I am following the scientific/medical community commentary on the Wuhan coronavirus fairly closely and it strikes me that a lot of these "scientists" aren't much different than Keynesian economists.
Most are sheep with little in terms of original thinking. The modeling of the virus by many is remarkably shallow---having no training in the field I can spot all kinds of errors.
They often take limited data, which might be explained by a number of other factors, and use it to project out broad-based conclusions about populations.
There is some good work out there but I would say 90% is coprolite.
-RW
There's an opportunity for a Wenzel drinking game. "Corprolite." "Drink!"
ReplyDeleteA few years back I read "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation" where epidemiologists tried to understand the source of all of the cancer appearing in Tom's River. The water supply was blamed, there were numerous victims, and they knew about chemical dumps by Ciba-Geigy and Union Carbide waste at a local farm. To be fair, Union Carbide paid a guy to dispose of the waste, but they didn't put a lot of effort into following up what he did. Anyway, one of the conclusions of the book is that the science of epidemiology is generally too impotent to draw conclusions from recorded data, so it would make sense that they'd spend all of their time with modeling instead.
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