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   HalvarFlake (halvarflake@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 01:21:40 JST HalvarFlake

   in reply to

   ... unknown pathogen causes during an infection is a *lower bound* to the actual harms. It's not even centered on the expectation value, because you can expect to learn more about the harms in the future.

   People do not understand this intentional bias in scientific research. And people make risk decisions around a *lower bound* for risk, not around *expected value* of risk.

   One data point about underestimating COVID harms:

   https://med.uth.edu/anesthesiology/2023/03/23/study-sars-cov-2-the-virus-causing-covid-19-can-alter-genome-structure-of-our-cells/

   • Embed this notice
     HalvarFlake (halvarflake@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 06-Apr-2023 01:21:41 JST HalvarFlake

     A quick toot about bias in science:

     Science as a statistical estimator is intentionally biased toward saying "we do not know". This is to prevent superstitions, and to have a high bar to what we consider "truth". In the early days of the COVID pandemic, proponents of "letting it rip" repeatedly argued that the impact of the virus is minimal, according to the science at the time, and that there is not enough proof that masks work.

     The thing is: What you know about the harm an ...

     Valerie Aurora repeated this.