Coronavirus

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Heres a question for ya man..

To what extent does ones personal discernment affect how they interpret a study?

Massively. But...

For instance, if two scientists of equal qualification and standing read a study, and draw entirely opposing conclusions, how does one decide which is right?
Or are they both right?

...that's why a well-designed study doesn't leave things open to questions of interpretation. Data can be interpreted in various ways. But a data-analysis study (typically) proposes an interpretation of available data on the basis of a shared methodology which anyone with the sufficient know-how can apply to the same data themselves.

Scientific disagreements with such a study are objective disagreements (empirical or methodological) with a given interpretation and resulting analysis of the data, not different interpretations of the study. A study that can be "interpreted" in various ways is an inconclusive study. Which exist, but then they are merely calls for more studies and that is there only meaningful conclusion: more to do.

A scientist who disagrees with the conclusions of a study will/should be able to explain, in objective empirical or statistical terms, why they think these conclusions represent either a flawed or (more often) partial analysis of the data, or (even more often) why a given conclusion is something that their analysis of the data (whether or not this analysis of the data is flawed or partial) doesn't actually bear out: a conclusion that goes beyond the evidence. Going from correlation (e.g. rise in vaccinations temporally correlated to rise in excess deaths) to causation (e.g. vaccines are causing excess deaths) is going beyond the evidence, independently of whether or not that correlation is in the data. Further analysis may find such a causal link, but that doesn't make any prior study which concluded causality from correlation any less poor scientific practice. Omitting crucial data preparation steps (e.g. not dividing excess death population into vaccinated vs unvaccinated) is one way partial analysis occurs. Perhaps most importantly, a scientific disagreement will contain a description of what should have been done or what should be done with the data instead.

So the distinction between "different interpretations" and "scientific disagreements" is very much an extension of the distinction between "opinion" and "hypothesis": different interpretations are expressed in opinions; scientific disagreements are expressed in testable hypotheses (ultimately testable, to be precise, since sometimes a hypothesis is based on observations which are not yet available or even possible, e.g. as with something like the Higgs boson: hypothesized in 1964, finally observed in 2012, technologically speaking not even observable for most of the interim).

If you want to look into a case study of how much of a cluster-fuck this all is when it comes to epidemiology, read up on the history of demonstrating that smoking is carcinogenic. And, especially, the history of the kind of resistance this conclusion was met with after it had achieved scientific consensus, including from "renegade" scientists, many of whom were being paid handsomely or just wanted the attention.

[astfgyl]

Why isn't smoking carcinogenic to everyone would be something else worth studying

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

It has been. A lot. Most forms of cancer resistance, either in humans or other species (some species have naturally high resistance to developing cancer) have been studied.

[astfgyl]

Anyone making any inroads on that front I wonder?

There is the old theory that curing or preventing cancers would be bad for business as well, which probably holds true to some degree but then again I suppose you could just charge insane money for the cure if you had it so there's that as well.

Anyway, back on topic....

.... I can't actually. I just don't have the heart for the COVID argument at all anymore and nobody will change their mind in one direction or another at this stage.

Let's just put it down to experience and take our own learnings from it all and use that to inform our future outlook.

We didn't all die from COVID like we were promised, we didn't all die from the vaccines like we were promised. Both sides said give it a few years, ie oh you don't know what the vaccine will do in 5 years, oh you don't know what catching the dirty unvaccinated version of COVID will do in 5 years.....

And on and on and on like Ariston,

Round in circles without a single mind changed.

The next one will be some fucking craic is my takeaway from it all anyway.

I love science but not The Science