3 Comments

I quite agree with the assessment that "scientists" are out of their depth.

I take serious exception to David Kinney

"Thus, when scientists decide how to report results to policymakers, they have to balance the need for action-guiding advice against the risk of their advice being wrong. These are value-laden decisions that cannot be outsourced to policymakers. "

The decisions must be made by policy makers especially elected policy makers.

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Would suggest reading the full context of Kinney’s piece. He has a lot more nuance than I could fit in that small quote. https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/ckeditor/2020/03/30/t-001-kinney.pdf

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Did not see any nuance. A scientist can only claim a very narrow domain of expertise. Once he steps out of that domain he is no more expert than the next person no matter his conceits and pretensions. The modern conceit of science is that it can do something. The greater the number of variables to manage the more likely that the "do something" strategy will fail.

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