Originally Posted by
Traffic_Is_Er_Was
I wasn't claiming that at all. I was rebutting the comment that peer review is the be all and end all of the argument.
Those articles are mostly highlighting some issues with the scientific peer review process and suggesting improvements, not saying the peer review process should be discarded completely, to be replaced by....what?
Yes, there are some papers and articles published saying that lockdowns don't work, or more accurately say that current lockdown measures should be altered. However, there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of other articles, statements, evidence and authoritative opinion by far more scientists and medical experts saying they do work, and have produced identifiable results.
So what I say is that if the vast bulk of epidemiologists and public health experts aren't convinced by or entertaining this alternate opinion out there then why should I? Why should anyone posting here, unless they have a secret double life as an epidemiologist? Why do some without any authority to tell scientists they're wrong continue to do it?
It has a psychological basis.
Conspiracy theorists have freed themselves from the lies of The Establishment, the Deep State, the Mainstream “Fake-News” Media. They, and their robust group of like-minded science-deniers, are the only ones who know the real truth. They know something — a lot of things, actually — that the rest of us don’t. They laugh at what fools we are for falling prey to obvious political agendas of scientists who are, after all, notorious for making baseless claims, duh. Everyone who does not share their ideas is a gullible idiot.
There is nothing to be done to dissuade these self-professed experts of their rightness. The fact that scientists live and work by a code that requires them to revise their hypotheses when new data is presented only confirms their belief. Scientists are sometimes wrong, but they, the conspiracy theorists, have always been right. And every new news article, every new study, every new expert opinion, only serves as further evidence that the world is against them.