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Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

natesilver.substack.com

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Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#211

Post by gptbore »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #189
gptbore wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your description of what these correspondents consensus seemed to be at the time of writing. I don't see how this is at all consistent with that the paper claimed - "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible", nor how it was portrayed by the media - "COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic has a natural origin".

The phrase "is not likely" imo should have been substituted for "is not plausible", though I am not sure everyone else interprets the phrase "not plausible" as meaning something like "almost certainly not true"; they could have meant it as, something like, "the least likely of all the possibilities, by a fair margin." Sure, I'd have preferred if they had been explicit, by giving their estimate of the probability of e…

"the main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario"

As an understatement, I don't think the authors accurately conveyed what their priors on the origin really were, nor what data they encountered to so dramatically shift these priors.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#212

Post by mettamage »

zztop44 wrote: post #152
mettamage wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, I could make a career in being a software engineering style type of journalist? I just don’t think they would care, would they? If anyone is reading it working as such, feel free to humor me by shooting me an email (in my profile). I studied psychology (bachelor), business (bachelor), computer science (master) and game-design (master). I also did some course work related to journalism (though very limited, I…

Yep that’s all great but the key to being good at journalism is being a good journalist. Take Matt Levine. His background as an M&A attorney and investment banker clearly informs his journalism and makes it better. But no one would give a shit about that if he wasn’t a good writer consistently writing good, interesting writing.

So, aren’t we asking for too much then?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#213

Post by soldeace »

ke88y wrote: post #10

Big question: HOW? Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of…

At least for this particular case it was not a matter of teaching journalists statistics or anything STEM-related. If it weren't for the leaked messages, we'd never hear about it. Epistemic sincerity and a good notion of statistics are important for sure, but giving whistleblowers legal cover and a means of releasing this kind of material is just as important.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#214

Post by mcpackieh »

papito wrote: post #28
slily wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of this line from the submission: "There’s also a generational divide in journalism, with younger journalists tending to be more openly left/progressive than their older peers — and tending to be more Manichean in dividing the world between good and evil rather than proceeding from the notion that people and news stories are complicated and it’s not particularly their job to pass moral judgmen…

[flagged]

He hasn't said any of these things you're tarring him for. Instead of responding to things you imagine he might say, try to stick to the facts.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#215

Post by RandomLensman »

timr wrote: post #179
giantrobot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science only works if contrarians get a voice. This is more of the rather tired "contrarians are always right" meme that seems to crop up constantly on HN. Sometimes a contrarian is right and the accepted consensus is wrong. But that doesn't happen only because the contrarian position is contrarian, it's because the contrarians brought receipts. They applied proper scientific rigor and came up with a falsifiable th…

> This is more of the rather tired "contrarians are always right" meme that seems to crop up constantly on HN. No, it isn't. I literally did not say that, I didn't mean that, I don't believe that, and trying to spin it that way is a tortured way of reading the very sentence you quoted. Contrarians don't have to be right to require a voice for the system to work. > Not all contrarians need a "voice". It's not worth an…

In most things science I doubt you can "judge for yourself". In a field where you have some expertise, perhaps.

At least I don't have the knowledge (not just technical but also the lingo-related aspect) to read any paper or judge between any different positions on non-trivial things.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#216

Post by not2b »

The danger with "be skeptical of all sources" is that it puts all the sources, including the trained scientists, the cranks, and the corporate shills trying to spin things their way on the same level. They wind up saying what everyone says, mixing in the good arguments with the bad ones, and saying "we'll have to leave it at that". One thing that can help is figuring out peoples' financial motivations. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, whose salary is depending on not understanding something?

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#217

Post by threeseed »

danenania wrote: post #108
threeseed wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nate Silver has no relevant qualifications, experience or anything of merit to justify people taking onboard his opinion without a healthy dose of skepticism. No different to any other random person on the street. That doesn't mean he's wrong of course but this is a subject where right now everything is conjecture and hard proof may never be found. So cautious restraint is needed before jumping to any conclusions.

"Nate Silver has no relevant qualifications, experience or anything of merit to justify people taking onboard his opinion without a healthy dose of skepticism." Compared to who? Many of the people who supposedly do have the qualifications to discuss covid's origin appear to have been corrupted by career/financial incentives and political biases.

Please provide sources that “many” experts have been corrupted.

Otherwise the source of the perceived biases may be closer to home.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#218

Post by Jun8 »

sn9 wrote: post #159
ke88y wrote: post #10

Big question: HOW? Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of…

Ezra Klein interviewed Zeynep Tufeckci about basically this because she's had an unusually good track record for a non-specialist on lots of topics, and it really comes down to being statistically literate and putting in the work: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/podcasts/ezra-klein-podca...

Also helps that Tüfekçi got her undergraduate degrees at good universities in Turkey which means she had to go through and score well on the grueling university entrance exams.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#219

Post by COGlory »

stubybubs wrote: post #204
jonnycomputer wrote: post #99

I spent at least an hour reading through both the emails and the slack messages in this "expose", but I came away from it fairly certain that they are being portrayed unfairly, and I'm fairly surprised that Nate Silver has latched on to this. You have to both look at the time-line of the paper writing and the time-line of the conversations. By my reading, by the time the paper was being written, most of them had inde…

"Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible. More scie…

>Historically, a zoonitic origin is extremely likely.

Historically, there have been far, far more documented lab leaks of SARS-CoV than there have been animal-human jumps.

People that wish to shutdown lab leak conversation are quick to mix in engineering. Lots of less educated people can't tell the difference.

It is very possible that the virus was both zoonotic in origin, and leaked from the lab.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#220

Post by m463 »

ke88y wrote: post #10

Big question: HOW? Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of…

It is unfortunate that money is a tool that makes society materially efficient but doesn't value certain members of society appropriately. This means not only Journalists, but also Teachers and just about every sort of regulator who can be bought.
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