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Rushed science and bad politics turned COVID-weather correlations into policy disasters.
My latest, in Nature Comms w @anacrgomez @bansallab & @SadieRyan: the basic science, how ecologists derailed Indonesia& #39;s lockdown, and how we pull up. (1/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
My latest, in Nature Comms w @anacrgomez @bansallab & @SadieRyan: the basic science, how ecologists derailed Indonesia& #39;s lockdown, and how we pull up. (1/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
By now it should be obvious that what was "expected" - less transmission in the summer - didn& #39;t happen. If you need an example close to home: think Arizona, which - as its summer wave declines - is inching towards 200,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. (2/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1281225057721880578">https://twitter.com/wormmaps/...
Also increasingly obvious: *places* that were supposed to have climatic protection don& #39;t. That particularly matters in Africa, where some countries are still operating on a model of climatic protection that& #39;s unlikely to keep working. (3/20) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20149195v4">https://www.medrxiv.org/content/1...
There are so many studies by now that have shown climate wasn& #39;t at the steering wheel. And so, so many more - many left as either orphaned preprints, or published in predatory journals - using correlations to say otherwise. (4/20)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30106-6/fulltext">https://www.thelancet.com/journals/...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30106-6/fulltext">https://www.thelancet.com/journals/...
Correlational studies on climate and weather - flawed as they are - haven& #39;t been defeated in some great marketplace of ideas. They& #39;ve changed national trajectories on lockdowns and reopenings, here and abroad.
In our piece, we explain why. (5/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
In our piece, we explain why. (5/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
The short answer is, science doesn& #39;t work the same way during a pandemic it does normally. No "marketplace of ideas" to defeat bad science. And, like I& #39;ve said before, spending scientific attention on weak "debates" makes those narratives stronger. (6/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1288596311416152069">https://twitter.com/wormmaps/...
Since the start of this pandemic, I& #39;ve urged ecologists and environmental scientists to put this topic down, and stop Streisand effect-ing it. As you can see in the replies below, people really don& #39;t like that. (7/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1276947604778164225">https://twitter.com/wormmaps/...
Other scientists haven& #39;t liked it either. At least 3 studies are up where I was privately asked to review a draft, gave feedback identifying basic errors (e.g., not knowing SARS-CoV-2 vs. COVID-19), urged authors to reconsider, & I& #39;m not acknowledged. (8/20)
But what I& #39;ve been warning would happen since April - the politicization of the science to a degree that would make it impossible to ever set narratives straight about small effect sizes, and prevent weaponization - happened. (9/20) https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1253760402137190400">https://twitter.com/wormmaps/...
Now we have Trump surrogates, on television, using the COVID-climate link to try to bolster the (unfounded conspiracy) theory that COVID-19 is a weaponized virus. And scientists didn& #39;t do that, but they should& #39;ve expected it. (10/20) https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/watch-trump-advisors-bonkers-rant-pushing-covid-19-conspiracies-1024196/">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/...
Around the world, we think this has happened: leaders looking for a way to avoid lockdown have used projections about weather, or baseline vulnerability due to climate, to get out of doing what they have to. Scientific consensus-finding didn& #39;t help course correct that. (11/20)
In this piece, we circle back to Araujo & Naimi, an ecological preprint that originally projected COVID-19 “will likely marginally affect the tropics.” That claim shaped UN WFP policy and, to various degrees, seems to have derailed lockdowns from Indonesia to Africa. (12/20)
I& #39;ve already written about why that study was wrong, and in all likelihood, it will never end up in a journal. But the harm already happened. The scientific "debate" isn& #39;t where the story is. (13/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1212-8">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
The interesting story here is: after being warned they made a mistake, two scientists might& #39;ve singlehandedly undermined global governance with bad science in broad daylight. (Unlike the Ioannidis story arc, no investigative journalists have dug into this one yet.) (14/20)
So here we are, you and me, at the bottom of a hole. What do we do now? (15/20)
First step: get the science right. In this piece, we walk through why COVID-19 isn& #39;t seasonal yet, why it might be someday, the challenges of scaling lab to nature, different kinds of sunlight, behavioral confounders - everything you need to know. (16/20) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18150-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
Second step: we realize science works differently in a pandemic. If you produce a study about COVID-climate relationships - even if you say sunlight only has a 1% effect - know that the work you& #39;re doing is more likely than not to be used to undermine public health. (17/20)
And if you know that - speaking as someone who& #39;s spent his life studying the relationship between climate and infectious diseases, and loves to squeeze a good paper out of a crisis as much as the next guy - I& #39;m still not sure why you would produce the work. (18/20)
Finally, science communicators: I& #39;m asking for your help. We have to get this 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⬇️" title="Pfeil nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Pfeil nach unten"> information out there, not just to hold governments accountable, but to help people understand their personal risk as people resume outdoor contact, and the S. Hemisphere looks toward summer. (19/20)
information out there, not just to hold governments accountable, but to help people understand their personal risk as people resume outdoor contact, and the S. Hemisphere looks toward summer. (19/20)" title="Finally, science communicators: I& #39;m asking for your help. We have to get this https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⬇️" title="Pfeil nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Pfeil nach unten"> information out there, not just to hold governments accountable, but to help people understand their personal risk as people resume outdoor contact, and the S. Hemisphere looks toward summer. (19/20)" class="img-responsive" style="max-width:100%;"/>
This is the most important thing we can do to get back on track: when people say "it& #39;s a small effect, but policymakers should probably still consider it," your answer should be "no." (20/20) https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1262017293359501318">https://twitter.com/NateSilve...
