Thread by @RogerPielkeJr

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There’s a lot of smart & nuanced discussion of the messiness of science in the real world in this essay by @mattwridley

But by the time he gets to the end, my views depart from his pretty severely ...

wsj.com/articles/what-… via @WSJ

Here is how @mattwridley concludes his essay

None of us are prepared to examine evidence ourselves & judge which experts are more reliable than others

Fortunately, there are formal & informal mechanisms which play this role

That’s the short cut

Such “short cuts” — which we can call science advisory mechanisms — generally (but importantly, not always) work well in contexts like climate & GMOs, but have for the most part failed miserably in the pandemic

Certainly @mattwridley spot on when arguing scientists typically have more success characterizing the past, present & near future vs the longer-term future or consequences of alternative courses of action

This is especially the case in novel contexts, doubly so when politicized

Science is messy, scientists humans & contexts of science are characterized by the same pathologies as any other human endeavor

That said, science coupled with an ability to makes sense of science in policy & politics offers the most promising route to better outcomes

/END