Who gets to be an expert?
Who gets to be an expert?
Author
Magnuson, Doug
McGrath, Jenny
Faculty Advisor
Date
2020
Keywords
experts , evaluation
Abstract (summary)
In the past few months we have been flooded with graphs, models, and
vocabulary about the spread of the virus. Here is a not-so-brief list of
some of the words that appeared in newspapers, Twitter, and on
Facebook in the first 30 days of the pandemic:
Confirmed cases, presumptive cases, number of tests,
number of positive tests, proportion of positive tests, log(2)
scale, log(10) scale, exponential growth, linear growth, lagged
effects, number of hospitalizations, number of patients on
ventilators, number of ICU patients, deaths from COVID,
deaths from COVID in hospitals compared to at home, time
since the 10th confirmed case, percentage change,
skewness, asymptomatic patients, deaths per million, deaths
per 100,000, cases per million, infection rates, testing rates,
percentage of positive rates, proportion of cases who have
recovered, lag-corrected epidemiological curves,
jurisdictional sampling, empirical vs. experimental results,
modeling, r-nought, effective retransmission rate, false
positives, false negatives, excess deaths, 7-day rolling
average, contact tracing, community spread, social
distancing, self-isolation, self-quarantine, flattening the
curve. If you want to be an expert in infectious disease, these words are just
the start of what you need to know. For the rest of us there are three
choices: Learn all of these words and how to interpret the graphs
associated with them, choose wisely which experts to follow, or ignore all of
them and use “common sense.”
Publication Information
Maguson, D. & McGrath, J. (2020). Who gets to be an expert? CYC On-line, 258, 33-37. https://cyc-net.org/cyc-online/aug2020.pdf
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
All Rights Reserved