. But this all took quite a while to work out, during which the “consensus” was incorrect and therefore it was not “settled science”.
Thanks for linking to that interview with Dr. Offit. I had a few additional takeaways in addition to yours. I was intrigued by Dr. Offit’s and “Doctor Mike’s” admission that collectively the CDC and various government representatives had repeatedly told the public falsehoods, which they knew to be falsehoods scientifically, to get the public to do what those agencies “thought best” (kudos to Drs. M and O for being forthright about it.)
Dr. Mike said,
A significant example they highlighted was what the C19 vaccines were developed to do versus what the public was told they would do. What the public was told is that these were going to stop the spread, that if you took the shots you weren’t going to get Covid, and that you weren’t going to pass it on to others, potentially killing grandma. This was the entire premise on which vaccine mandates were based (see quotes below).
But Drs. Mike and Offit spent quite a bit of interview time insisting that stopping spread was never the main point of these products, rather it was to mitigate serious disease:
(Great Barrington Declaration, anyone?)
That is not at all what the public was repeatedly told by highly placed individuals in government, Pharma, and media:
That quote directly from Pfizer is especially interesting since a Pfizer executive, when asked directly, denied that they had been tested for that when introducing the products into the market:
One more from Dr. Deborah Birx:
Again, the whole premise of vaccine mandates was “herd immunity” and “stopping the spread”. People were bullied, shamed, and manipulated based on that now highly questionable premise. A little further on, Dr. Mike drew a logical conclusion from this kind of manipulation:
Dr. Offit’s response was fascinating. Setting aside what he said about ten minutes ago, he pivots back to the very “stopping the spread” narrative that he just said was an unrealistic expectation for these products:
He trots out measles as supposedly parallel, but it’s an apples to oranges comparison – he had just likened the Covid vaccines to vaccines for flu and other respiratory diseases where “You’re going to get mild infection again and again and again,” but the desired goal is to mitigate serious disease. As my wife noted, Dr. Offit is clearly conflicted.
There was a lot of additional interesting info in this interview. How about when Dr. Offit says, “That does not work well in a public health venue, it doesn’t, you are not encouraged to challenge the science behind a recommendation. But we should be encouraged, I think the public benefits from hearing that discussion” (17:27; my emphasis).
His material about the CDC and FDA lying about the bivalent vaccine was also interesting– that was the one that only Dr. Offit, out of 14 advisors on the FDA advisory board, voted against because there was no demonstrated additional benefit and the only “safety” data they had was from mice (source and again, kudos to him for saying No), He noted, “But in order to get people to get it, we made statements that just weren’t true” (interview, 1:45:00).
I hope to write more in the near future on the serious harm that comes from touting something as “established” or “settled” science which later turns out to be overturned, especially if it comes out that those doing the touting knew all along that their claims were shaky, and even more especially if they were actively trying to shut down debate and silence those who disagreed. This has caused a great deal of damage, damage that I hope to see the medical and scientific communities discussing in earnest how to repair. At least to me it’s not going to be very helpful if the core response to the damage done by the scientific and medical communities themselves is just some variant of “but Trump!”
More specifically, that a medium was required to account for the propagation of light as a wave. The existance of the aether proved inconsistent with experiment, but the wave aspect of electromagnetic radiation remained and found new explanatory framework. In that respect, the community recognition that light required a theory which accommodated a wave function was on the right track.
Speculative extrapolations from theory are less certain than inferences from data.
So there is a difference between popularity of ideas around edge science such as string theory or modified gravity, and the consensus around long validated ideas of the age or shape of the earth.
It’s “AND Trump… AND RFK Jr… AND Musk, etc”
And I would argue that these people caused more damage to scientific trust. You complain about the FDA and CDC chopping down a tree with an axe, but while ignoring people like RFK Jr. burning down the forest with a flamethrower. It’s not something you can brush off as a variant of “but Trump”.
If by “settled science” you mean “positions which [we think] won’t end up being incorrect”, then there is no such thing as “settled science” in science. All conclusions always provisional: this is our conclusion and here is the research supporting it which can be very strong, but we (or should) never say this is absolute truth. So, yes, we were talking passed each other.
I would agree that this is an issue. If I were to argue that seat belts should be mandated because it will save you 100% during an accident, that is false and misleading regardless of my intentions. And it can have the opposite effect. If I convinced people that seat belts are 100% effective, but then someone dies despite wearing a seat belt, people could think that I am lying and they won’t wear seat belts anymore… this will have the opposite result of my intention to save lives.
This is the analogy I used to convince my parents in taking the vaccine, probably because they always reminded me to wear my seat belt when I was in the back of the car, so they intuitively understood the point of the seat belt even if it is not foul proof.
But here is my problem. You will (rightfully) complain about the misleading communications from health officials, but I am hearing next to no complaints regarding the people who spread lies and falsehoods some of which are far worse… in fact (after having read ahead) you seem to promote them.
That declaration did not just propose vaccines should target high risk groups, it proposed to “shield” high risk groups away from the low risk groups who should live their lives as normal so they can build-up herd immunity from natural infections. This is a batsh*t dangerous idea which wouldn’t even work. It wouldn’t work even with Measles even though it is much more contagious and pretty much any infection grants life-long immunity. Dr. Offit also explained this.
PAUL OFFIT [October 27, 2020]: I think the White House has embraced – the White House doesn’t have a plan. So now suddenly herd immunity induced by natural infection has become the plan, right? But the premise is wrong. The premise is that a virus could can affect enough people in the population, that would provide immunity such that that essentially the virus would put itself out of business. That’s never happened. That’s never happened for any virus. So historically there’s no support for it. Secondly, if you had to pick the perfect virus for which it would happen, it would be measles. I mean, measles is 10 times more contagious then this virus and SARS-COVID-2. It has an [inaudible], you know contagiousness index of close to 20, where this is less than two. Two, measles induces lifelong sterilizing immunity. You are protected against all manner of infection, including asymptomatic infection, that’s not going to be this virus. And nonetheless, despite that, before there was a measles vaccine every year there would be about one to two million cases of measles. There would be 50,000 hospitalizations, and there’d be 500 deaths from measles. So there’s no such thing as this Great Barrington declaration. Plus, about 30% to 40% of the population is really at high risk.
I am really frustrated when this happens. You complain about misleading people into believing that vaccines are 100% effective at preventing infection and disease, and later you complain that vaccines were mistakenly claimed to reach herd immunity and stopping the spread… but at the same time you promote an idea to establish herd immunity via natural infections, which is far far worse and dangerous. What the heck is going on here??! It’s not skepticism against authority. It seems to me you are simply cherry picking the authority you want to believe. I still sympathize with your valid complaints, but this irony must be pointed out.
From this quote and watching the video for the full context, I don’t see how he is pivoting back to the “stopping the spread” narrative (depending on what you mean by “stopping the spread”). Here he addresses the question of autonomy and allowing the patient to decide what is best for them, and Offit points out (correctly) that choices affect others when the disease can spread to others. He is not saying that you won’t (with 100% certainty) be able to catch and spread covid when you are vaccinated. Not even from this quote alone. He makes it clear in this and in other conversations that we were not going to stop the spread through herd immunity. The best we could do was reducing and slowing the spread through vaccines and other means so the hospitals did not get overwhelmed. To go back to the analogy, seat belts do not eliminate deaths, but they do reduce the mortality rate.
I clicked on the source you linked, and I was rather shocked at the comments. You give kudos to Dr. Offit for being honest here and open about safety, but look at the reactions he gets for his honesty. Just a few made by the person who posted the tweet.
If you watch his longer interview with ZDogg from a few weeks ago, he gives it away. They’re mandating boosters at his future son-in-law’s college (Cornell). Offit says “it’s so unfair!” Oh really!? It’s hitting too close to home now apparently.
He’s upset that his daughter’s to-be husband - healthy young Cornell student - is facing a booster mandate. He knows the risks for him, but will only talk “efficacy”. He’s still towing the line somewhat.
The tragic lie - nothing but the vaccines can help you. Safe & HIGHLY effective, cheap antivirals plus c,d, zinc, quercetin stops the virus from progressing to severe disease. The vaccines are harming tens of millions of people. Save the children! Do not give the C19 vax!!!
So in their eyes, Paul Offit still remains a lying hack only concerned with the safety of his family. And notice the claims to not take the vaccine, that they are harming tens of millions, and take vitamins and antivirals instead. And after looking this person up, they are an attorney - not a scientist with experience in the field - but are nonetheless acting as the “director of research” for the “Vaccine Safety Research Foundation”; a prolific anti-vax group which spreads BS about vaccines. Apparently, this group was founded in 2021 by a tech millionaire who prior to this (during the early days of the pandemic) funded research in trials testing the efficacy of pe-existing drugs. He got very frustrated when the research he funded did not bear fruit, butting heads with the very scientific advisory board he was funding, putting pressure on them to promote a drug without conclusive data. Just as bad if not worse behavior you criticized the CDC and FDA for. Eventually all 12 members of the science board resigned due to his claims and behavior.
Are you listening to these crackpots? Do you also believe their crap? Just curious.
Perhaps you don’t follow these people on twitter. Perhaps you randomly found this tweet when searching for Paul Offit’s comment on the bivalent booster. Although when I searched for “Paul Offit Bivalent Vaccine” I get this detailed article (worth the read) on top of google search results. However, even if you don’t follow these people on twitter, the fact that you (even without knowing) ended up on their twitter feed when searching for Paul Offit’s comment… that should really alarm you how easy it is to fall straight into the lap of bullsh*tters on the internet.
This seems to be very relevant to our discussion here:
@thepalmhq has brought up valid concerns about miscommunication from scientific officials, like the FDA, CDC and WHO. However, that alone is not nearly enough to address the issue regarding (dis)trust in science. In fact, the research mentioned in this article points out that trust in science is actually pretty high. The problem is that we are currently living in a social and political ecosystem where the influence of reliable science communication is overwhelmed by unreliable noise, so it’s not surprising that many end up believing in pure nonsense while thinking it is legit science. It’s not the lack of trust but misplaced trust that is the main issue here. Some specific examples mentioned are:
To me this seems a bit like complaining about the new traffic light because another accident occurred at that intersection, and blaming the traffic light. The traffic light is there for a purpose - to help prevent accidents - and the proper way judge the usefulness of the traffic light is to estimate how many accidents were prevented. You could install a better traffic light, and maybe that will do an even better job of preventing accidents. Nothing can prevent all accidents; some people are just bad drivers.
The problem with people still getting COVID even after a vaccination ISN’T that vaccines don’t work; it’s that vaccines are not 100% effective and there are multiple strains of COVID which further diminish efficacy. To judge the effectiveness of vaccines it is necessary to estimate the number that did not get sick, the people that did not die, and the harm that was prevented. Those numbers are easily in the millions.
AND of course, some bad outcomes will still occur; epidemiology is not an exact science, but it helps if the vehicles isn’t being steered by bad drivers.
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