Politicians don't understand science: advisers give evidence at UK Covid inquiry | Hacker News Reader

Politicians don't understand science: advisers give evidence at UK Covid inquiry

nature.com

26 pointsrossant8 comments

It's good to document this stuff but I find that this enquiry is slightly misaligned in that they keep asking leading questions to people they don't like and not letting them ramble or even talk too quickly.

Getting everyone in the same chair is very expensive politically, get the most from it.

Cummings in particular I think was asked a lot of questions that I found unreasonable. Maybe he deserves it, who knows, but he thinks on a different level than anyone else they're going to hear from — there are loads of scientists, but that's not his schtick.

Boris Johnson contradicted Angela McLean and said face masks are useful 30 April 2020 -

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-face-coverings-useful...

Don't ever forget scientists are lying cunts. Politicians are supposed to be, scientists are truly bad people because they are hypocrites.

100 years of masks. There was nothing new for scientists to learn. They are the enemy.

Politicians are dangerous, but they are just a tool.

Understanding why it took medical experts so long to realise that masks were important is a saga in its own right. It's not a case of hypocrisy as such, as the fact it went against the core belief of clinicians about what separates a serious person of medicine from a quack.

The beliefs closest to our hearts receive the least inspection.

Rigorous science is a pretty slow process. A study taking a year to get published is pretty expected. Scientific consensus comes after several such studies.

Relying on science to dictate policy regarding a new and rapidly evolving situation is just a very bad idea.

Perhaps, but relying on best current knowledge that is backed by evidence is a pretty good policy. It may not always be correct, but it's a whole lot better than blind conjecture. Even if it's a guess made by the most educated guy in the room, that's still the most educated guess we have. Hindsight is 20/20, and we bias our view of past decisions with current knowledge.

It's good in certain situations, when there is a good body of scientific knowledge to fall back on.

The tragic flaw of science-based policymaking is that scientific understanding requires evidence, and evidence is only available after an intervention is put into place. Because of this, if you rely on science alone to dictate policy, it becomes a reactionary force that opposes all new ideas as too poorly understood to be implemented.

What the revisionist crap is this?

China told the west it was airborne and that masks should be used in like bloody February.

Right after January when they got all their party members to send masks home from the west.

This just smacks of over generalization. Honestly when someone says a phrase like “X are Y” without any qualifiers like “some X are Y” or “many X are Y”, it’s hard for me to take the rest of what they’re saying seriously. You are included in that.

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