Fair enough. Also, don't worry about bias. I've statistically adjusted for it and I'm still right.
Here, my final addition to this thread, it's by Dr. John Lee and sums up my personal views almost perfectly.
We are placing a huge amount of weight on modelling predictions, created with not much evidence, and untested assumptions. And in the certain knowledge that exactly this approach – the early modelling of pandemics – has been wildly wrong in its predictions before. There has been nowhere near enough discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the model being used, or about whether the direct and indirect harms caused by our response to Covid-19 may outweigh the harm caused by the virus itself.
... the fact that so many governments have jumped together, taking extraordinary actions based on modelling and prediction, is not a testament to the validity of those models. It is instead evidence of is what can happen when the emergence of a new virus interacts with science and politics in the multimedia age.
...
It is time for us to return, critically and calmly, to a rounded and robust scientific debate that generates a range of views about the severity and significance of this virus. And for our politicians to weigh these differing views extremely carefully against the clear and manifest harms of lockdown.
Source:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article...-need-evidence-scepticism-and-vigorous-debate
Stay healthy, stay safe, and, above all, STAY INDOORS!
My view is that various branches of science have gone rogue in recent years.
1) Often they depend on computer models which are, almost inevitably too complex to validate. These models can be used to put out all sorts of graphics, and are thus far more persuasive than they deserve to be. Ordinary software has to be de-bugged using known test cases of one kind or another. It is rare indeed to write a program of any size that doesn't need this phase. How do you debug computer models?
2) Because science has become a cut throat climb of the greasy pole, all sorts of muddle headed ideas become prominent just because the author has clout. Very little attempt is made to discuss important areas of science (important to humans) in public. Even when I was working post doc, I saw some of this, but it affected issues that were of no direct importance to anyone outside the subject. This problem has simply spread and spread, so that academic advice on the ways to handle the pandemic are useless.
Advice which varies from one specialist to another, is almost by definition useless.
3) Unfortunately scientists have increasingly competed to grab media slots by making extreme claims. This supplies publicity to the institution where they work, and feeds back into approval of those views and disapproval of alternative, more cautious ideas. Feedback of this sort seems to have created the "Climate Catastrophe":
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/09/a-climate-modeller-spills-the-beans/
In medicine, the feedback loops are often driven by grants from pharmaceutical companies to scientists who promote ideas that result in more of their products being used.
4) The real truth is that while it is possible to make detailed predictions in systems that are simple and well defined (and where chaos does not mess things up), scientists make all kinds of predictions, and cross their fingers that reality backs them up, or think of excuses if it does not.
5) When the media want to 'prove' an idea, they implicitly bribe scientists with the offer of free publicity, if they come up with 'scientific evidence', which is almost invariably presented as if it came from all scientists.
This cult of crap science is now a real danger to civilisation. If there is one outcome from this mess, I hope it finally crashes everyone's belief in modern science (results that emerged 100 or more years ago are far more reliable).
David
