I would just like to point out that Nate Silver's nonsense today didn't merely insult public health scientists, epidemiologists, and officials.
It also insulted public health ethicists, implying that it takes no special expertise or training to unpack and offer guidance
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It also insulted public health ethicists, implying that it takes no special expertise or training to unpack and offer guidance
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On the deep and fraught complexities in vaccine allocation and prioritization.
I have noted in @AMJPublicHealth that public health ethics is fundamentally about priority-setting:
ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.210…
Some of us have spent years working on exactly these kinds of probs.
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I have noted in @AMJPublicHealth that public health ethics is fundamentally about priority-setting:
ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.210…
Some of us have spent years working on exactly these kinds of probs.
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@AMJPublicHealth The idea that you can just barge into the subject with no training in either public health or applied ethics, wave a gatdang magic wand, and "solve" all of these problems is so absurd I've been wanting to #Hulksmash all day
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Just to be clear, being a public health ethicist doesn't give me or any of my colleagues a crystal ball to note the "right" answer. (Often there isn't one "right" answer, which is something you LEARN by training in ...
Wait for it ...
Applied ethics!!
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Wait for it ...
Applied ethics!!
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In other words, training in and spending years working on public health ethics helps to install a strong sense of epistemic humility -- we know we don't have the answers.
Unlike Nate Silver, who is awful sure he knows The Answer.
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Unlike Nate Silver, who is awful sure he knows The Answer.
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What we do have are a set of very special skills, acquired over years of training, that help us to unpack and excavate all of the issues, values, and relevant moral agents. We think deeply about whose voices are likely to be unheard, like BIPOC and disabled people.
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We are trained to step lightly but methodically, humbly, and carefully. We don't have the answers, but we are good at framing the problems, the potential options and the value tensions and conflicts and how they impact different groups, esp. marginalized and oppressed people.
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And then, some of us, like me, are also trained in policy and have actual, honest-to-goodness experience with both policy work, advocacy, and mediation.
So we can also help facilitate meaningful discussions through equitable and transparent processes of public reason.
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So we can also help facilitate meaningful discussions through equitable and transparent processes of public reason.
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We don't have the "right" answers. But we have the training, experience, and skills to help guide decision-makers and communities to what hopefully will be ethically BETTER decisions, as opposed to some of the ethically WORSE ones we've consistently been choosing.
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If ever public health ethics (and public health law) mattered, it is now. Silver's garbage did not only insult the epidemiologists and scientists -- far more important, no question! -- but they also essentially trashed my entire subfield.
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tl;dr:
Public health ethicists exist. Our training and experience matters. We can help.
(Also: Nate Silver sucks).
11/11
Public health ethicists exist. Our training and experience matters. We can help.
(Also: Nate Silver sucks).
11/11
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