Policy (and thus public health) will necessarily involve working with imperfect, incomplete data, and (sometimes terrible) trade-offs. Mike Ryan of WHO had it right. "If you need to be right before you move, you will never win." Hence all these debates.https://twitter.com/i/status/1346073730510954498 …
-
0:45Show this thread -
I'm not arguing here about any particular debate but the fallacy that's plagued a lot of this discussion. There is of course stronger/weaker and different types of evidence, different trade-offs and calculations etc. But "no data" is almost never true, and yet gets used a lot.
3 replies 8 retweets 77 likesShow this thread -
zeynep tufekci Retweeted zeynep tufekci
I've been thinking that, epistemologically, that might be one of the most important lessons of last year. An implied philosophical frequentism that has plagued our analysis/action/communication.https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1341452907175170050 …
zeynep tufekci added,
4 replies 19 retweets 78 likesShow this thread -
(And please don't @ me as if this is an argument about the merits of a particular vaccine scheduling or dosing. I'm talking about epistemology. There are people with impeccable credentials making important points on all sides of that & decisions will be made with imperfect data!)
4 replies 5 retweets 73 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @zeynep
I do think it's important to recognize, however, that hardly anyone is actually saying "we have no idea if one dose works." The principal concerns are second-order effects where we (arguably) also have reasons to say it's problematic: escape variants
, vaccine hesitance
, etc.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
-
Replying to @zeynep
Am I? At least among the people you refer to with impeccable credentials having nuanced discussions, most aren't saying we literally have no idea if one dose is effective for at least a little while. The epistemological point is important but we should be mindful of straw men.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @RidleyDM
The world—and parts of it with impact—is much bigger than the people you follow on Twitter. That's all I have on that.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @zeynep
That is a fair point. There are a *lot* of people falling prey to this fallacy (as another branch of this thread pointed out, even more on post-vaccine transmission than on dosing, I think).
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
I realize I was ambiguous, sorry - when I said "hardly anyone" I meant "hardly anyone among the impeccably credentialed people you were talking about." Ah, Twitter.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
The impeccably credentialed people rarely drive these discussions, though.
-
-
Replying to @zeynep
Fair enough. On the vaccine dosing issue, I am cautiously optimistic that it's ultimately up to the FDA and so the impeccably credentialed people will drive the actual decision, but the tenor of the other discussions still matters in other ways even if that is true.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.