So much of academia runs on silent, collaborative service, requiring mutual goodwill to sustain it. That a few universities would sign letters to get them better deals w/ a corrupt administration… I don’t see how those universities survive in the long run. The rest of us just need to say no.

Not in my name. I won’t work for a school, I won’t give a talk at a school, I won’t write a letter or a review for a school, that signs this.

And in the process, whites made money selling their homes to desperate black buyers, fled to the suburbs where govt programs lifted them up, and took a lot of the municipal tax base with them, leaving behind cities that spiraled into decay.

But yes, Helen Andrews, they are the Real Victims here.

Whites fled integrating cities because of their own racism, often ruining their old neighborhoods as they left through arson and bombings as well as dropping industrial rezoning and interstate highway placements across once nice areas in a vain effort to build up racial barriers.

To put that in perspective, in Canada at $50k salary, you pay about $15k a year in taxes. For only $3k more in taxes we get 2 forms of pension, unemployment insurance, Healthcare and fund both federal and provincial governments... US is a giant ponzi scam

We are a government ruled by viral video fiat now.

You aren't even allowed to research which viral video has whipped the regime into a mania and how they came to believe it, because the research of the systems themselves is viewed as "censorship."

This how you end up randomly invading Portland.

100%.

And fame where you’re lauded as smart and heroic for going against the “corrupt experts“ is probably especially appealing for folks on the more grandiose & narcissistic side of the personality scales.

Sure. I’m saying that it matters that no one on the paper had that domain specific knowledge.

And to be totally fair, I think he messed up here. I don't think he's a grifter or nefarious actor on the scale of RFK Jr and his HHS cronies.

But if he'd have recognized the limitations of his knowledge and understanding (and maybe not been a paid expert in a trial) we might not be here.

WAY easier to throw out nutty ideas that people want to hear (eg, covid stuff) than to do the hard work of actual science and weighing complex tradeoffs.

NGL though, at the time it nearly broke me. Prasad is quite a lesson in some people are just bad actors who sometimes pick the right side for a moment.

My take: when prestige and attention and status among scientists was tied to causal inference methods, he was aligned with that. As soon as the opportunity to gain more power and attention came along, he dropped causal inference like a hot potato and ran with the contrarian tide!