Can You Trust Science Too Much?
Channel: vlogbrothers
Date: 2021-07-30

Science is a human-created process that is undergoing constant revision and it is the best tool we have for uncovering truth. It's not a bunch of facts, it's not an ideology. It's imperfect and influenced by bias, but it is also very good at decreasing the affects of bias. 

Forcing science to stand up next to systems that use entirely different rules is super frustrating, and I have been very disheartened by how effective that has been for getting people to abandon expertise for some guy who has opinions. 

But I am also frustrated by people who treat science like it's an ideology...who take whatever is the current consensus and attack people who want to add to it or challenge it as if they are anti-science or a political opponent. 

The nice thing is that we do have lots of randomized controlled trials for several different vaccines so, like, let's definitely do that. But we also need to keep investigating anti-virals and treatments for sick people because, like, we're not out of the woods yet...

Sources:
A good general article to read if you want to know more:
https://theconversation.com/a-major-ivermectin-study-has-been-withdrawn-so-what-now-for-the-controversial-drug-164627

Latest and most robust analysis shows ivermectin is not a good COVID Treatment: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab591/6310839
(this only looked at randomized controlled trials, which compare people in the same situation who got either a drug or a placebo and no one knew who got what.)

Observational Studies find Promising Results: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006291X20319598?via=ihub
(observational studies give people the experimental treatment to see how they do, but they don't test that against a placebo, just against the general background, which makes them much less reliable.)

Ivermectin Study Used Faulty Data: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns

Big New Ivermectin Trial: https://www.principletrial.org/



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