The slow suffocation of science by data

What we're witnessing in recent weeks is a slow suffocation of science - by the hyperspeed and rulelessness of modern technologies including data and social media.

The dominant themes in pandemic reporting from late 2020 to February have been the holiday spikes, virus variants, from the U.K. then South Africa, vaccinations, forthcoming vaccines, and the dramatic decline in cases.

All sorts of reasons have been concocted to explain the trendlines. So-called experts make passionate arguments mostly based on conjecture built on top of some cherry-picked data.

I took a few minutes to pull together the following chart, so we all can join the cacophony.

Thanks to the team at OurWorldinData for collecting and making the data accessible.

I have chosen a range of countries representing many different experiences. For example, Israel (blue line) has been loudly claiming victory on the vaccination front. The U.K. (pink) likewise has self-congratulated on their vaccination work. There is increasing chatter in the U.S. along the same lines. Meanwhile, Canada (second from bottom) has been criticized for a slow vaccine roll-out. So has the E.U. South Africa (green) also has a slow roll-out, is the epicenter of the much-feared South African variant, and even stopped using the Astrazeneca-Oxford vaccine.

Valid causal factors must explain the trend in every place where the factor is active. Some factors, like the Thanksgiving holiday, are local while many factors, such as vaccinations, are global.

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After making the above chart, I also checked in on the Swedish experiment:

Isn't it funny that when the trend isn't looking good, the voices disappear? Journalists should be chasing after those epidemiologists and professors to ask whether they repudiate their prior views, or if they have an explanation for what transpired.

The mainstream media have been vocal in stamping out misinformation. And yet, they have given a lot of space early on to this renegade group of scientists. Not correcting the record, and informing their audience that the theory has buckled under the weight of reality, also contributes to misinformation.

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A sharp drop in cases occurred in Japan starting mid-January, where they only just approved a vaccine (mid February). Here's what happening in Asia Pacific.

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If you're a business analyst who've been asked to explain the trends in your company's performance indicators, you already know this type of trend analysis is very hard work - you can't just sling things at the wall. Offering explanations for some cherry-picked data is not science; it's a mockery of the scientific method.

If this post makes you question the experts you hear night after night on the news, I'd have succeeded.

 

P.S. [2/22/2021] Right on cue, the New York Times put this article up today. To put it succinctly, the two statements can both be independently true: that the vaccines are helping, and that the cases have recently sharply declined. Two true statements do not a link establish. About the situation in the U.K., they say "Vaccines don’t explain it: Even though a quarter of the population has been vaccinated, only the earliest recipients had significant protection by Jan. 10, when cases there started to drop. Those early doses mostly went to health-care workers and elderly patients already in the hospital."

 

Comments

[Wolfgang Remmel]

The case of sweden very much depends with which countries its compared with.
Its demographic structure even is mire comparable to other european countries than only the nordic ones

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biweekly-covid-cases-per-million-people?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=ESP~GBR~FRA~SWE~CZE~CHE&region=World

[Kaiser]

WR: The chart you made shows Sweden worse than the other countries except Czechia so to me, it isn't saying something different. In my post, I'm actually speaking mostly to U.S. reporters and commentators, as I do not have much exposure to non-U.S. media. Here, a faction of the scientists has repeatedly pointed to Sweden as an example of why there should not be any lockdowns, etc. Sweden initially said that their policies would prevent a second wave, and I'm impressed their leaders have admitted the error and adjusted the policies. What I haven't seen in the U.S. are those scientists following Sweden's lead. The media has not called them to account either.