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Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

This point from the article is really important IMO

'Scientific consensus is important, but it isn’t uncommon when some of the most important voices turn out to be those of independent thinkers, like John Ioannidis, whose views were initially doubted. That’s not an argument for prematurely accepting his contestable views, but it is a sound argument for keeping him, and others like him, at the table'

In a free society information and ideas should flow freely, not be banned and originators punished as happens in closed societies. It is alarming the level of vitriol and blind adherence to 'the scientific method' aka accepted establishment viewpoint in some cases, particularly online.

For all the endless proselytizing about 'innovation' there are some remarkably closed minded people around, enabled and amplified by social networks

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> independent thinkers, like John Ioannidis, whose views were initially doubted.

The phrasing of this makes it sound as though his views have become accepted.

They have not, in fact the absolute shambles of a "study" he did to support his conclusions (that COVID-19 is weaker than flu, and that almost everyone has had it already) are a huge embarrassment, or ought to be, except that he works for the Hoover Institute, which is explicitly ideologically opposed to things like Public Health efforts.

There is no reason to for such "science" to be anything but excoriated.

I still wonder why people defend Ioannidis so much, given the amount of crap he has done lately.

As someone said last week, maybe he just likes being a contrarian too much, and cannot look past the urge to contradict just to gain more notoriety.

I'm not in the academic sciences but when my uncle published his thesis in a journal for his physics PhD, he got literal hate mail in his mailbox for going against the old-guard with his conclusions. It completely blew my mind that his peers who worked in the sciences got so wound that they sent hate mail to him. I think he still has the letters all these decades later.

I learned second hand that apparently a lot of scientific acedemia is like that. Crazy.

Thanks for sharing this. I've heard many stories like that of your uncle from professional researchers in science, economics, and other fields. This is something that people who have no experience in professional academia and science often do not understand.

In my experience a lot of people assume that because science and related disciplines are rational endeavors that the institutions and culture compassing them must also be rational, empirical, purely evidence-based, etc. Reality can be almost comically, and sometimes tragically, the opposite.

It's like finance or law or any other field with some hothead cutthroat personalities in powerful positions. Where there is perceived power there is an attraction to people who feed off of power alone. Egos are a plenty and often cruel to others trying for the same goals. Lots of people are hypercompetitive rather than collaborative, and see any peer as an adversary or challenger rather than leaning into synergy.

This kind of stuff would happen at conferences too, a couple notable cases of screaming matches from the audience to the presenter have happened. Sometimes vindictive professors will go to a rival professors's grad student's talk and just grill the poor kid, asking them impossible questions and being hypercritical. Usually the grad student's own professor has to step in and try to deflect the assholes line of questioning. Sometimes the professors are even in the same department. It's a total cringe moment for the rest of the audience, and is definitely a phenomenon that is slowly growing out of the field as professors retire.

Take a look at the comment section of this blog to see it first hand: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/how-not-to-perf...

Most probable the senders were non academic cranks. Not serious researcher will do that,even less for a kid just getting a PhD

I'm in physics and I've never heard of anything remotely like this. Are you sure that "hate mail" wasn't just pointing out errors in his work, which is a completely legitimate and downright essential part of science?

Our public doctors even are getting death threats. https://www.fr.de/panorama/corona-experte-virologe-christian...

This is the bestknown public figure in Germany who supports the Imperial College Study and the drastic lockdown measures, but his public statements are mostly political, without proper evidence. Never mentioned the IFR, the R0, the absolute numbers, the curves. Our local panic guy.

>It is alarming the level of vitriol and blind adherence to 'the scientific method'

My experience has been that these faults are expressed in irrational opposition to "the scientific method", and just as dramatically as you've described - and that irrational support of it is much less dramatic.

Are you referring to this article? https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a...

The parent article referred to the author of this. I just quoted a paragraph of the parent article to make my point, I don't have an opinion/haven't read Ioannidis piece

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