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The medical and scientific community is concerned about damaging trust in vaccines and in science by taking risks responding to COVID-19.
Instead, they damaged trust by failing to do so, avoiding risk and being slow and conservative to react.
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Instead, they damaged trust by failing to do so, avoiding risk and being slow and conservative to react.
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First, it seems scientists are worried that "providing the public with information about uncertainty would increase distrust in science and scientific institutions, as well as cause panic and confusion."
The quote is not about COVID-19, though it certainly could be.
It's from a 2011 paper - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1366987032000047815 which points out that this sentiment is, simply, wrong.
People don't distrust science because there are risks and uncertainties, they distrust it for other reasons. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087641228079105
It's from a 2011 paper - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1366987032000047815 which points out that this sentiment is, simply, wrong.
People don't distrust science because there are risks and uncertainties, they distrust it for other reasons. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087641228079105
A more recent paper, from July this year, investigated this further, and finds that technical uncertainty - where we don't know the answer - doesn't increase distrust. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963662520942122 .
What reduces confidence is when there is factual disagreement. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087641228079105
What reduces confidence is when there is factual disagreement. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087641228079105
"Masks don't help" / "Yes they do" is a factual disagreement. "We don't have clear evidence either way" is uncertainty.
Uncertainty doesn't reduce trust. Unjustified certainty does. So of course factual disagreement reduces confidence in the answer given by one of the sides.
Uncertainty doesn't reduce trust. Unjustified certainty does. So of course factual disagreement reduces confidence in the answer given by one of the sides.
Unjustified confidence is a epistemic problem, but more than that, any new information looks like a dispute, with both sides certain of the answer.
Worse, when disagreement or past views are ignored or dismissed, because "of course masks work," people see it as a dispute. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342088757089087488
Worse, when disagreement or past views are ignored or dismissed, because "of course masks work," people see it as a dispute. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342088757089087488
So every day that the Surgeon General said that masks might not work set up America for a later anti-mask debate. "Scant or conflicting evidence" doesn't sound enough like "We don't know": https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1244020292365815809
As an aside, we know that news will portray anything they can as a debate. That's because modern media doesn't optimize for correct explanations, or fair portrayals, it optimizes for pageviews and advertising revenue.
And of course we will get new information about a novel disease.
The one place scientists and policymakers should have been certain at the outset is that they would need to adjust messages and policy. (But risk aversion by policymakers means they don't like to admit ignorance.) https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342089568405905408
The one place scientists and policymakers should have been certain at the outset is that they would need to adjust messages and policy. (But risk aversion by policymakers means they don't like to admit ignorance.) https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342089568405905408
Second, another near-certainty at the outset was that the US took far too little risk in aggressive response, on almost every front.
Despite knowing better, the US was overly timid about scaling testing, tracing, relief payments, vaccine funding, and of course, challenge trials. https://twitter.com/emerywells/status/1236381839264276481
Despite knowing better, the US was overly timid about scaling testing, tracing, relief payments, vaccine funding, and of course, challenge trials. https://twitter.com/emerywells/status/1236381839264276481
In each case, the risk of failure was asymmetric in two ways; the first asymmetry is that failure from overinvestment beats failure from underinvestment, and the second is that blame and responsibility for failure would have been concentrated, while benefits would be shared.
The risk of spending too much on, and doing too much testing, or overbuilding a tracing system, or overpaying people to stay home, or overfunding and overbuying vaccines were all small compared to the cost we see now, of too little.
And we knew this about the risks beforehand.
And we knew this about the risks beforehand.
And continuing on the asymmetry of risks and failure, the risk to screened, younger volunteers in a challenge trial is far lower than the risk to the general public.
Challenge trials would have helped far more if they had been approved in June, not December.
Challenge trials would have helped far more if they had been approved in June, not December.
In each case, again, we didn't know if taking the risk would pay off beforehand.
But we knew the high cost of failure or overspending was small compared to the immense cost of failure to even try, or the idiocy of spending conservatively on known risk mitigation measures.
But we knew the high cost of failure or overspending was small compared to the immense cost of failure to even try, or the idiocy of spending conservatively on known risk mitigation measures.
The second asymmetry, of blame, is largely human nature.
Human nature is to look for a specific cause of failure, not of success, especially when success looks like a return to normal - why should anyone get credit for nothing happening, and things being just fine? https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342092137672929281
Human nature is to look for a specific cause of failure, not of success, especially when success looks like a return to normal - why should anyone get credit for nothing happening, and things being just fine? https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342092137672929281
As an aside, Nick Bostrom pointed out that catastrophe, with a specific cause, has a clear name. The reverse has no good name.
Windfall? That's for one person.
Miracle? That usually involves preventing something bad.
(And I'd add they often have no clear, specific cause.)
Windfall? That's for one person.
Miracle? That usually involves preventing something bad.
(And I'd add they often have no clear, specific cause.)
But we should want to have incentives for risk-taking for the public good.
In private enterprise, risk is rewarded with profit. In government, the public gets the benefit, not the risk-taker. But if they fail, they lose their job - the same as private industry. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342095527064776704
In private enterprise, risk is rewarded with profit. In government, the public gets the benefit, not the risk-taker. But if they fail, they lose their job - the same as private industry. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342095527064776704
The reason government works is that is allows collective decisions; no individual self-nominates to pay taxes alone, but we all can benefit from public services.
But decisions still too-often require individual risk; humans insist that someone must be on the hook for failure.
But decisions still too-often require individual risk; humans insist that someone must be on the hook for failure.
A key part of leadership, of course, is about ensuring blame stays at the highest level, ("the buck stops here,") while success is given at the lowest.
And we clearly had a leadership failure in many parts of the global west. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342096850912948224
And we clearly had a leadership failure in many parts of the global west. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342096850912948224
In any case, government failed to take enough of the necessary risks to overinvest, while private industry, doing things like researching and making vaccines, took risks, some of which paid off. The biggest input of government seems to have been to slow things down. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342096470703484929
Don't blame our failure to stop COVID-19 on the uncertainty of a pandemic, blame it on communicating poorly and failing to reason about risks well enough to address them.
Though first place for blame goes to the US gov't discarding plans in place beforehand for how to respond. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087536383041536
Though first place for blame goes to the US gov't discarding plans in place beforehand for how to respond. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087536383041536
To end the thread, if the overly cautious and slow approach of waiting for near-certain evidence and not reacting quickly when there is a catastrophe is what people mean by "following the science," it's no wonder many people don't trust it. https://twitter.com/davidmanheim/status/1342087536383041536
