[2006alum]

https://www.wired.com/story/new-covid-19...hey-right/

Learned some things from this article. Apparently one of the coauthors of the study is just some VC investor asshole who just wrote a WSJ oped about how the virus isn't so deadly. Sure some of the papers I've been on have had some dubious coauthors but this is beyond the pale. What figure did he contribute to in the paper?

Also of note, the actual manufacturer of the serology tests is a Chinese company that is actually now banned from exporting tests to the US. Hangzhou Biotest Biotech. Sounds like a reputable entity......

This is the bad faith I'm talking about. Three co-authors went on record a month ago in two different nationally-circulated op-eds saying the virus was overblown, it was no worse than the flu, and that social distancing was the wrong move. Were this study to confirm their prior, data-light hot take, it would burnish their reputation. They got out ahead of the science with a hot take, and then coincidentally, posted a study that purports to support their hot take even though there's a strong possibility it does no such thing, notwithstanding their topline takeaway that this is no worse than the flu. 

Speaking of bad faith, did anyone follow how (Law) Professor Richard Epstein -- he of the infamous "this will only cause 500 deaths" op-ed that was later revised to 5,000 deaths due to a "factoring error" -- was caught surreptitiously revising his entire op-ed to look like he'd originally claimed 5,000 (instead of 500) deaths and updated to 50,000 (instead of 5,000)? He got called out on it thanks to a careful reader and the waybackmachine:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JohnPMacke/status/1251716101819584513?s=20[/tweet]

What do both have in common? They put their reputation on the line with a contrarian hot take that is proving every day to be less and less likely, and now they are pursuing questionable means to try to revive their position. I really hate to say this as someone who went to Stanford and cares a lot about academia, but "experts" like Epstein and Ioannidis are what cause non-experts to stop taking experts seriously. They don't speak with caution or caveats, but with bold, provocative flair bordering on hubris, and when they seem to be in the wrong, they double down rather than admit the strong possibility of their error.

And to be clear, my position was never that they should retract it. My position is that they should revise their topline summary to read, "could be widespread undetected community transmission, could be almost none." But that finding is clearly not the one they were motivated to find.

[2006alum]

https://www.wired.com/story/new-covid-19...hey-right/

Learned some things from this article. Apparently one of the coauthors of the study is just some VC investor asshole who just wrote a WSJ oped about how the virus isn't so deadly. Sure some of the papers I've been on have had some dubious coauthors but this is beyond the pale. What figure did he contribute to in the paper?

Also of note, the actual manufacturer of the serology tests is a Chinese company that is actually now banned from exporting tests to the US. Hangzhou Biotest Biotech. Sounds like a reputable entity......

This is the bad faith I'm talking about. Three co-authors went on record a month ago in two different nationally-circulated op-eds saying the virus was overblown, it was no worse than the flu, and that social distancing was the wrong move. Were this study to confirm their prior, data-light hot take, it would burnish their reputation. They got out ahead of the science with a hot take, and then coincidentally, posted a study that purports to support their hot take even though there's a strong possibility it does no such thing, notwithstanding their topline takeaway that this is no worse than the flu. 

Speaking of bad faith, did anyone follow how (Law) Professor Richard Epstein -- he of the infamous "this will only cause 500 deaths" op-ed that was later revised to 5,000 deaths due to a "factoring error" -- was caught surreptitiously revising his entire op-ed to look like he'd originally claimed 5,000 (instead of 500) deaths and updated to 50,000 (instead of 5,000)? He got called out on it thanks to a careful reader and the waybackmachine:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JohnPMacke/status/1251716101819584513?s=20[/tweet]

What do both have in common? They put their reputation on the line with a contrarian hot take that is proving every day to be less and less likely, and now they are pursuing questionable means to try to revive their position. I really hate to say this as someone who went to Stanford and cares a lot about academia, but "experts" like Epstein and Ioannidis are what cause non-experts to stop taking experts seriously. They don't speak with caution or caveats, but with bold, provocative flair bordering on hubris, and when they seem to be in the wrong, they double down rather than admit the strong possibility of their error.

And to be clear, my position was never that they should retract it. My position is that they should revise their topline summary to read, "could be widespread undetected community transmission, could be almost none." But that finding is clearly not the one they were motivated to find.