On the Media, a podcast that I really enjoy, recently released an episode where Ryan Broderick, one of the guests being interviewed, criticized the discourse surrounding the coronavirus. His complaint was that too many non-epidemiologists were publishing videos and articles about the coronavirus. In the episode, he specifically calls out venture capitalists, economists, “finance bros” and pundits in general, and his core disagreement is not with what they’re saying but rather that they lack the relevant credentials to say it.
For example, Broderick cites a massively-viral Medium article, published before we were panicking in the U.S., that talks about all the precautions we should be taking in the face of the coronavirus. His main issue was not that the article was wrong; he states in the interview that everything in the post was correct, yet he still has an issue with the fact that it was published by someone without a background in science. Broderick claims that this viral, perfectly-factual Medium post allowed others to publish Medium posts that were factually incorrect and gave those same people an opportunity to be featured on Fox, where they would spread misinformation on a large scale. I could not think of a more incorrect conclusion to draw from this. The original Medium post warning of the coronavirus was a great service to the U.S. Since the post went massively viral, a lot of people probably changed their actions as a result of reading it, allowing lives to be saved and the virus to be more contained. Furthermore, what Broderick should be objecting to is the fact that others published Medium posts filled with misinformation instead of objecting to the fact that they were not epidemiologists. In fact, we should be encouraging all kinds of influencers to warn their followers of the dangers of coronavirus because they’ll probably be able to reach many people that otherwise would have just ignored what the epidemiologists are saying. We should only criticize people if they spread misinformation, not if they simply have the audacity to opine on the coronavirus without the relevant credentials.
On a separate note, I don’t know which economists, venture capitalists, and bloggers Broderick reads, but the ones that I follow, like Tyler Cowen, Slate Star Codex, and others have been some of the most helpful in my understanding of the coronavirus. Ultimately, I’m not really sure why Broderick insists on people having the proper credentials before they speak about the coronavirus. His job, as a journalist, literally requires him to write or speak about subjects in which he’s not the expert in. He’s able to do this by talking to experts and collecting their opinions, but I don’t know why he would think that others can’t do the same. After all, aren’t venture capitalists and economists some of the best judges of risk? Who better than them would understand the power of exponential growth, of black swans, of seemingly small things having an outsized impact? I’m so indignant about what Broderick said on On the Media because I hate appeals to credentials in general. To me it is about as good of an arguing tactic as ad hominems. If Broderick is trying to say that we should listen to epidemiologists more, then yes, I agree with him, but if that’s the case, then I think he’s going about it wrong.
On The Nose 