You notice a minority of scientists were early to advocate: 1. asymptomatic COVID19 occurs 2. masks are useful 3. rapid tests are useful Yet opposition on each came from other scientists. Why? Is it because training has promoted p<0.05 to the point we can't do Baynesian anymore?
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Replying to @michaelzlin
each of these has big implications for the public, and being wrong can be very damaging. by the same 'Bayesian' reasoning we'd skip clinical trials for the vaccine. is it crazy to expect scientists to provide evidence to support their claims?
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Replying to @JaseGehring @michaelzlin
not to mention the extremely obvious counterpoints, including: - hydroxychloroquine - Remdesivir - convalescent plasma - excessive surface sterilization you can't cherry pick correct ideas and say we need to start adopting ideas more quickly. some ideas are right, others not.
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Replying to @JaseGehring
Not cherry picking. The scientists I am thinking about did not advocate cq/hcq or excessive surface cleaning, indeed because those lacked mechanistic basis. That's the whole point, to use all knowledge intelligently. You can go back through my posts or
@zeynep 's3 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @michaelzlin @zeynep
it's an interesting point, and one i've reflected on. i've learned i'm more conservative regarding new ideas and waiting for data. i also have no influence on policy. i might feel differently where i in a position of importance.
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Replying to @JaseGehring @michaelzlin
I would actually say it wasn’t conservative. It was a very risky proposition to do that for some of the things we didn’t—wait when there was a preponderance of evidence of the risk and when we faced exponential growth.
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In my view, it was a fairly conservative suggestion to say we should start wearing masks and start at least being careful indoors. Of course, for injecting drugs into people, we need clinical trials and robust safety data. That’s different.
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Replying to @zeynep @michaelzlin
we're in agreement. i'd push back on Michael characterizing scientific thinking too broadly. these different issues have different levels of evidence and confidence. to me scientists have largely made good calls while our institutions have failed.
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Replying to @JaseGehring @michaelzlin
There is truth to that, obviously, but also a lot of failures too. A lot of things that go into successful scientific careers in the academy, like grant writing, publishing, clinical medicine etc. are very null-hypothesis oriented. That’s not always right for public health.
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Thanks like synthesizing from emerging evidence into policy, being proactive and figuring out when precautionary principle is appropriate one facing exponential growth, and when caution is warranted (unproven drugs obviously and I’m a great fan of UK Recovery that way).
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