RFK is a very difficult case. Not when it comes to what to do about his speech, I'm of the same mindset as you and I don't support the misinformation panic. But free expression people do need to be clear in recognizing that there are lots of people out there with poor critical-thinking faculties and a conspiracy-theorizing mindset. RFK is obviously such a person.
The complicating factor, of course, is that a critical mass of voters is equally bad or worse in these respects. (An important habit of mind for free speech absolutists is to work hard not to overestimate the electorate's critical thinking capabilities, which the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor encourages us to do.)
I think there is value in holding the line that says 5G conspiracy theories, vaccine/autism and GMO fearmongering and the like has no place in the halls of power. If the opponent were Nikki Haley, I'd be inclined to say that it's worth running a greater risk of losing in order to repudiate RFK. Given that the opponent was Trump, I think you're right that it was worth it to try to reach an understanding with him.
Bhattacharya, on the other hand, is a very serious person and I actually agree with many of his unorthodox views. I think it would be great to have him in a high position. But here there is a problem as well. If he works for Trump, that could end up further polarizing the response to his views--lots of folks will assume that he's a bad guy because he's willing to work with Trump (and RFK). It would be nice if the response was the one you hope for, but I'm not sure that's realistic.
Thank you for your comment, I mostly agree. But I don't feel I can decide who has a place in the halls of power and who does not. I have my own preferences, but if the voters decide that someone has a place, they belong there.
I see the force of that, although what I'm saying is that if it weren't for Trump, I'd support the Democrats saying "Part of our 'platform' is that RFK shouldn't have a place in government, voters can choose us or not on that basis." Which is what they did in the actual campaign against Trump.
But also I think it's fine for some things to be "undemocratic," in the sense of being outside the purview of the issues that candidates campaign on and voters get to register opinions on. Like no candidate ever runs on nuclear security issues these days even though policy still gets made in that domain.
Yes, totally fine for a political party or nominee to exclude someone and then live with the consequences if voters decide otherwise, though I think in this case it was a major strategic miscalculation. I felt in July last year (when I wrote the post on Kennedy) that for all his flaws, he could be a real asset to the party. I think folks like Golden and Booker see that now.
I continue to find perspectives like this perplexing. RFK Jr. is a known quantity, defined historically by his being profoundly wrong about most topics on which he advocates and his unwillingness to change his position despite definitive critique. Yes, what happens with him as HHS secretary remains to be seen. It is theoretically possible that power will have a moderating effect on him and that he would somehow see his way to endorsing routine childhood vaccination, but his own protestations that he is not "anti-vaccine" are utterly unconvincing given his history. He has a long track record of opposing childhood vaccination based on dubious naturalistic fallacies.
The cases of Prasad and Bhattacharya are a little tougher to adjuducate. They both at least appear to be competent in some domains but have demonstrated precisely the opposite in their advocacy around Covid. Prasad may have correctly identified instances where the risk-benefit calculation for vaccination (e.g., in young people) or masking (e.g., in toddlers) was not clear, but elsewhere he demonstrated, repeatedly, that he has a poor grasp of infectious disease dynamics and interpreted the statistical results of many studies in risible ways. I can only conclude that he is in fact more susceptible to motivated reasoning than the targets of his ire, not to mention being high on his own gas.
I was led back here by a Bluesky post where you said it would be better for him to post without being trolled. He should extend the same professional courtesy to people he disagrees with rather than slandering them with accusations of lying and deceipt [in some cases, he points to real cases of bad behavior and messaging on the part of public health officials, but also unjustly smears swathes of people]. I cannot see why you do not hold him to the same standard, much less why you appear to be such a fan of his. I think he's precisely the wrong kind of contrarian, i.e., one whose protestations do less to illumnate and more to inflame knee-jerk emotional reactions. Paraphrasing a colleague of mine, contrarianism is a technology that we use to inprove our understanding. I would add that once contrarianism becomes one's identity, that person now resides in perilous environs. (As an aside, Glenn Loury has fallen victim to this in the past and admitted to it, to his credit. Despite the fact that he obviously relishes his own contrarianism, he is a serious thinker with a great deal of self-awareness.)
I know less about Bhattacharya, though I will say I believe the Great Barrington Declaration to be an embarrassing document for all involved, and not just in hindsight. Without relitigating the entire thing, the fatal core of that document was this: they *assumed* the truth of herd immunity, ignored unique aspects of population risk under contagion, and then proposed solutions based on those assumptions. That document is an object lesson in poor reasoning under uncertainty.
None of this is to say there aren't serious discussions to be had about trade-offs, mandates, tensions between systemic risk and individual liberty, etc. It's crucial we have those discussions, and I do believe ideological and political homogeneity in my field is a problem.
Thank you for this very thoughtful comment, I agree with much of it.
I don't think RFK can be persuaded to endorse the MMR vaccine but these decisions will be made mostly at the local level and if Bhattacharya breaks with him on this (as Prasad certainly does) it could reduce hesitancy in the areas where it has most taken hold. I stand by this point.
On Prasad, yes, he should extend the same professional courtesy to others. But even if he doesn't, I think it would be good if we all engage with him in good faith. I would like Bluesky to be a productive space for dialogue and we need his perspective there.
One person I didn't mention in this post is Emily Oster, who was maligned viciously on social media for making what I think are quite sensible claims about the effects of school closures.
Glenn is a complicated figure (as his memoir reveals). We've had plenty of disagreements in the past, but I feel fortunate to have enjoyed his friendship for a couple of decades.
Finally, on Kennedy, I think it was a strategic blunder by Democrats to treat him as a bigot rather than just profoundly mistaken on certain issues:
I have much more sympathy for Oster. I've disagreed with a fair bit of her writing, but it has usually led me to better understand my own views and the limits of my knowledge. I have certainly seen some incensed takes on her from public health folks, including people I respect, and have found many of them to be far too harsh, even if some of the criticism is accurate, in my view.
Re: Prasad: one is entitled to good faith until they squander that license, particularly by not returning it. I really do think that on issues such as masking, Prasad simply repeats things he has claimed ad nauseum. (I read maybe 10 posts of his last weekend, and I got the sense that he rarely responds substantively to challenges. I came across a post where you, correctly, challenged one of his comments on the direction of confounding in a study of the effect of Covid vaccination on cardiovascular disease [I think]. Not sure I saw him respond to that, but maybe I missed it.) For instance, whether masks "work" is in fact a conflation of at least two questions: 1) do they effectively filter incoming and/or outgoing pathogens, which is fundamentally a question about physics, and 2) if #1, are they effective public health strategies... if not, why not? Much room for reasonable and productive disagreement, but I think you'd have to look elsewhere to get it. As far as I've seen, he's mostly waved these sorts of discussions away casually. (For context, I was a "mask skeptic" early in the pandemic, in the sense that I suspected massive issues with correct use that would reduce masks' effectiveness and possibly even lead to "risk compensation". I'm still not sure we've come to a good understanding of the trade-off here. As a modeler, I am certainly interested in this kind of question. Obviously, the acceptability of mandates is a political question.)
Despite my low opinion of RFK Jr., I did find your suggestion that the Democrats blundered in ostracizing him interesting. From the standpoint of political strategy, it does seem like it could have cost Harris some votes (but where, geographically?).
I'm looking forward to reading Loury's memoir. I've enjoyed the episodes he's done with you, though I might have missed the older ones. I also owe more of his books and scholarly works a read.
A trivial aside: when I was a PhD student, I ate (and still eat) at a little breakfast joint in my neighborhood, where I would see Glenn from time to time. At that point, I had just discovered the episodes he did with John McWhorter discussing various campus/culture war issues. Was always too shy to say hi, though.
I think Glenn would have responded warmly if you had said hello.
On RFK and the election, his support was especially high among Latinos (link in post), so I would say NV and AZ would have seen the largest effects. But his numbers were also high elsewhere, enough to tip the rust belt states in my opinion.
RFK is a very difficult case. Not when it comes to what to do about his speech, I'm of the same mindset as you and I don't support the misinformation panic. But free expression people do need to be clear in recognizing that there are lots of people out there with poor critical-thinking faculties and a conspiracy-theorizing mindset. RFK is obviously such a person.
The complicating factor, of course, is that a critical mass of voters is equally bad or worse in these respects. (An important habit of mind for free speech absolutists is to work hard not to overestimate the electorate's critical thinking capabilities, which the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor encourages us to do.)
I think there is value in holding the line that says 5G conspiracy theories, vaccine/autism and GMO fearmongering and the like has no place in the halls of power. If the opponent were Nikki Haley, I'd be inclined to say that it's worth running a greater risk of losing in order to repudiate RFK. Given that the opponent was Trump, I think you're right that it was worth it to try to reach an understanding with him.
Bhattacharya, on the other hand, is a very serious person and I actually agree with many of his unorthodox views. I think it would be great to have him in a high position. But here there is a problem as well. If he works for Trump, that could end up further polarizing the response to his views--lots of folks will assume that he's a bad guy because he's willing to work with Trump (and RFK). It would be nice if the response was the one you hope for, but I'm not sure that's realistic.
Thank you for your comment, I mostly agree. But I don't feel I can decide who has a place in the halls of power and who does not. I have my own preferences, but if the voters decide that someone has a place, they belong there.
I see the force of that, although what I'm saying is that if it weren't for Trump, I'd support the Democrats saying "Part of our 'platform' is that RFK shouldn't have a place in government, voters can choose us or not on that basis." Which is what they did in the actual campaign against Trump.
But also I think it's fine for some things to be "undemocratic," in the sense of being outside the purview of the issues that candidates campaign on and voters get to register opinions on. Like no candidate ever runs on nuclear security issues these days even though policy still gets made in that domain.
Yes, totally fine for a political party or nominee to exclude someone and then live with the consequences if voters decide otherwise, though I think in this case it was a major strategic miscalculation. I felt in July last year (when I wrote the post on Kennedy) that for all his flaws, he could be a real asset to the party. I think folks like Golden and Booker see that now.
I continue to find perspectives like this perplexing. RFK Jr. is a known quantity, defined historically by his being profoundly wrong about most topics on which he advocates and his unwillingness to change his position despite definitive critique. Yes, what happens with him as HHS secretary remains to be seen. It is theoretically possible that power will have a moderating effect on him and that he would somehow see his way to endorsing routine childhood vaccination, but his own protestations that he is not "anti-vaccine" are utterly unconvincing given his history. He has a long track record of opposing childhood vaccination based on dubious naturalistic fallacies.
The cases of Prasad and Bhattacharya are a little tougher to adjuducate. They both at least appear to be competent in some domains but have demonstrated precisely the opposite in their advocacy around Covid. Prasad may have correctly identified instances where the risk-benefit calculation for vaccination (e.g., in young people) or masking (e.g., in toddlers) was not clear, but elsewhere he demonstrated, repeatedly, that he has a poor grasp of infectious disease dynamics and interpreted the statistical results of many studies in risible ways. I can only conclude that he is in fact more susceptible to motivated reasoning than the targets of his ire, not to mention being high on his own gas.
I was led back here by a Bluesky post where you said it would be better for him to post without being trolled. He should extend the same professional courtesy to people he disagrees with rather than slandering them with accusations of lying and deceipt [in some cases, he points to real cases of bad behavior and messaging on the part of public health officials, but also unjustly smears swathes of people]. I cannot see why you do not hold him to the same standard, much less why you appear to be such a fan of his. I think he's precisely the wrong kind of contrarian, i.e., one whose protestations do less to illumnate and more to inflame knee-jerk emotional reactions. Paraphrasing a colleague of mine, contrarianism is a technology that we use to inprove our understanding. I would add that once contrarianism becomes one's identity, that person now resides in perilous environs. (As an aside, Glenn Loury has fallen victim to this in the past and admitted to it, to his credit. Despite the fact that he obviously relishes his own contrarianism, he is a serious thinker with a great deal of self-awareness.)
I know less about Bhattacharya, though I will say I believe the Great Barrington Declaration to be an embarrassing document for all involved, and not just in hindsight. Without relitigating the entire thing, the fatal core of that document was this: they *assumed* the truth of herd immunity, ignored unique aspects of population risk under contagion, and then proposed solutions based on those assumptions. That document is an object lesson in poor reasoning under uncertainty.
None of this is to say there aren't serious discussions to be had about trade-offs, mandates, tensions between systemic risk and individual liberty, etc. It's crucial we have those discussions, and I do believe ideological and political homogeneity in my field is a problem.
Thank you for this very thoughtful comment, I agree with much of it.
I don't think RFK can be persuaded to endorse the MMR vaccine but these decisions will be made mostly at the local level and if Bhattacharya breaks with him on this (as Prasad certainly does) it could reduce hesitancy in the areas where it has most taken hold. I stand by this point.
On Prasad, yes, he should extend the same professional courtesy to others. But even if he doesn't, I think it would be good if we all engage with him in good faith. I would like Bluesky to be a productive space for dialogue and we need his perspective there.
One person I didn't mention in this post is Emily Oster, who was maligned viciously on social media for making what I think are quite sensible claims about the effects of school closures.
Glenn is a complicated figure (as his memoir reveals). We've had plenty of disagreements in the past, but I feel fortunate to have enjoyed his friendship for a couple of decades.
Finally, on Kennedy, I think it was a strategic blunder by Democrats to treat him as a bigot rather than just profoundly mistaken on certain issues:
https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-ad-hominem-inference
Thanks again for engaging.
I have much more sympathy for Oster. I've disagreed with a fair bit of her writing, but it has usually led me to better understand my own views and the limits of my knowledge. I have certainly seen some incensed takes on her from public health folks, including people I respect, and have found many of them to be far too harsh, even if some of the criticism is accurate, in my view.
Re: Prasad: one is entitled to good faith until they squander that license, particularly by not returning it. I really do think that on issues such as masking, Prasad simply repeats things he has claimed ad nauseum. (I read maybe 10 posts of his last weekend, and I got the sense that he rarely responds substantively to challenges. I came across a post where you, correctly, challenged one of his comments on the direction of confounding in a study of the effect of Covid vaccination on cardiovascular disease [I think]. Not sure I saw him respond to that, but maybe I missed it.) For instance, whether masks "work" is in fact a conflation of at least two questions: 1) do they effectively filter incoming and/or outgoing pathogens, which is fundamentally a question about physics, and 2) if #1, are they effective public health strategies... if not, why not? Much room for reasonable and productive disagreement, but I think you'd have to look elsewhere to get it. As far as I've seen, he's mostly waved these sorts of discussions away casually. (For context, I was a "mask skeptic" early in the pandemic, in the sense that I suspected massive issues with correct use that would reduce masks' effectiveness and possibly even lead to "risk compensation". I'm still not sure we've come to a good understanding of the trade-off here. As a modeler, I am certainly interested in this kind of question. Obviously, the acceptability of mandates is a political question.)
Despite my low opinion of RFK Jr., I did find your suggestion that the Democrats blundered in ostracizing him interesting. From the standpoint of political strategy, it does seem like it could have cost Harris some votes (but where, geographically?).
I'm looking forward to reading Loury's memoir. I've enjoyed the episodes he's done with you, though I might have missed the older ones. I also owe more of his books and scholarly works a read.
A trivial aside: when I was a PhD student, I ate (and still eat) at a little breakfast joint in my neighborhood, where I would see Glenn from time to time. At that point, I had just discovered the episodes he did with John McWhorter discussing various campus/culture war issues. Was always too shy to say hi, though.
I think Glenn would have responded warmly if you had said hello.
On RFK and the election, his support was especially high among Latinos (link in post), so I would say NV and AZ would have seen the largest effects. But his numbers were also high elsewhere, enough to tip the rust belt states in my opinion.