Transmillennial

 Conor Friedersdorf, a reactionary wolf in classical liberal sheep's clothing, is shocked, shocked! What this actually was was a 'panel discussion' between DeSantis, Scott Atlas , and the three authors of the Great Barrington declaration , trying to justify their repulsive actions during the COVID epidemic: the scientifically unfounded claim that one could reach 'herd immunity' via infection alone, along with abandonment of almost all public health measures to combat the disease, and a callous acceptance of a million deaths in the US alone.  The declaration, as is usual with such attacks on the scientific consensus, once drafted, was signed mostly by people with no experience in the field, with dubious qualifications if not a record of quackery, and a religious or political act to grind. Previous petitions that attacked the theory of evolution and anthropogenic climate change served as a model. DeSantis, whose record on COVID is disgraceful, was happy to get on bo...

 I used to tell my students that the fate of bad science is not to be refuted, but to be ignored. We ignore it, because to refute it takes time that could be used for more worthwhile endeavors, and refuting it also makes enemies. In fact, on one of the rare occasions I felt it necessary to publish a refutation of some particularly bad science,  one of a referee's major criticisms was that I was paying any attention to the work at all. That is one of the nice things about the scientific consensus.  I submit this formula no longer works, in an era when the bad actor can go on Fox News and spew their garbage to the world, or take a job with a Republican administration and put the lives of thousands in jeopardy.  This is why I'm calling out John Ioannidis. Ioannidis is often called an iconoclast, but I maintain iconoclast is one of those nouns that declines. My iconoclast is your bombthrower is his kook . When Ioannidis published  Why Most Published Research Findi...