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Jared Sutton's avatar

There are only a few possible explanations as to how such a glaring error could have made it into such an important paper.

(1) It was intentional. In my wildest suspicious moments, I can't believe this is the case. But the reason is not that I don't believe those that brought the paper are too honorable to lie, but that the would-be lie was so poorly hidden.

(2) It was the result of sloppy science due to the people performing the research having an idea of what the outcome should be prior to beginning the research.

I think explanation 2 is likely because we have plenty of instances of this happening on the regular before COVID. Now the researchers aren't just trying to make the person paying them happy (by selectively interpreting in a convenient way), but a political stance formed around many COVID-related topics before the research began, and it became abundantly clear that there was only one correct view. If these researchers came to the "wrong" conclusion, then their livelihood could be ripped from them.

I don't know what to do to reverse these trends, but I do look forward to hearing your thoughts, as always.

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William Cunningham's avatar

I found this substack post illuminating on at least how I read most things now: https://climateer.substack.com/p/numbers . Nothing is trustworthy on its face anymore and honestly probably never was, at least down to the detail of individual numbers.

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