(2021-10-02) Gelman I Can't Quite Say I'm Shocked That People Aren't More Shocked About Harvard And The CDC

Andrew Gelman: I can’t quite say I’m shocked that people aren’t more shocked about Harvard University and the CDC’s latest misdeeds . . . but I’m disappointed that people aren’t more disappointed. Here’s what really stunned me. Not that Harvard and the CDC made embarrassing stupid errors—again, we all do that; I proved a false theorem once, and one of my articles has an incorrect definition of p-values in its first sentence, granted that particular error was introduced in the editing process, but it’s still my job to read my damn articles before they go to press, right?—; and not even that they haven’t shown any interest in fixing these mistakes. No, what really bothered me was the reaction of our blog commenters.

25 comments on one post, 32 on the other, and nobody in either comments section expressed shock, surprise, or even disappointment at these institutions for letting us down. Everybody was like, oh yeah, Harvard, what can you expect, they’ll gladly trade their soul for a feature story on NPR, and, oh yeah, CDC, what can you expect, they’re so political, the science doesn’t matter to them.

that should bother us. That it doesn’t, is an indication of the sad state we’ve come to, that decline in trust that has been seen for so many (elite) institutions in this country.