Isn't discussing the author's credentials pretty much the definition of an ad hominem? It goes against the person and not the argument the person has made.
There is nothing extraordinary or wrong about people publishing articles while they "hasn't finished their Phd". Having published articles is practically required prior getting Phd. As such, it cant possibly explain anything. What Loanides is doing there is manipulating people who dont know how science works, how Phd is obtained nor know and how publishing works into thinking there is something lesser about author.
In the context of "scientific norms" this is egregiously bad behavior on Loanides side.
If you read the final paper (linked by bergstorm) it doesn't contain any of the excerpts that he screen-shotted. They probably existed in an early preprint of the paper, but they don't exist in the final paper! : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554
He also attacked Theranos for their media portrayal and secrecy long before anyone else did. Was that an ad hominem too? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/21109...
> Of course that aside his predictions throughout the pandemic have been consistently terrible and undersold the threat, so I'm honestly not sure why we're still listening to the man.
Now you 're making an ad-hominem too (just like the tweet you linked)
> dealing with an unknown threat, saved countless of lives.
You really can't say that. Years later, with hindsight we ll be able to assess how many lives were lost because of the rampant policy errors all around. The pandemic was in no way optimally handled