FTR, most fans of RFK and/or Rogan would NOT consider an academic or scientific setting ‘neutral’. Those are the habitats of leftist/commie intellectuals. Which a large part of the whole problem.
You don’t play chess with pigeons.
You also don’t debate facts.
I know. But it’d still be fun to make the offer and watch him waffle.
The problem with “debates” as a general proposition is that they usually aren’t a good response to resolving controversies. I have no idea as to Dr. Hotez’s speaking skills, but just more generally being right does not mean you will prevail in a debate as so many debate club participants have discovered over the year. This came up a lot decades ago when carefully prepped creationists would clamor for public debates on evolution, get some biologist to agree, then destroy them on the debate stage because even fairly quick-thinking scientists were often not sufficiently prepared to deal with the line of clever, nimble bullshit the creationists were throwing down.
Public debates in these situations are often a trap tactic.
No, it wouldn’t be fun because that’s not how it would go down. When someone isn’t debating in good faith and doesn’t address the points the other person is making, they don’t waffle.
Anti-vax nut: Point A
Scientist: That’s not true because point B
AVN: Ah, but you’re ignoring (unrelated) point C
S: That is false
AVN: But your objection is addressed by point D
and so on…
Furthermore, the nut can pretend things are black and white and ignore all nuance while emphasizing the uncertainty in science. “Can you definitively say that no one has died within a week of receiving a vaccine, that vaccines are 100% safe? Ah, so you admit they are dangerous!”
As a scientist, you might watch the debate and think the nut is getting his ass handed to him. That’s not what the majority non-scientist audience is going to see.
That’s it precisely- it takes so much longer to refute a lie then tell it that trying to forces you to look pedantic on a few points and ignore the rest. In addition, because the antivaxers aren’t limited by truth, they can ambush with unexpected “facts” that their opponent can’t address because they’ve never heard of them before.
The only way this could work is if a strong, neutral moderator is in charge and all information is shared with the opposing side beforehand. Of course, RFK jr and his ilk would never agree to that.
Otherwise known as a Gish Gallop.
Note also that Horetz has volunteered to go on Rogan (alone) as a regular interview in order to explain the science, but that’s been ignored.
RFK is a nut, and Elon promoting him may be the dumbest thing he’s done so far.
That said, there’s nothing about being a scientist that should make it hard to debate idiots. Gish Gallops can be called out. And ‘trust me - I’m a scientist’ died on the right the day they started calling for censorship for people who said things like the virus was airborne or that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, and a lot of health professionals declared that the George Floyd riots were A-ok because racism was a bigger public health threat than Covid. They blew their trust, so now they are being challenged on everything. That’s how things work.
But most scientists are not the kind of people that would do well in a public debate. So instead, have RFK debate someone like Michael Shermer, who is sympathetic to his free speech arguments but who is a solid skeptic who knows how to debate cranks and could tear RFK into little pieces.
That’s a really good point, but someone else made it better.
I mean, cite? My recollection was the protests were viewed as not that hazardous because they were outdoors and many participants masked.
It is beyond perfect that Sam is supportive of debates with people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Sound like anybody you know?
They were expecting a bump in cases after the first few protests but those never materialized.
Yes, some (“a lot” is rather subjective) health professionals said the decision to protest was a balance between the risk of spreading the disease and the risk of systemic racism - which at the time was itself a real risk given the rather large racial disparities in cases and deaths.
And then the bump in cases didn’t happen and that told us some combination of being outside, distancing, and masking prevent the spread. And future protests and gatherings were considered less of a risk if those factors were in place because of this new knowledge we gained. Contrasted with right wing festivals, protests, etc (like Sturgis) where people bunched together and didn’t mask and there actually were increases in case loads a couple weeks later.
And thus is science advanced.
Of course, none of that is really pertinent to Sam, who is impervious to facts and education. Nor to Elon Musk whose California factories were COVID breeding grounds - and part of the reason he removed to Texas where worker protections are much weaker.
Was that known for certain at the time? My recollection is that the role of ventilation in the spread of covid wasn’t settled at the time, and there was still a reasonable debate over the effectiveness of masks. My memory is that the protestors felt that they were taking a risk for important reasons, not “we’ll be okay because it’s outside,” though the fact of lower outdoor transmission came clear during or not long after that protest season. But memory is an unreliable yardstick.
Note that I’m not agreeing with Sam_Stone’s “a lot of health professionals declared,” because (1) I don’t recall that, and (2) I can’t believe that anyone has ever declared riots “A-ok” and (3) health professionals can have opinions on protests and riots, but these are outside their field and therefore not expert opinions and therefore no more and no less valid than any other non-expert opinion.
Here you go:
And here’s the public letter mentioned in the article:
Signed by 1288 public health professionals.
So, protests against racism or police violence are A-OK. Other protests, however, such as protests against lockdowns, are just white supremacy and should be shut down,
Adding in anti-racist language is guaranteed to alienate the right and cause them to challenge anything future ‘public health authorities’ have to say. Add in the unwarranted censorh of ‘conspiracy theories’ that have been shown to be almost certainly true, such as the origins of Covid in a Wuhan lab, and the ‘public health community’ has done a lot to deatroy their credibility among half of the population. And deservedly so.
Yes, we know.
Surely it’s just agile politics.
BTW, has Sam provided a citation that actually says “the George Floyd riots were A-ok”?
From the open letter you cite: “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19.”
That’s a pretty important point (they even bolded it for you) which explains why they’re talking about it at all. But you have erred in saying
The letter states, “This letter is signed by 1,288 public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals, and community stakeholders.” If you read through the list, some clearly identify themselves as community stakeholders rather than health professionals, and many identify themselves as students in programs that put them on track to be health professionals. It’s not like this was put out by the AMA.