Before the pandemic I didn't use Twitter much. Now I am becoming an expert on the many types of logical fallacies that people who do NOT have any arguments use to try to discredit scientists
3/ I've decided to catalogue and respond here to some of the most common things I am confronted with, in an attempt to diminish my expertise, question my motives, and turn people against me in general.
4/ Here "Appeal to motive", evidence-free, that I say #COVIDisAirborne because I benefit from sales of CO2 meters, HEPA filters, or whatever
7/ BTW my motivation to write this thread is to educate others (and myself) on these fallacies and how to respond to them. Some are more obvious, some less so
When I was new to twitter, wasted a lot of time dealing with them. Hope to save others time
Nothing to do w/ this:
8/ Tone policing (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_poli…) – focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic.
11/ The "Normalcy Bias" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_…) has also been prominent in the pandemic, especially at the start, but also w/ each wave:
"There are 3 phases of response: 'denial, deliberation, and the decisive moment'. Ppl were likely to deny that a disaster was happening"
12/ One example of the Normalcy Bias (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_…) on early responses of many experts to the pandemic. There had not been a really bad pandemic for over a century, didn't believe it could happen / warn the public / prepare.
15/ Most interesting about the logical fallacy (Courtier's Reply) used by @Metadoc to dismiss airborne transmission experts as not having relevant expertise to discuss COVID transmission through air:
He himself is an expert on... transmission of diseases through WATER, not air!
17/ The mix of Appeals to Authority / Courtier's Reply by @WHO et al. against airborne / aerosol scientists has been so prominent that @trishgreenhalgh wrote a whole paper about this dynamic (explaining it with more sophisticated Bourdieusian theory):
"The fallacy of minimizing 1 harm by pointing out a more severe harm is fallacy of relative privation. Has been commonly employed to minimize how COVID-19 has harmed children"
19/ "Traitorous Critic Fallacy" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_dece…): "implying that the critic is motivated by undisclosed favorability or affiliation to out-group, rather than responding to the criticism. Critic should avoid the question or topic entirely"
1/ "After four years of fighting about it, @WHO has finally proclaimed that viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID, can be spread through the air"
3/ "Words matter. When people heard that COVID might spread on surfaces, they wasted time wiping down groceries. People who misunderstood airborne spread needlessly wore masks on outdoor walks and veered off sidewalks to avoid their neighbors."
1/ New paper in @ScienceMagazine: "Mandating Indoor Air Quality for Public Buildings"
Explaining current status of indoor air quality standards (in short: bad or non-existent), the huge health benefits that would arise from them & proposing a path forward science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
2/ "People living in urban & industrialized societies, which are expanding globally, spend more than 90% of time indoors, breathing indoor air (IA)."
"Most countries do NOT have legislated indoor air quality (IAQ) performance standards for public spaces"
1/ Measuring CO2 indoors in a 10 day trip from US to Europe & back
Bus @RideRTD to Denver airport, poorly ventilated as usual.
We have not left town yet! In previous trips it kept increasing, we'll see this time.
2/ For background on what CO2 indoors indicates and more details, see
TLDR:
- We exhale 40000 ppm CO2
- Outdoors: 420
- Each 400 extra ppm indoors = 1% extra rebreathed air
- CO2 makes us dumber, indicator of virus & pollutants. Does not capture filteringdocs.google.com/document/d/e/2…
3/ Or by reducing recirculation. Some recirculation is ok if well-filtered, saves energy.
Energy-recovery ventilators allow ventilating well with limited energy use.