Category Archives: Philosophy

In the Spring of 2021, an Israeli doctor voiced a concern about cases of myocarditis that he was witnessing among young men who had received the Pfizer mRNA COVID vaccine. 

There was no apparent reason to doubt his testimony, and that should have been sufficient to alert physicians around the world to be on the lookout for similar occurrences. If confirmed in the experience of others, the Israeli doctor’s concern could be taken into prudent consideration for medical practice and public health worldwide.

But we live in the age of empiricism and “science-based” recommendations. In this age, the clinical judgment of physicians is not a fact until it has a number attached to it. Also, questions of right and wrong and of what to do can only be decided when “data” have been collected.

So a conflict of numerical facts was quickly entered into.Continue reading “The empiricist has no clothes”

Last month marked the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Graunt, commonly regarded as the father of epidemiology.  His major published work, Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, called attention to the death statistics published weekly in London beginning in the late 16th century.  Graunt was skeptical of how causes of death were ascribed, especially in times of plagues.  Evidently, 400 years of scientific advances have done little to lessen his doubts! 

A few days ago, Fox News reported that Colorado governor Jared Polis had “pushed back against recent coronavirus death counts, including those conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”  The Centennial State had previously reported a COVID death count of 1,150 but then revised that number down to 878.  That is but one of many reports raising questions about what counts as a COVID case or a COVID death.  Beyond the raw numbers, many controversies also rage about derivative statistics such as “case fatality rates” and “infection fatality rates,” not just among the general public but between academics as well.  

Of course, a large part of the wrangling is due not only to our unfamiliarity with this new disease but also to profound disagreements about how epidemics should be confronted.  I don’t want to get into the weeds of those disputes here.  Instead, I’d like to call attention to another problem, namely, the somewhat confused way in which we think about medical diagnosis in general, not just COVID diagnoses.Continue reading “What’s a diagnosis about? COVID-19 and beyond”

On the day that we taped our podcast episode with Brian Nosek about the replication crisis, the renowned statistician Andrew Gelman published an essay in the New York Times on precisely that topic.

Gelman echoes some of the remarks made by Nosek.  In particular, he draws attention to the point we discussed regarding what to believe when the results of an experiment are contrary to what is expected.  Commenting on a recent study (co-authored by Nosek) in which statisticians were asked to predict, ahead of a replication experiment, whether the findings of the original study would be replicated or not, Gelman says:

Here’s where it gets really weird. The lack of replication was predicted ahead of time by a panel of experts using a “prediction market,” in which experts were allowed to bet on which experiments were more or less likely to — well, be real.

We tried to press Brian on that point.  Do certain subjects impose essential limitations on empirical science?  It seems to me that certain questions regarding human behavior are essentially answered by human judgment rather than by “mindless” data analysis, despite the fact that human minds can be prone to bias.  Brian agreed but also brought up some counterpoints.  Don’t miss listening to that episode.