Glider Fire Sale

On Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 8:56:10 AM UTC-4, b4soaring wrote:
What the predictions said was "if we do nothing, something bad will happen, but only if we do nothing.

Something is then done.

Something bad doesn't happen, at least not quite so bad.

It doesn't mean the predictions were wrong, just that the worst case scenarios were prevented:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqzicvDVcKg


On Saturday, 9 May 2020 01:04:01 UTC+1, wrote:
I think in this specific case, however, Neil Ferguson has a bit of a reputation for getting it not only wrong but way wrong. For example:

He was behind research resulting in the destruction of 11 million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that 150,000 people could die.

Predicted in 2002 that up to 50,000 people would die from mad cow disease in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from mad cow.

Predicted in 2005 that up to 150 million people would be killed from bird flu. Reality was that only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

Ferguson’s advice in 2009 said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was that the swine flu would kill 65,000 Brits. Reality was that swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Pretty hard to take such a guy seriously but that's exactly what happened when he said there would be 2.2 million dead in USA and 500,000 dead in UK. Oops, missed it by "that" much...

On Friday, May 8, 2020 at 2:24:00 PM UTC-5, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 08 May 2020 10:54:56 -0700, greggballou wrote:

Nice try. Same story in the telegraph link below.

That was a general observation, not specifically about that story. The
Sun, Daily Fail and the Torygraph are not news sources I trust.

If its on BBC Radio Four or in New Scientist its probably true.

Mr Lockdown doesn't believe in your new
religion even though he created it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ve-government-
scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/

Thats a common problem with some elements of UK government and senior
civil servants: they are so far up their own arses they don't think the
rules they impose can possibly apply to themselves.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that this necessarily makes their
science invalid if they're scientists. Thats unlikely because peer review
is a fairly good way of keeping scientists honest. Mistakes and fraud
WILL be remembered. Remember Andrew Wakefield of MMR infamy? He's
thoroughly discredited these days and ignored by everybody outside the
lunatic fringe.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Good video. Especially highlighting the impact of the predictions on behaviour and the subsequent lowering of bad outcome. It's too bad that some posters seem to spend a lot of time looking for consipiracy behind, under, near and inside every stone when anything impacts or their very self-centered world view.