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Asterose t1_j7i1byq wrote

Reply to comment by atred in (Virology) Has SARS-CoV-2 outcompeted all the other coronaviruses which have been called the ‘common cold’? by jsgui

One mark of good, real science at work is when a prediction, based on evidence, is shown to be incorrect and scientists update the predictions with the new data.

Complaints about scientists "not being 100% certain" and "they keep changing what they're saying" are red flags revealing people who do not understand how science works and why the scientific method is so important to everything we have today.

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Fight_the_bastards t1_j7i9h4x wrote

Yeah, it’s like people who complain about how the rules for masking “changed constantly.” Well, when you’re learning new things about a disease, countermeasures are going to change, and also it didn’t help that a substantial percentage of people (including in state and federal government leaders), actively ignored the guidance for idiotic reasons.

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Asterose t1_j7iacdj wrote

Seriously. They might as well be saying "last week the weatherman said it would be sunny but NOW they're saying I'll need an umbrella tomorrow?! Those idiots who study weather are obviously useless and don't know what they're talking about!" Except instead of just risking getting soaked, they're playing games with a goddamn virus.

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birdstork t1_j7jicz0 wrote

People do say that about the weatherman - I hear it all the time. Meteorologists take time & explain how the pattern could shift but people don’t listen.

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Endogamy t1_j7jjuav wrote

Yeah complaining about inaccurate forecasts is so widespread and almost always wrong. It’s almost always someone who didn’t pay attention to the details of the forecast or misheard/misunderstood/misremembered it, or heard a forecast for another place but assumed it applied to them etc.

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Asterose t1_j7kifq2 wrote

And also doesn't understand that weather is just really damn difficult to predict. That humans have figured out the level of accuracy we do get now is genuinely impressive.

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Asterose t1_j7kip5x wrote

Slightly different, I'm well aware of that which is why I specified it being sunny last week, as in people thinking last week's sunny weather should mean it couldn't possibly be rainy tomorrow ;)

I might not have worded it quite clearly enough and gave the impression I meant people complaining about current forecasts being wrong. Weather is actually really difficult to predict in quite a few cases, so the level off accuracy we currently have is genuinely impressive, and I wish more people could appreciate that.

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jsgui OP t1_j7kgdd1 wrote

It would be like the weatherman playing the game of pretending the weather will be dry so when he goes to the shop there are still umbrellas in stock for him and the various other weathermen to buy. Then as soon as supply of umbrellas is not the pressing issue the weatherman admits it’s actually raining.

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jsgui OP t1_j7kg4sl wrote

At some point early on the guidance itself was untruthful. The public were being told that masks were not effective while various hospitals were buying and using them.

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CySU t1_j7klonm wrote

Those same people rely on monochromatic thinking to get through their daily lives. A lot less energy is spent weighing pros and cons so if someone else appears to be making conflicting statements overtime it’s a lot easier to dismiss as “hacks who can’t even get their story straight”.

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BeatlesTypeBeat t1_j7i2i8j wrote

This has been my biggest takeaway as well. We've always adjusted as new data became available.

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zeeke42 t1_j7ibt0x wrote

I didn't read the question that way at all. I took it as "why did they think that at the time, and what have we learned since then about why they were wrong?"

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atred t1_j7ik52g wrote

yeah, it wasn't a complain about scientists, it was more why it was considered unlikely to mutate and what changed that now is considered "highly mutable" as OP put it.

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Lumpy-Dingo-947 t1_j7iko3k wrote

I mostly heard “if they were wrong before, how can you be sure inconveniencing me is right????”

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pablofs t1_j7kqzt6 wrote

Scientists are portrayed in movies and media as “knowing” everything, no wonder people is confused. Basically they take a mystic cultist character and call it a scientist.

But true scientists would be difficult to film, always having more questions than answers, null hypothesis and margins of error.

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cynric42 t1_j7jsxu1 wrote

Also represented in how scientists talk when asked about how something is going to play out in the future. There are often qualifiers involved or limitations like "if it behaves like similar viruses, we can expect", or "from what we've seen so far, it is likely ..." etc. Sadly those often get left out for headlines or in short excerpts from media about what someone said.

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bmyst70 t1_j7lwuyk wrote

I think it was during the pandemic that many people saw real science unfolding almost in real time. Until then most people only had the orderly, bite sized chunks in school. Which give the illusion that science is always an orderly process.

But real science is messy, with an educated best guess proven or disproven. Lather, rinse, repeat. It does amazing things but orderly, it is not.

And these many people got very upset and decided it's not a good thing because it's not crisp, black and white and unchanging.

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Asterose t1_j7m223c wrote

Excellent insight! Thank you for pointing these out :)

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DrQuailMan t1_j7lljwo wrote

However, a red flag for fake science at work is if when asked to explain its predictions, or changes in its predictions, no details are provided.

Of course this is not the case for covid-19 science. But the person asked a legitimate question about the state of the research. You don't have to give conspiracy theorists ammo by responding with a non-answer like that. Just say which early studies indicated low mutability, and which later studies or observations indicated high mutability.

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Asterose t1_j7m114f wrote

>You don't have to give conspiracy theorists ammo by responding with a non-answer like that.

Well, I literally said: "One mark of good, real science at work is when a prediction, based on evidence, is shown to be incorrect and scientists update the predictions with the new data."

Please specify where and how exactly I "give conspiracy theorists ammo by responding with a non-answer like that" then. I did not read the person's comment as needing detailed links and explanations on Scientific Method 101, but you are welcome to provide those if you feel the person needs the basics.

>Just say which early studies indicated low mutability, and which later studies or observations indicated high mutability.

You are welcome to do so, because I personally didn't and don't have the time to go hunting for those specifics just to repeat all the searching and link-sourcing dozens to hundreds of other commenters have already been doing across the replies to both that person and OP. Since you are concerned they didn't get answers out of the many other comments doing exactly that, you can provide the answers you feel they still need.

Because I was solely focusing on and responding with some reassurance that changing statements and predictions with new evidence are part of how the Scientific Method works.

In fact, a few people replying to the same initial comment as me are also talking about the scientific method and public reactions, so I think several of us found it relevant for a few people to discuss and reassure about that since sources and info on the COVID-related questions are already in so many other comments.

I've had a really hard day at work so I am potentially coming across here as angry or passive-aggressive, this is the best I can do to explain right now.

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DrQuailMan t1_j7mc1um wrote

>I did not read the person's comment as needing detailed links and explanations on Scientific Method 101

Youre missing the point. Bringing up "scientific method 101" is a step backwards, as this person's actual request was to see the scientific method in action, not to have the concept of it described to them.

>just to repeat all the searching and link-sourcing dozens to hundreds of other commenters have already been doing across the replies to both that person and OP.

No one has replied with a link / reference to this person yet, as of an hour ago.

>Since you are concerned they didn't get answers out of the many other comments doing exactly that, you can provide the answers you feel they still need.

I don't have the expertise to do that. Is that supposed to be a gotcha? If anything you're slightly gotcha-ing yourself by saying it would take you a long time to find appropriate sources, and exposing your own overconfidence. Not every scientific misprediction gets analyzed scientifically, so without already being familiar with the appropriate sources, you can't know whether there are appropriate sources.

You'd think that on r/askscience, people would accept the idea of answering questions with actual scientific data, or an explanation that the data doesn't exist, and would understand the non-triviality of providing the correct answer.

>In fact, a few people replying to the same initial comment as me are also talking about the scientific method and public reactions

Virologists are rare on the internet. Clueless know-it-alls are common. An abundance of replies from the common type of person doesn't indicate that such replies were particularly warranted, compared to the uncommon type. People act within their capabilities. Sometimes that drowns out other people, to ill effect.

>I am potentially coming across here as angry or passive-aggressive

I am just explaining how your comment was indirectly harmful. Save your back-to-basics warning for suspicious questions about science, not all questions about science.

"Why does science say X" is a normal question. "Why did science say X, but now says Y" is also a normal question.

"Why did science say <thing it obviously didn't>, but now says Y" is a suspicious question. "Why did science say <thing that is obviously compatible with Y>, but now says Y" is a suspicious question.

Like, post this all day on questions about mask or vaccine efficacy, where trolls try to pretend masks were supposed to 100% prevent transmission, or vaccines were supposed to prevent all sickness for everyone. But this guy, he's just asking about mutation research, not saying anything about that research being untrustworthy or tainted.

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Straight-Plankton-15 t1_j7o2vau wrote

>Complaints about scientists "not being 100% certain" and "they keep changing what they're saying" are red flags revealing people who do not understand how science works

It's not that deep. If you're averse to non-personal questions, this isn't the correct sub.

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