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The way @BretWeinstein & @HeatherEHeying (and other IDWers) misrepresent science is extremely frustrating to watch. They get some things right but then ruin it by feeding their audience bad heuristics or inserting highly subjective readings and theories.
Let me explain with an example. Bret and Heather discuss hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) & whether it is an effective treatment for Covid-19. Specifically, they refer to a Newsweek article on David Risch's claims it is 'the key to defeating the pandemic'. https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535
David Risch is a Yale epidemiologist and thus the kind of authority who people would be likely to take seriously, based solely on his credentials. He published a review in the American Journal of Epidemiology pushing the same arguments back in May. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586
Heather & Bret's take on this is to focus on how this article (and the review it links to) reveals how harmful it is that the topic has been turned into a political football & how people are too quick to dismiss a potentially effective treatment simply because Trump promoted it.
They give the impression that they are part of a select group who are able to look at the topic dispassionately & that, by extension, their listeners are privy to a rare critical perspective that is scientifically informed & largely apolitical: "the reality middle ground".
There are a bunch of problems here but let's start off with where I agree: It *is* a problem when scientific issues become politicised & it *is* clearly false that just because Trump says something it must be wrong (though it isn't a terrible heuristic to start from skepticism).
With that out of the way, here are the problems.
1. Trump is the person primarily responsible for turning the topic into a political football. The right wing media on this basis have hyped HCQ as a miracle cure. But Bret & Heather focus entirely on the mainstream liberal media.
1. Trump is the person primarily responsible for turning the topic into a political football. The right wing media on this basis have hyped HCQ as a miracle cure. But Bret & Heather focus entirely on the mainstream liberal media.
2. Although they express some token uncertainty, this segment largely presents Trump's claims as being vindicated by Risch's article. This ignores the low quality of Risch's article, the weight of other higher quality evidence on HCQ, and the broader expert consensus.
3. The lack of support of HCQ from relevant experts is not based on distaste for Trump but because the clinical evidence does not support it. Most experts were sceptical but hopeful & waited for results from high quality trials. Those have started to appear. All are negative.
4. Rather than offering a critical, scientifically informed take on Risch's claims, Heather & Bret spend most of the segment linking it to Trump & politics. Had they looked at his claims critically they might have found things like the article below. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-evidence-cant-seem-to-kill-it/
This is a detailed blog post from @gorskon on 'science based medicine' that systematically dismantles Risch's claims referring to the higher quality studies and the extremely dubious evidence that Risch is relying on.
Why does any of this matter? Because I think this is a perfect example of how the folks in the IDW & similar contrarians misrepresent what a critical, scientifically informed approach involves. They invite their audience to feel smugly superior that they see beyond partisan...
...bullshit, while engaging in standard liberal media bashing. Moreover, if they really value what they say, it would seem more beneficial to eschew the usual political aspects & focus on helping their audience to assess the validity of the scientific claims being made.
Here, they might have discussed the appropriate amount of scepticism one should assign to extreme outlier views when there is a general lack of high quality clinical evidence & that which has started to appear is almost uniformly negative. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine/
The context here is also important. Bret & Heather are releasing this at a time when Trump, Breitbart, and the right wing conspiracy fringe have been pushing a viral video by 'America's Frontline Doctors' claiming, amongst other things, that HCQ is an effective treatment.
Given the viral reach & amount of misinformation present in that video, and that it is being signal boosted by the president and his family, you might think it a topic worth mentioning when discussing politicisation but no it receives zero consideration. https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87797
Finally, if more high quality evidence emerged for HCQ as an effective treatment and it turned out that the early negative studies were all just outliers, then the expert consensus would shift. But that would not change what the current state of evidence is or how responsible...
...scientifically minded people should respond to the overhyping of an unproven treatment based on president Trump's endorsement & the subsequent endorsement by right wing media and conspiracy theorists. FIN.
