[NOTE: This post, except for the introductory section here in brackets, was written continuously as I investigated the situation, then split off from the weekly post.
Excellent post. Sadly the behavior of Dr. Black exemplifies why people don't, and probably shouldn't, trust experts just because they have credentials.
I am curious, were you ever told in school to "Consider what the author wants to be true" when critically reading something? I recall that came up a few times when I was young in the 80's and early 90's, but none of my college students (born circa '98-2002) said they had ever been told something like that. I used to bring it up in every class after the first one when I was talking about an article and said "And just like you were told in school..." I wonder if at some point in the late 20th century the notion of critical reading just went away and students were instead taught just to accept whatever the properly accepted experts said.
The part I find most interesting is the "but anti-science people are sharing this!" when the actual claims in the toolkit contradict what (at least this crop) of "anti-science" people believe. Kiera Butler says that "someone who downplays the benefits of kids vaccines" (an impressively mild category of person to be so Unacceptable that simply them touching the 1's and 0's that comprise your PDF tainted it!) was sharing it, but the toolkit repeats "vaccines are super awesome, you should totally get them, and specifically the thing that pushes kids risk so low as to make our recommendations compelling." It's one of the most important things they cite about it! Kid Vaccine Downplayer person linking this to their patients is likely.... giving them something that argues MORE for kid vaccines than before. Seems like an improvement?
one question regarding the "COVID Dec '20 - Nov 21" compared to past year flu data. Just as normal influenza was suppressed from historic levels to very low levels by anti-covid measures, is there a risk that citing pediatric covid numbers from Dec 20-Nov 21 - a period where at least some of the anti-covid measures that the toolkit recommends rolling back were still in place - is underestimating the level of pediatric covid harms that would occur? My personal feeling is that kid vaccines + retaining reasonable, non-high-cost precautions still makes "back to normal" the right call, but I got an apples-oranges vibe from it.
Some hopefully-constructive criticism. For context: I've been gratefully following your blog for ~1 year now. You've introduced me to many important concepts, and done an insane amount of legwork tracking+analyzing the Covid landscape, making me feel that I could remain safely informed without doing similar legwork. Thank you!
That said, a question: what are your goals when writing a piece like this? It is starting to feel like the opportunities to (deservedly) dunk on people who are misbehaving are crowding out the thesis. After reading to the end, I had to go back and review to remind myself what the post is actually about – I think it's a case study in bounded distrust, incidentally highlighting some interesting categories of invalid or dishonest reasoning? What I came away with on first reading was simply "wow those jerks who are criticizing this toolkit sure are jerks"; the endless examples of jerkiness drowned out anything else I might have retained.
Perhaps you don't need to be so systematic in detailing each individual instance of intellectual dishonesty, motivated reasoning, etc. As a reader, I would love to instead hear any ideas you might have for how to combat this sort of phenomenon, how to engage with people who have fallen into a bad meme cluster, or in general how to improve some aspect of the situation.
You note that one thread "starts out by making clear it’s here to show how wrong people are rather than fix mistakes." I worry that you might be in danger of starting down that same road.
Thank you. I do have to remember to keep a lid on things like this, and I hope people remind me of this if I start going to this well again soon or too often - I decided to do it once and it sort of spiraled out of control in a way I didn't see coming, but I agree it shouldn't happen like this again. And yes, I did think about it before hitting the publish button, but I felt like having such a clear example *that happened right after I published the other post* would be useful.
So both you and others, please do call me on it if I indulge this too much.
Excellent post. Sadly the behavior of Dr. Black exemplifies why people don't, and probably shouldn't, trust experts just because they have credentials.
I am curious, were you ever told in school to "Consider what the author wants to be true" when critically reading something? I recall that came up a few times when I was young in the 80's and early 90's, but none of my college students (born circa '98-2002) said they had ever been told something like that. I used to bring it up in every class after the first one when I was talking about an article and said "And just like you were told in school..." I wonder if at some point in the late 20th century the notion of critical reading just went away and students were instead taught just to accept whatever the properly accepted experts said.
I don't recall those words but I've heard similar things from time to time.
Typo: "that takes less liscence than"
The part I find most interesting is the "but anti-science people are sharing this!" when the actual claims in the toolkit contradict what (at least this crop) of "anti-science" people believe. Kiera Butler says that "someone who downplays the benefits of kids vaccines" (an impressively mild category of person to be so Unacceptable that simply them touching the 1's and 0's that comprise your PDF tainted it!) was sharing it, but the toolkit repeats "vaccines are super awesome, you should totally get them, and specifically the thing that pushes kids risk so low as to make our recommendations compelling." It's one of the most important things they cite about it! Kid Vaccine Downplayer person linking this to their patients is likely.... giving them something that argues MORE for kid vaccines than before. Seems like an improvement?
one question regarding the "COVID Dec '20 - Nov 21" compared to past year flu data. Just as normal influenza was suppressed from historic levels to very low levels by anti-covid measures, is there a risk that citing pediatric covid numbers from Dec 20-Nov 21 - a period where at least some of the anti-covid measures that the toolkit recommends rolling back were still in place - is underestimating the level of pediatric covid harms that would occur? My personal feeling is that kid vaccines + retaining reasonable, non-high-cost precautions still makes "back to normal" the right call, but I got an apples-oranges vibe from it.
Thank you, Zvi, for this magnificent explosion of rageful fair-mindedness.
Some hopefully-constructive criticism. For context: I've been gratefully following your blog for ~1 year now. You've introduced me to many important concepts, and done an insane amount of legwork tracking+analyzing the Covid landscape, making me feel that I could remain safely informed without doing similar legwork. Thank you!
That said, a question: what are your goals when writing a piece like this? It is starting to feel like the opportunities to (deservedly) dunk on people who are misbehaving are crowding out the thesis. After reading to the end, I had to go back and review to remind myself what the post is actually about – I think it's a case study in bounded distrust, incidentally highlighting some interesting categories of invalid or dishonest reasoning? What I came away with on first reading was simply "wow those jerks who are criticizing this toolkit sure are jerks"; the endless examples of jerkiness drowned out anything else I might have retained.
Perhaps you don't need to be so systematic in detailing each individual instance of intellectual dishonesty, motivated reasoning, etc. As a reader, I would love to instead hear any ideas you might have for how to combat this sort of phenomenon, how to engage with people who have fallen into a bad meme cluster, or in general how to improve some aspect of the situation.
You note that one thread "starts out by making clear it’s here to show how wrong people are rather than fix mistakes." I worry that you might be in danger of starting down that same road.
Thank you. I do have to remember to keep a lid on things like this, and I hope people remind me of this if I start going to this well again soon or too often - I decided to do it once and it sort of spiraled out of control in a way I didn't see coming, but I agree it shouldn't happen like this again. And yes, I did think about it before hitting the publish button, but I felt like having such a clear example *that happened right after I published the other post* would be useful.
So both you and others, please do call me on it if I indulge this too much.
:thumbs-up and thanks again for all the great work you put into this blog.
Agreed that the example is great – I just wanted to note that the point might come through better with less weight of supporting points.
Just reading this now. Thanks for this in-depth breakdown.