Re:Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data...
by KennyBlanken on Thursday September 23, 2021 @12:00PM
(#28631043)
Ad hominem would be "he's a covid-denier, his research is worthless."
What I actually said was that he was an expert in research quality, and then promptly helped generate very shoddy research that was outside his area of expertise and ended up widely criticized by people actually in that field. Pointing that out is not ad hominem.
Extremely early-on in the pandemic he ran around shouting with no evidence that COVID was not very infectious and not deadly at all, and really, we needed to stop with these silly lockdowns and social distancing and masks and so on.
He then changed his tune to claim that actually covid was very infectious but this meant that the death rate was very low (and thus we needed to stop with these silly lockdowns and social distancing and masks and so on.)
Even his claim of very high infection / low mortality rate were true, it doesn't change the fact that ERs and ICUs have been repeatedly swamped, predominantly in countries, states and counties where political leaders are not employing standard pandemic control measures.
The man was literally shouting "THIS IS NO BIG DEAL STOP LIMITING OUR FREEDOM" while ERs and ICUs filled to the gills with dying people and in many places they literally could not burn the bodies fast enough.
His early claims were junk in part because COVID often was not mentioned or listed as cause of death, especially early in the pandemic.
PS:
> You're simply dismissing one of the most-cited scientists in the world
Appeal to authority. See? I can play that too. Maybe you can fool the average HNer into thinking citations imply credibility, but absolute junk research can end up highly cited because it was junk and many researchers sought to validate said research or pointed out its obvious flaws.
Next time, try arguing this stuff with someone who didn't work in a lab that was doing linguistic analysis of research, a project that existed because citation counts are completely worthless for identify novel research or evaluating its validity. And to head it off at the pass: yeeeeeees, even if you include journal impact factor.
What I actually said was that he was an expert in research quality, and then promptly helped generate very shoddy research that was outside his area of expertise and ended up widely criticized by people actually in that field. Pointing that out is not ad hominem.
Extremely early-on in the pandemic he ran around shouting with no evidence that COVID was not very infectious and not deadly at all, and really, we needed to stop with these silly lockdowns and social distancing and masks and so on.
He then changed his tune to claim that actually covid was very infectious but this meant that the death rate was very low (and thus we needed to stop with these silly lockdowns and social distancing and masks and so on.)
Even his claim of very high infection / low mortality rate were true, it doesn't change the fact that ERs and ICUs have been repeatedly swamped, predominantly in countries, states and counties where political leaders are not employing standard pandemic control measures.
The man was literally shouting "THIS IS NO BIG DEAL STOP LIMITING OUR FREEDOM" while ERs and ICUs filled to the gills with dying people and in many places they literally could not burn the bodies fast enough.
His early claims were junk in part because COVID often was not mentioned or listed as cause of death, especially early in the pandemic.
PS:
> You're simply dismissing one of the most-cited scientists in the world
Appeal to authority. See? I can play that too. Maybe you can fool the average HNer into thinking citations imply credibility, but absolute junk research can end up highly cited because it was junk and many researchers sought to validate said research or pointed out its obvious flaws.
Next time, try arguing this stuff with someone who didn't work in a lab that was doing linguistic analysis of research, a project that existed because citation counts are completely worthless for identify novel research or evaluating its validity. And to head it off at the pass: yeeeeeees, even if you include journal impact factor.