Certainly Uncertain
Good piece by Siobhan Roberts in The New York Times from April 7.
It's on a subject I think about a lot: Uncertainty.
In fact, just this week, I was reviewing the Johari Window and thinking about "unknown unknowns" -- stuff we just can't even imagine happening, like much of the world getting grounded by the government (as I explained it in the column).
What I know is that I don't know -- and that experts who speak with certainty on COVID are experts who probably don't have much to back it up.
We need to embrace that there are uncertainties and recognize how uncomfortable we are about ambiguity, uncertainty.
We long for certainty, to the point where we'll shut off our reasoning to get it.
Excerpt from Roberts' piece:
These are, safe to say, uncertain times.The confirmed global cases of illness from coronavirus are approaching 1.5 million, and reported deaths are well into the six figures, but what are the true rates of infection and mortality?
We don't know.
Last week, Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that up to 25 percent of people infected with coronavirus show no symptoms. But at the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, gave a markedly broader range.
"It's somewhere between 25 and 50 percent," Dr. Fauci said. "And trust me, that is an estimate. I don't have any scientific data yet. You know when we'll get the scientific data? When we get those antibody tests out there."
This type of uncertainty about facts, numbers and science is called epistemic uncertainty. It is caused by a lack of knowledge about the past and the present -- "our ignorance," said David Spiegelhalter, a statistician and chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.
Science is full of epistemic uncertainty. Circling the unknowns, inching toward truth through argument and experiment is how progress is made. But science is often expected to be a monolithic collection of all the right answers. As a result, some scientists -- and the politicians, policymakers and journalists who depend on them -- are reluctant to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties, worried that candor undermines credibility.
...What happens when scientists do acknowledge uncertainty is the question behind a study, published March 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. It explored "The Effects of Communicating Uncertainty on Public Trust in Facts and Numbers."
"The accusations of a post-truth society, and claims that the public 'had had enough of experts,' prompted us to investigate whether trust in 'experts' was lowered by their openly admitting uncertainty about what they know," said Dr. Spiegelhalter, one of the principal investigators.
The study's findings suggest that being transparent about uncertainty does not harm the public's trust in the facts or in the source.
"These results indicate that people 'can handle the truth' about the level of certainty or uncertainty of scientific facts and knowledge," said Anne Marthe van der Bles, a psychologist at the University of Groningen, who is the lead author and an affiliate with the Cambridge research team.
The other problem, however, is scientists and others' longing to tidy things up into "certain" packages.
Also, again from Roberts:
The limitations and uncertainties inevitably get exploited in politicized narratives, and entangled in misinformation and disinformation...
Personally, when reading a scientific paper and when listening to somebody detailing information, I look for openness about the limitations of the science or the other information. There may be mistakes in the math, mistakes in somebody's reasoning, but openness about limitations at least has the look of somebody who cares about the truth, and that's a least a start.
Well, duh.
This can be seen in what has become obvious guesswork by a dozen-plus agencies.
Also, EVERY valid scientific measurement names the instrument/method of measurement and the uncertainty factor - basically the limitation or resolving capability of said measuring device.
The ONLY fixed values in science are STANDARDS, because they are definitions. One place you can find these is at the NIST Web site. Some are surprisingly obscure. I bet you think you know what a “second” or “meter” is…
Meanwhile, numbers for COVID-19 must be presented to sell fear.
Radwaste at April 10, 2020 3:28 AM
thinking about "unknown unknowns"
Remember that the next time someone presents you with a nice, shiny model.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 10, 2020 6:51 AM
Don't forget about the unkown knowns, IRA. There is nothing like those 'Damn it! I knew that!' moments.
Ben at April 10, 2020 9:00 AM
The quest for certainty applies also to the lure of totalitarian/socialist regimes. People want security and safety and these systems promise that--of course it is a lie, but you find out too late.
In science it is often the case that a nice story dominates for far longer than it should because we like a nice tidy story. This was the appeal of Skinner's view and Freud's. Reality has turned out to be much messier. Even in biology, the dogma about 1 gene=1 trait and inheritance took forever to be overturned (1 gene can affect multiple traits as well as the effect of other genes; epigenetics is real etc).
cc at April 10, 2020 9:27 AM
I saw this quote on the internet.
“The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard. “
-- George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Most socialists seem to be rules driven. You can throw contradictions, and unintended consequences in their face all day long and nothing ever gets through.
They are always convinced that if there are rules for everything, and if those stupid people would just follow them, we would have utopia.
The *experts* will tell us all what to do. The experts are never wrong.
Isab at April 10, 2020 10:11 AM
There is nothing like those 'Damn it! I knew that!' moments.
Well, in theory you've parameterized those into something one can get a value for in your model. So that you're not completely pantsed on national TV. Maybe just a flying turban wedgie.
But you can still be surprised by some of the solution states they can bring to the table if those are uncommon and it is a thing not well studied.
For instance, an anti-cyclonic tornado. Rare, but it's a solution for equations at that scale and they do happen.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 10, 2020 10:31 AM
Here's a known klown.
JD at April 10, 2020 12:22 PM
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