You realize that a lot of what Vox does is just report on what experts say? What is the problem with that given what you say above?
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Replying to @MattNoahSmith @mattyglesias
The value is digging into it so you have the right experts. Of course we are all wrong sometimes, but the mask thing was groupthink kind of wrong which is a particular kind of wrong we should work to build very strong defenses against. Not easy! Very human.
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Replying to @zeynep @mattyglesias
I find the distinction between right and wrong experts to be self-serving here. Either these people were experts who disagreed with you or not experts at all. It’s obviously important in the sciences to allow for disagreement.
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Perhaps you have an epistemology of expertise in epidemiology and medicine and public that allows you to make distinctions between the good and bad experts. The helpful intervention would have been to have shared that.
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Otherwise you are just kicking a bunch of journalists when they are down.
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Replying to @MattNoahSmith @mattyglesias
This is exactly why this deserves digging down. Why did we dismiss the Asian expertise? Why did people not look up the many papers that already existed. Yeah, experts herd, too. Understanding such processes is critical.
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Replying to @zeynep @mattyglesias
So what is the mechanism to avoid this? You haven’t really offered anything. In the academy we have journals with double blind peer review, we have talked with q&a, and there is still herding... journalists have few of those checks. Yes people need to do better but how?
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Not uncritically repeating government statements is a good start. Reaching out to academics and other experts to check official pronouncements is good. But which academics? Which experts? Should everyone check with *you* before reporting on Covid?
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Replying to @MattNoahSmith @mattyglesias
No, not me, of course. Hong Kong, Taiwan, S. Korea where world's top infectious disease specialists with deep expertise in this family of viruses and SARS experience would have solved the problem fairly early on. I only wrote when I realized nobody else was, and someone had to.
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Thank you! That said, while I thought I might be ending my public writing career, I wasn't going to be homeless. I hope I would have done it even if those were the stakes, but it's very human to avoid such risks. That's why we should institutionally protect critical thinking.
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