RT @Em_Lickspittle@twitter.com
@fitterhappierAJ@twitter.com It is not just sociologists though. You have some pretty heavy duty immunologists also casting doubts and who feel the evidence is not strong enough to substantiate the assuredness of all your claims to date. Let's not being disingenuous by saying 'it's just the sociologists'.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/Em_Lickspittle/status/1594730527302582272
The virologists and immunologist disputing my claims rely on the public's inability to assess primary information
My verified claims have been:
1) There is no herd immunity to cov2
2) T cell memory is insufficient to control cov2
@fitterhappierAJ
If the virologists and immunologists are doing what you claim, that wouldn't affect the consensus of scientists from those fields.
What is there opinion of most virologists and immunologists?
I'm not a researcher. I'm not qualified to evaluate any of these claims. The majority opinion of the relevant field is all I really have to go by. If you are right, the majority opinion will eventually follow.
So.... I took freshman & some sophomore college biology. (Also physics, chem) I learned enough to *read the papers* in the field. I'm no expert, but I *can* typically tell when I'm reading an OK paper vs. a bullshit paper.
This is how I evaluated the claims of the aerosol scientists vs. the medical commnity (aerosol scientists right).
AJ is pretty much right. The people trying to deny his claims here have got nothing, literally nothing but wishful thinking.
@neroden @fitterhappierAJ
And if that's the case, the consensus will agree with him, not how detractors. It might take longer than it should, but eventually, whatever is supported by the evidence wins out. That's kind of the whole point of science.
Yes. Eventually. The problem is that "expert consensus" doesn't always actually follow the science for *decades* at a time. The denial of airborne viral transmission by doctors for 60 years comes to mind.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9149
Loud wrong people (like Dr Charles Chapin) can be very influential.
Science itself is Popperian, but "consensus" is Kuhnian.
It's why it's so important to have the skills to be able to read the papers yourself.
Even if it takes decades for the consensus to come around, the alternative is relying on the opinions of non-experts or experts with a minority opinion. We have too many doing that already. That's how we ended up with hundreds of thousands of additional preventable deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.
No. That's wrong.
The alternative is learning enough science -- biology, chemistry, physics, math, probability & statistics, critical thinking -- to be able to actually read and evaluate the papers yourself.
Got it? The problem is that most people lack the background or the ability to do it.
Again, millions of conservatives genuinely believe they they did exactly that, and that's what resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths during the pandemic.
It's good that you took the time to learn enough to read published science, but if you genuinely believe you are more expert in science than the majority of scientists, then you're probably suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Again, millions of right-wingers are idiots who never bothered to learn even freshman biology.
I'm not "more expert" in anything than the majority of scientists. What I *am* moderately good at is *evaluating other people's expertise*. It's a skill. It requires background and training.
It's a skill which political leaders need in order to hire the right advisors. Many do not have it. Al Gore had it.
Honest to goodness, a lot of it is simply being able to read what people are actually saying. I have found ZERO immunologists who have actually said "We have hard data and evidence showing that AJ is wrong". Not a single one. That says something, right?
Also, I have found none who said "AJ's theory is impossible because XYZ". Not a single one.
Instead, all I see is "We aren't sure whether AJ is right or not". Which is fine!...
@tofugolem @fitterhappierAJ ...but what it means is, we have evidence that AJ is right, and we have no evidence that he's wrong. So, provisionally, best to assume that he's right.
@neroden @tofugolem @fitterhappierAJ
One of the more "interesting" things to happen over the last few years is watching how "precaution" or "better to be safe than sorry" became widely and openly mocked or at least ignored.The progression after that is that things that were pretty much universally agreed to be bad things, like Polio, are minimized by using the same metrics as COVID minimization. The future progression could be pretty bleak.
@BE @tofugolem @fitterhappierAJ
When I was a kid, adults used to say "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?"
Apparently much of modern society is saying "Jump off the bridge! Why don't you jump off the bridge like everyone else?"
I do not understand it. The only explanations are in psychology, I suppose. I am struggling to learn enough to understand it.