Left-vs-right is not the only bias that matters. Before the pandemic, I would have thought that virologists care about how viruses are transmitted. It seems, that they don’t consider that to be their field.
Given that virologists are higher status in academia than people in environmental health who actually care about how viruses are transmitted outside the lab, the COVID19 seems to have been bad. Pseudoscience around 6-feet distancing was propagated by government regulations. Even Fauci admits that there was no sound reasoning that supported the 6-feet rule.
Fauci also decided against using use money from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to fund studies about community masking as a public health intervention. You don’t need virologists to run studies about masking, so probably that’s why he didn’t want to give money to it.
While Fauci was likely more to the left, that did not create the most harmful biases in the policy response that didn’t want to use science to it’s fullest potential to reduce transmission of COVID19 but rather wanted to give billions to the Global Virome Project.
In another case, grid-independent rooftop solar installations are a lot more expensive than they would need to be. Building codes are made by a firefighter interest group in the US, and for firefighters it’s practical if the rooftop solar cells shut of when disconnected from the grid and as a result the pushed based on flimsy evidence for regulation that means that most rooftop solar in the US doesn’t work if the grid is cut off.
The question of whether you want grid-independent rooftop solar, is not one of left-vs-right but the biases are different.
Especially, today where many experts are very narrow in their expertise and have quite specific interests because of their expertise, thinking in terms of left-wing and right-wing is not enough.
Left-vs-right is not the only bias that matters. Before the pandemic, I would have thought that virologists care about how viruses are transmitted. It seems, that they don’t consider that to be their field.
Given that virologists are higher status in academia than people in environmental health who actually care about how viruses are transmitted outside the lab, the COVID19 seems to have been bad. Pseudoscience around 6-feet distancing was propagated by government regulations. Even Fauci admits that there was no sound reasoning that supported the 6-feet rule.
Fauci also decided against using use money from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to fund studies about community masking as a public health intervention. You don’t need virologists to run studies about masking, so probably that’s why he didn’t want to give money to it.
While Fauci was likely more to the left, that did not create the most harmful biases in the policy response that didn’t want to use science to it’s fullest potential to reduce transmission of COVID19 but rather wanted to give billions to the Global Virome Project.
In another case, grid-independent rooftop solar installations are a lot more expensive than they would need to be. Building codes are made by a firefighter interest group in the US, and for firefighters it’s practical if the rooftop solar cells shut of when disconnected from the grid and as a result the pushed based on flimsy evidence for regulation that means that most rooftop solar in the US doesn’t work if the grid is cut off.
The question of whether you want grid-independent rooftop solar, is not one of left-vs-right but the biases are different.
Especially, today where many experts are very narrow in their expertise and have quite specific interests because of their expertise, thinking in terms of left-wing and right-wing is not enough.