How to be a good amateur epidemiologist *thread*

I'm a philosopher of science by training. So, while I'm not a scientist, science is my object of study. This seems like a great time to share some lessons from being a professional dabbler in science. 1/19

There are many complaints now about "amateur epidemiologists" opining on things they don't understand. Rather than discouraging people from engaging with the science, I want to share my views on how to grasp our own limitations as we go outside of our specialization. 2/n

First of all, I think that knowledge and understanding comes in degrees. And while "knowing just enough to be dangerous" may be a real thing, surely the positive correlation between knowledge and good reasoning dominates. We want people to try to understand science. 3/n

Let me insert here that many scientists are doing an amazing job now of disseminating their understanding of the covid-19 disease and pandemic to the general public. I can't give a fair list of great sources here on Twitter, but you can start with @EpiEllie and go from there. 4/n

Secondly, while science should be regarded as authoritative in many respects, there are ways to misunderstand this. The amount of disagreement between experts differs between the sciences, and between topics within any science. This complicates things for us amateurs. 5/n

The knowledge that science produces is a social thing. It grows over time in a community of scientists, not in the mind of an individual researcher. How do we as amateurs know if the statement of some particular scientist is representative of this communal understanding? 6/n

Maybe the only way to know this is by being an expert. But more optimistically, just as a scientist may regard the outcome of a new experiment tentatively until more evidence comes in, we can take the same attitude towards new (to us) statements by individual scientists. 7/n

Lesson #1: A majority view within a science is authoritative to us, because the process by which that view comes about is more reliable and credible than whatever belief-forming processes are available to us as individuals.

This relates importantly to lesson #2 (below). 8/n

The fact of lesson #1 does not hold in precisely the same way to an expert in the field. This has to do with the limits of the amateur perspective. 9/n

As amateurs, we can advance our understanding of the scientific theories, models, and evidence in many ways. This is a Good Thing. (For example, @3blue1brown has some super instructive videos on epidemiological models and simulations.) But there are things we _cannot_ do. 10/n

If I cite a scientific paper in my philosophical work, it's because I take it to express a common enough view in that science. My citation adds no weight to the views expressed in that paper. It's because _I_can't_read_that_paper_critically_. 11/n

Lesson #2: As amateurs, we can strive to understand what scientists say--but we lack the tools for critically evaluating what they say.

(This holds when the scientist is speaking on their area of expertise, of course.) 12/n

An expert _can_ have good grounds for rejecting a consensus view in their science. Science is a rational enterprise after all, not only a social one.

But the probability of an amateur finding an error that has escaped the scientific community is very low... 13/n

In short: to be part of the critical peer review process of science, you need the right training. And the best reason we can have for being skeptical of the claims of an individual scientist is that we doubt that it represents the majority view in that science. 14/n

Important: this is _not_ because scientific knowledge is a matter of taking a vote--it's a consequence of our amateur perspective on it. The situation is different for the experts. 15/n

So, this suggests at least two ways of being a bad amateur epidemiologist: First, confusing the claims by a particular scientist with the knowledge that has accumulated within that research community. Cure: read more broadly! 16/n

Second, underestimating the amount of knowledge/training that is needed for reading science critically. As amateurs, we likely don't even know how much we don't know. Cure: hone in on what seems the majority view, and base any skepticism on that. (Or get a relevant degree.) 17/n

Acknowledging these limitations to the amateur point of view, we can strive to better understand, through science, the world in general, and our current situation in particular. And we really, really should. For our society and for ourselves as individuals. 18/n

Disclaimer: these are my experiences, and should not be confused with those of other philosophers of science. Some philosophers have in addition an advanced degree in some scientific discipline. (My background is in computers, which isn't that far from the philosophy I do.) 19/19