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Comment by teh_klev | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to diminish the work of "epidemiologist"'s but they aren't virologists. They're ultimately specialised statisticians and shouldn't have any say in how or what research is carried out.

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What? I’m no virologist or epidemiologist and yet I definitely want to have a say. And when physicists start creating black holes, and AI researchers start creating thinking killer robots, and generals go to war, etc.

I value expert opinions but oversight is necessary.

> What? I’m no virologist or epidemiologist and yet I definitely want to have a say

Well there you go.

Epidemiologists study the spread of diseases and their impact on communities. That's an important factor to consider when judging the potential impact of risky research, and it's not something virologists are trained in.

Sorry, but epidemiologists have no ability to make these predictions. Epidemiologists generally work in the field of "who, when, and where" based on historical data evidence.

Mathematical disease modelling is also part of epidemiology. You may have seen their work discussed in the press early in the COVID epidemic when they predicted the possible death count and the likely impact of various interventions.

Well what were their predictions vs actual outcome?

Speaking from experience, last year we had an outbreak in Melbourne, Australia. The local government's response was guided by modelling from epidemiologists (and others), and went on to match the peak and length of the outbreak to the model's estimations almost down to the day[0].

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-29/coronavirus-melbourne...

They seem to be doing fairly well now, as well.

Only a virologist should tell another virologist what to do. Got it.

Nope, a panel of virologists and related researchers with the same scientific understanding in the field should make these decisions.

It's ok to have wishful thinking. Plenty of grants include virologists and epidemiologists, so your proposal isn't practical.

Sure, they could provide anecdotal input based on past outbreaks, but they don't have the biological expertise to decide solely on what research should or could be carried out.

Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.

"Anecdotally"

That was a reference to your previous comment. Does anecdotal count for nothing? Fine, run a survey of virologists and epidemiologists and report the intersection of set. It will not be arbitrarily small.

I looked through the grant. To my eye, I consider some of the participants as epidemiologists.

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