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Karol Karpinski's avatar

Kudos to Prof Tufekci for opening up the newsletter to debate, and to Prof Smith for offering his take. My main problem with his argument is that it seems to hinge on purportedly “high trust” that professoriate enjoys (he speaks of “respected professors”, “trusted community members”).

I don’t know if Prof Smith counts himself in their ranks, but in any case—this ship has sailed already. Prof Smith speaks of them as if they had the credibility capital of 1970s’ Walter Cronkite. I’m sorry, but to me and much of the world they’re like McNamara and LBJ. In other words, you can’t squander what you don’t have.

Michael Mina and Zeynep Tufekci have been exceptions to that precisely because they have been consistently doing what you advocate them not to do: spoke their minds openly, did not shy away from disagreement, and candidly spoke of what they believe they don’t know. I’m sorry to say, but if Prof Tufekci were to start equivocating and indulging in noble lies, that wouldn’t boost the credibility of the “public health community” as such. Quite the opposite—many people would abandon following them and possibly turn to cranks.

Finally—please don’t take it personally, Dr Smith—I’m afraid that your hard delimitation between “expert/scientific debate” and public activism has got a whiff of arrogance to it. People can read. We’ve got sci-hub, NEJM/Lancet un-paywalled their coverage of Covid. My boyfriend’s family (working class/refugee/POC and a few other terms you seem to name-check) had no problems following the gist of the scientific debate back in Feb/March, which might’ve very possibly saved their lives. So I think you really overstate the difference between Prof Tufekci penning a letter to the editor in The Lancet and writing a Substack in terms of what transpires to the public. The biggest argument in favour of going the public route to me is that it’s just faster, and we don’t have much time to spare.

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Darij Grinberg's avatar

This is a textbook example of "proving too much". The argument is essentially that since publishing an opinion can have ripple effects that might defeat the argument -- or otherwise cause harm --, the argument should not be published. It can be applied equally to many other contentious issues. For example, publicizing police violence can cause the police to "retreat to the donut shop", thus increasing the crime rate, which in turn causes a tough-on-crime shift in public opinion and ultimately more police violence. Yet no one would seriously take be deterred by this from discussing police violence or suggesting countermeasures, and for good reasons: With a bit of work, you can find possible downsides to anything. But it isn't much harder to find upsides to match them. At the end of the day, you can argue your way to any conclusion you want simply by taking the right combination of these downsides and upsides. It's not much different from what is called p-hacking (or the Garden of Forking Paths, if you don't want to blame the author) in experimental science.

Here are Smith's main objections:

S1. Pro-one-dose arguments may cause people who would otherwise go through the full course to skip the second dose.

S2. Any publicly visible disagreement between scientists risks getting weaponized as a proof of science being untrustworthy by dark forces.

S3. Pro-one-dose arguments may give authorities a convenient pretext to skimp on completely vaccinating the marginalized and non-influential.

Here is how to adapt the exact same arguments to argue the opposite points:

S1'. Pro-one-dose arguments may make people otherwise wary of vaccinating themselves decide to give the vaccine a try. (As someone who has BII phobia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood-injection-injury_type_phobia -- myself, I can confirm that this is a real thing.)

S2'. Silence and monophony can be far more concerning than disagreement. I follow various right-wing publicists -- some I agree with, some I am curious about, and some out of the same interest that makes train wrecks interesting to watch -- and I have rarely seen anti-vac sentiments being justified with the existing disagreements between scientists. The ones I do remember seeing concern the AstroZeneca vaccine (due to the egregious blunders in its study) and the Sinevac one; even there, the worst I have heard is "let's wait for more evidence", which is indistinguishable from left-wing opinion. As the mainstream press is competing at whose 10-word headline can induce the most panic (Reuters just reported on someone getting COVID one week after vaccination, as if this was something unexpected), Steve Sailer of all people gave a reasoned plea for not taking the side-effect panic to heart and just taking the damn vaccines ( https://www.takimag.com/article/lets-be-over-and-done-in-21/ ).

S3'. Anti-one-dose arguments may give authorities a convenient pretext to delay vaccinating the marginalized and non-influential.

This all said, even if these all weren't issues, what exactly is being suggested? Not to discuss anything at all in public if the discussion could be abused or misinterpreted? That is, not to discuss anything of any remote importance? Many issues already are suffering from a "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" dynamics. Smith's appeal will not dissuade any fools; it will only make angels more fearful. For better or for worse, going public is a widespread and often functional way of getting concerns heard. As we have seen in the case of CDC guidance, it often works for the greater good. What is gained by ceding this ground to those with less scruples?

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