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Absolutely wrong. Analysis done by informed laymen is essential in breaking intellectual logjams in established fields. These situations happen over and over again in history. It's increasingly looking like we have one of these logjams in public health right now.

Ideas need to be evaluated on their merits in all cases, especially in times of controversy.

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> Analysis done by informed laymen is essential in breaking intellectual logjams in established fields.

Which is why it is important that people with the expertise evaluate those ideas on their merits.

What doesn't help is when less informed laymen think they can accurately judge the validity of ideas put forward by slightly more informed laymen.

What active hurts is when those less informed laymen start spreading their half-balked ideas and trying to impact policy without making an effort to get their ideas validated by people with the experience to find the simple, obvious errors they are making.

> without making an effort to get their ideas validated by people

Me posting this is literally me doing that, so your visible irritation is very oddly placed.

HN is a platform dominated by laymen in this field. Posting this article here is an attempt to publish and widen distribution. It is not an attempt to reach out to people with expertise prior to publishing.

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