Statistics analyst Gary Smith: Even if COVID-19 deaths are randomly distributed among the population (and they surely aren’t), data mining will, more likely than not, discover a geographic cluster of victims… (Lots of things can start to appear meaningful.)
Tag: COVID-19
Is COVID-19 the end of “Trust Science!!”?
Once we climb back out of the hole we have so furiously dug for ourselves, let’s start thinking more about ignoring the pack howls from “science.” After all, how many more of them can we afford?
Is COVID-19 alive?
Villarreal and Mazur introduce a term that will be new to many— and relevant to viruses like COVID-19: quasispecies
But IS there such a thing as pandemic science?
The problems that Lenzer and Brownlee identify in their screed as wrong science are normal components of a panic in a crisis. What it all really shows is that we aren’t as much smarter than our forebears as we think.
At STAT: Ioannidis’ differing COVID-19 views shouldn’t be demonized
Demonizing differing views is a characteristic of superstition, not science. It says a lot about “science” today that its practitioners choose such methods.
Michael Egnor on COVID-19: Herd immunity vs herd mentality
Dr. Egnor is sadly right. The rubbish purveyed to us along the lines of “trust science!” has proven false. Whenever the smoke clears…
Evolutionary Informatics Lab guys on COVID-19: When 900 bytes shut down the world
A great physicist warned us, information precedes matter and energy: Bit before it: The COVID-19 virus contains about as much information as a sticker in WhatsApp. Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks and Dr. Daniel Andrés Díaz-Pachón explore a dreadful truth: “Human biology is so finely tuned that less than a kilobyte of information Read More…
An eye-opening science-related COVID roundup
Reliance on expertise can, depending on the circumstances, be a form of superstition. And, in short, the numbers solemnly announced by the suits on TV are often just a crock. And none of this is doing the reputation of science any good.
So what really happened with COVID-19 in China?
Interest in COVID-19 is so high here, it makes sense to post a link/excerpt to a long, careful article by Heather Zeiger at Mind Matters News, trying to piece together what really happened (and yes, there is a big science hook):
Classic “evolution” rubbish about COVID-19
So the worry is that we are more social than chimps and therefore can’t handle social distancing? Seriously, the big difference between being a human and being a chimp is that humans can actually decide to do something based on reason. It comes of having an intellect, something Darwinian evolution has never been able to assimilate.
Inference Review devotes issue to COVID-19
While in lockdown, read intelligent commentary.
Michael Egnor: Evolution presupposes design – the COVID 19 edition
Now that he mentions it, Darwinism—without design in nature— probably couldn’t even produce viable viruses.
Why COVID-19 rates are difficult to compute
Among other things: “Things appear deceptively dire if we calculate death rate solely by reference to reported COVID-19 cases; but the picture is deceptively benign if we measure deaths against an inflated conjecture about the non-reporting population. ” – McCarthy
Jonathan Bartlett: Was the COVID-19 Virus Designed? The Computer Doesn’t Know
Some researchers confuse not finding a particular type of design with ruling out design of the virus. This problem is not unique to them; it is a bad habit of the scientific community which stretches back into the 1800s.
Fake stats debunker Ioannidis on COVID-19 stats: Not reliable
Ioannidis: School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious disease…