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Comment by mrmetanoia | Hacker News Reader

One of my in-laws is a full on Fox news nut, but has a rare condition that he received treatments for as part of an NIH study that did him a world of good and Fauci was one of the doctors that worked on it, as a result the bits of nuttery he didn't buy into were attempts to discredit Fauci or anti-vax stuff. Oddly it didn't pull into question any other beliefs he picked up from that station.

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I believe that's referred to as Gell-Mann Amnesia. Common for most educated consumers of tv and print journalism. Indeed, even Fauci has made mistakes he has later had to correct/retract, like his early herd immunity claim.

I always think Gell-Mann Amnesia is funny because the namer of it was a medical doctor who wrote a book about about how climate change is fake.

> even Fauci has made mistakes he has later had to correct/retract, like his early herd immunity claim.

You get new evidence and you update your beliefs. This is literally how science works and progress is made. If you had to put every student of science on the spot for everything wrong they said/did, there wouldn't be as much progress.

Why downvote, that's exactly what I said. I'm glad you agree that even experts make mistakes. It would be truly strange to argue that point, though many have and do. With respect to Gell-Mann amnesia, to be more exlicit since it seems that's needed, it's really just a side effect of our heuristics. Most of the time you can turn your brain off and follow the crowd, widespread consensus is a safe bet, but you have to leave room for occasionsl mistakes, as you acknowledge. Taking mental shortcuts, being lazy conformists is in no way exceptional. Humans are mostly stupid creatures, even experts.

Um I don't really agree. Making mistakes is not the same as changing opinion based on new evidence.

Fauci changed opinions, a lot of experts do. It's only the lay people with no idea how science works who will call it a "mistake".

Actually it's worse than that, people have openly harassed and threatened Fauci and his family for doing what he did. That's unfair and borderline evil.

He also made mistakes, like telling us masks didn't work to save stock, and then changing guidance when there was enough stock. It's ok, as we're saying here anyone is entitled some mistakes along the way, but nobody is perfect, and overall we got through the worst of it, so it wasn't that bad.

Well if you think he didn't make mistakes, or think that any human is error free, then you have an oppinion that is not based on science. Some sort of zealotry or hero worship or something along those lines. Fauci made mistakes. Science makes mistakes. To err is human. You might want to reevaluaute your beliefs and maybe read some of the copious amount of scientific and philosophic literature on the topic. Everyone makes mistakes.

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