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Comment by bertil | Hacker News Reader

> there's zero accountability. If this entire thread ends up being wrong -- as so many of these Twitter hot takes have been proven to be wrong from last year -- no one cares.

It is true in many cases, but I feel like anyone who has contributed _as an expert in epidemiology_ has a good track record on correcting their statements. Did I miss anything worrisome?

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This assumes that a correction or retraction will necessarily spread with the same dynamics of the original statement. The distribution network, and the motivations of other actors spreading the information, is more important the person making the original statement. In this case, much of Twitter is the appeal to emotional responses, not rational ones. And as a medium for information conveyance is just terrible (16 tweets for something like this is evidence of that fact). Given that, I expect that any real value to the message here will be completely lost, as would that of any correction or retraction, because those amplifying the message will be doing so on the basis of their own prior sentiments on response to the diseases.

All considered I feel the point of the original comment.

On twitter, the correction should have the roughly same audience as the original — unless you stop following the author. People who amplified the original still share that amplification.

My point still stand: I have not seen an epidemiologist write something that proved false without a clarification. Non-specialist write uninformed things but it’s not really new.

There are scammer epidemiologists. Dr. Eric Fiegl-Ding is one of them who also has a Twitter profile.

A good write up on him is here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-alarmist-eric-feig...

For anyone wondering, Wikipedia says:

Feigl-Ding holds doctorates in both epidemiology and nutrition, with his professional experience in nutritional epidemiology and epidemiology of chronic disease. Since this professional experience and research work are not in infectious disease epidemiology, the subfield most relevant to COVID-19, Feigl-Ding has been criticized for offering viral social media and other media commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic.

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I think readers should form their own opinion on whether to label him a "scammer epidemiologist".

> feel like anyone who has contributed _as an expert in epidemiology_ has a good track record on correcting their statements

I think this feeling would be misguided: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/ -- retractions have been basically non-existent. On the scientist or the journalist side.

The only reference to a forecast in that article is a "chair of the department of medical ethics", not an epidemiologist, on a television program, not a tweet that they can comment.

The primary author seems to have a lot of incorrect positions though:

"Ioannidis estimated that deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 could potentially be as low as 10,000—or they could approach levels not seen since the flu pandemic of 1918"

"writing to President Trump of his concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the efficacy of lockdowns"

And just like with the Y2K bug one of the issues with takes like this is that it ignores all of the work that people did to prevent it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If there were no vaccines, lockdowns or similar health measures maybe the predictions would have been accurate.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ioannidis-aff...

Eh, Indy SAGE (of which the author is a member) can be quite cranky. Just because the UK Government are terrible and SAGE advise the UK Government doesn't intrinsically make Indy SAGE any good.

Specifically, Indy SAGE are eternal doom-mongers. Most of what they say is completely out of proportion in this vaccines era of COVID.

They also scream “close the borders” _all_ _the_ _damn_ _time_. This is (a) generally pointless when COVID is everywhere, and moreover the UK is doing worse than many countries. Also, (b), it helps perpetuate the UK's dangerous anti migrant rhetoric. Just yesterday people drowned in the English Channel as a result of the UK's hostility to refugees, and a bunch of xenophobic politicians feigned horror.

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