Since when is science about consensus? I seem to recall learning more about falsification being the primary driver behind the scientific method, which tends to revolve around a rigorous process of trying to prove everything wrong until you just can't any more. Sure haven't seen a whole lot of that. Sure have seen a whole lot of, listen to us because this is what we say, without a whole lot of correctly collected data (emphasis on the correctly collected because data are worthless unless correctly collected, i've personally had to throw out hours of work because of sampling errors)to back anything up. Yet, I'm being told to accept lockdowns, police searches of homes and a whole host of human rights violations on the whims of some vague international appointed entity in the name of public safety. Any voice speaking against this is to be silenced on the public platforms of the day.

Yes, ignore all the overwhelmed hospitals and the sudden jump in mortality in Italy and Spain that made them decide to lock everything down after they already had a crisis on their hands. Rail more about a transnational organization with a long though often imperfect record of epidemiological expertise. Those bureaucrats in Geneva are personally ruining your life.

>Yes, ignore all the overwhelmed hospitals and the sudden jump in mortality in Italy and Spain that made them decide to lock everything down after they already had a crisis on their hands. Rail more about a transnational organization with a long though often imperfect record of epidemiological expertise. Those bureaucrats in Geneva are personally ruining your life.

Not one of these statements reflects any stated positions of the parent. All are hyperbolic mis-characterizations.

GGP said

> without a whole lot of correctly collected data (emphasis on the correctly collected because data are worthless unless correctly collected, i've personally had to throw out hours of work because of sampling errors)to back anything up.

"Deaths: 191,081" would beg to differ with their conclusion that there isn't a whole lot of correctly collected data. Further, we have incredibly good evidence that social distancing works. We could see it on a state by state and week by week basis in the US, as well as in other nations when they implemented similar policies. There's a whole lot of data backing up lockdowns.

There's also literally hundreds of academic papers on the subject would also disagree. I'm not sure what they expect, but you don't generally get to run longitudinal double blind studies in the midst of a pandemic (although now we're finally getting to the point that you can, with, for example, evidence that things like cloroquine don't improve outcomes).

I'm also not sure what home invasions and human rights violations they're talking about, I haven't heard of any, so I'm curious to see if that's substantiated. I doubt it is.

If you want to discuss that with the GGP, and think you can do so fairly, in good faith, go right ahead. I'm just tired of the absolute degradation of quality dialogue on this site, which has accelerated during this period of mass unemployment and sheltering in place. Extreme misrepresentations have become the norm. It's tiresome and is no way to attempt dialectic.

Consensus in science is fundamental. This is because even nobel laureates can and have turned to quackery. You don't have science without peer review.

If you're anti-consensus, you're anti-science.

And yes, it's OK to be skeptical, all good scientists are skeptics, but skeptics don't reject consensus, only denialists do.