Coronavirus & Alex Berenson -- Shut Up, the Experts Explained | National Review"People whose expertise has been questioned often respond in ways that further alienate the skeptics.
A good illustration comes from Vanity Fair’s profile of Alex Berenson, a leading advocate of the view that lockdowns are too strict.
Berenson was one of the first journalists to point out that the IHME model, on which so many states rely, drastically overestimated hospitalizations — even after multiple revisions, and even after taking the effect of lockdowns into account.
Here is the response from Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, as quoted by Vanity Fair:
Models are not crystal balls. A modeler is giving you a range of potential outcomes. What he [Berenson] is doing is what a lot of people who don’t understand science do, they take the uncertainty built into a model and say, “Oh, well, it shows these people don’t know what they are talking about.” He is playing with scientific uncertainty in order to say, “See, I know what is right here.” He is somebody with a messianic complex. And to be clear, all of the models say this is going to be one of the worst epidemics we have ever faced.
Note the arrogant tone, the name-calling, and the argument from authority.
This is how Professor Gonsalves intends to win over the skeptics?...
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