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On 04 Dec 2020, after the pursuit of herd immunity strategy being extensively debunked by the scientific community and the recent developments regarding vaccines, a group of Dutch economists publish a document that resembles the Great Barrington Declaration in many aspects.1/7 https://twitter.com/_basjacobs/status/1334775148545765377
I was planning to write a thread on the false premises and the misleading sophisms in the text. I quickly realized that the amount of falsehoods and tricks of rethorics was so overwhelming, that It would take me a huge amount of time and effort to write the thread. 2/7
I also had the impression that this was something like combating a strategy similar to a “firehose of falsehoods”. Luckily, I came across of good thread (in Dutch) of @innouveau debunking several parts of the texts, including their misleading way of displaying data.3/7 https://twitter.com/innouveau/status/1335382556586483716
Anyhow, anyone who would be following the discussions and publications on the subject-matter can quickly spot the amount of issues in the text. It strikes me that some professors would participate in this text. 4/7
It remains the question of what are we facing here: is it merely an issue of Dunning-Kruger or are there also conflict of interests involved in the production of this text? Accusing of the second is serious and one should initially assume that it is only the first. 5/7
However, it would be important to know if there is any conflict of interest. I couldn’t avoid thinking of this article of @trishgreenhalgh , @martinmckee @shell_ki related to the Great Barrington declaration. 6/7 https://twitter.com/guardianscience/status/1317851440317034499
What is happening here? Dunning-Kruger? Conflict of interest? Something else? 7/7.
