Dr. Jerry Ravetz – on Willis, epidemics, rough & tumble debate, and post normal science

For me, the Dr Ravetz’s comments wrt to Truth were most pertinent. In the absence of a belief that the foundation of science lies in the pursuit of truth, and perhaps having been witness to the abuse of science in the service of a government, one can easily imagine how a doctrine such as PNS might emerge.
And perhaps it s because my science education was a little more enlightened than Dr Ravetz’s, or perhaps its because I have a vague philosophical bent, but in any event I make a distinction between two kinds of ‘truth’. The first, Truth (with a capital ‘T’), is an absolute kind of knowledge, the kind of thing that shall be handed down to Man by God at the End of Time. The second is a more human and historically contingent kind of knowledge, truth (with a lower case ‘t’), which in, my view is the real focus of scientific endeavour.
The first kind of knowledge, the absolute Truth, is of course knowable only to God. We will either have to wait until the End of Time, or, possibly, our entry into the afterlife, to receive it through His grace. However, obtaining the second kind of knowledge, the historically contingent ‘truth’ – albeit an imperfect and incomplete type of knowledge – would appear to be a a more realistic ambition in this life for a finite being such as myself.
In my view, ‘truth’ (lower case) is best pursued through the efforts of each individual in applying his or her own ability to reason so as to better understand the natural world. The proper motivation for this, it seems to me, is a sense of ‘wonder’ at the world in which we live, an innate drive to comprehend – even in the face of opposition from authority. The motivation for science, in my view, has nothing to do with the machinery of government, or policy design. It is, at core, an individual effort undertaken for individual ends, and the indirect political consequence of which is to question authoritarian dogma.
Although my concept of science does nothing, of course, to bridge the gap between ‘truth’ and ‘politics’, my view is: so be it. Let each scientist pursue ‘truth’ of the natural world (as mediated by individual reflection and debate with others) so as to better appreciate its marvels purely for its own sake; and let politicians and bureaucrats implement policy to better serve the interests of power.
It can be countered that my view of science is Utopian and that in a modern technocratic society, science cannot remain aloof from politics. But my fear is that for science to enter the world of politics is nothing more than to announce its imminent demise. In the political realm all forms of knowledge are in the service of expediency. In such a realm, far from weakening dogma, a politicised form of science can only help to re-inforce it.

Thank you Dr. Ravetz for your considered contribution here. Your gracious tone makes a difference and is deserving of recognition, especially in light of the savaging of earlier contributions.
While the comparison of PNS to the disease incident works on one level (preventative care) it weakens on others. For example, we have a good empirical understanding of epidemiology, but far less firm grasp of climate. While preventative measures are demanded by the disease potentials, they are relatively finite, cost controlled, with a known outcome. PNS suggests that with far less empirical knowledge, and a healthy dose of data largess, we should take action to mitigate a phenomenon we have yet to prove exists (CAGW.) The cattle epidemic is an application of normal science (we know with certainty disease vectors in cattle herds.) We do not know with certainty what a doubling of CO2 may do to global temperatures, or even the cause of the natural non-anthropogenic CO2 rise.
More likely your theory belongs in political science, as PNS is a far more likely explanation for political action than for action precipitated by scientific method.

I wish people could at least differentiate between
a) the framework of PNS
b) whether the framework applies to climate change
One of the main problems with the discourse seems to be that people, rather irrationally, mistake b for a.
Personally I think that PNS will apply to climate change only if a high likelyhood of C in (C)AGW can be adequately established. Till then it should remain a “pure” scientific question.
(C), established in vast and transparent research, would warrant the PNS framework. Then all the arguments would apply. It would still not be certain scientifically, but political action would be justified and desirable.
As thing stand, I don’t think the (C) has been established, and the politicized “consensus” claims to the contrary have less to do with the PNS framework than old fashioned corruption of science. The height of irrationality in this thread is ScientistForTruth reading a vast ideological influence into one single reference to PNS.
I will say that FMD is a bit lame example for PNS. The GRAINN-technologies that Dr. Ravetz mentioned in his previous article would offer a far better example to highlight the signifigance of the framework, as I argued in five or so posts at the end of that thread http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/22/jerry-ravetz-part-2-answer-and-explanation-to-my-critics/
I’m not copy pasting those arguments, which no one adequately countered I must add, but you can try and reply to them here, and perhaps we can then have a substantial debate about “PNS”.

It is gravely appropriate that there are at least two comments above that refer to eugenics, a post-normal science if there ever was one.
In the 1920’s eugenicists produced evidence of an incipient epidemic of genetic decline in the human species. The stakes were high. Fundamental matters of morality were dismissed, and a genocidal Holocaust was embarked upon, with scientists actively participating.
Today we are experiencing the same thing in climate science. The stakes are said to be high. Fundamental matters of morality are dismissed due to the putative threat to “the planet”, and civilization-wide authoritarian punishments are proposed, with scientists actively participating.
I don’t know if what we are witnessing is “normal” science or something else, but whatever it is, it is immoral. One might even call it evil. Damages to be inflicted on the entire human species are “incidental to the noble effort.”
The “corruptions” are inherent, however, not incidental in CAGW science. The whole edifice is based on twisted authoritarian “morality” that is not only fallible but proved by history to be horrifically wrong, inhumane, and immoral beyond measure.
If, as Dr. Ravetz opines, quality in science depends on the ethical commitments of its leaders, then we need to examine their ethics, our ethics, and the ontology of morality in general. What better field of study for a philosopher!
I applaud Dr. Ravetz in his struggle to rise above the scorn and humiliation of his student experiences. I share with him a belief in Absolutes like “beauty”, “justice”, “good”, and “evil”. And “truth” too. There is nothing wrong with your head, Dr. Ravetz, if your aim is to seek the meaning and reality of those Absolutes.
There are always implications emanating from scientific inquiry. Our task is not to squelch the inquiry but to manage the implications, such that terrible immoralities and inhumanities do not result.

steven mosher (13:10:11) :
If I am reading you rightly, your reformulation that applies to CAGW is:
1. Theories are uncertain
2. interests are in conflict
3. Stakes are high
4. Decisions are immediate
I would ask, what was the primary driver? Why was CAGW even put on the table? If the theory was uncertain, how did it come to pass that decisions were deemed immediate or urgent?
I think we are getting things arse about face. It all started with a manufactured urgency, not a theory, uncertain or otherwise. The manufactured urgency of those who wanted environmental interests to quickly gain powerful global influence, projected onto the putative urgency of the “problem”.
The “theory” was simply a convenient Trojan horse, and if some other had been available, that would have been chosen instead. Indeed, if CAGW falls over, something else will be adopted to take its place.
If post normal science were a way to stop this kind of shenanigans, I’d be all for it. However, in my opinion, it’s all part of the problem because it holds the pursuit of truth in contempt, substituting for it the concept of quality. Why, I wonder? I think it’s a form of hubris – quality can be controlled, and by extension, nature. Somehow, man is in control of nature, and just as he supposedly started the problem, he can stop it, if only we can get the stakeholders fired up and suppress any of those who might rock the boat.
Dr. Ravetz seems to claim he wants to get all the stakeholders involved, and for them to arrive at a solution that is optimal, principled, ethical and so on. Maybe he’s sincere about that, but it still presupposes the existence of the problem and that truth has no part to play in its solution. However, if the truth is that there is no significant problem, what then?
It goes back to Willis’ null hypothesis. Normal science works just fine if the null hypothesis (any putative changes in global temperatures are overwhelmingly natural rather than anthropogenic) is considered. But the climate science fraternity, through various forms of vested interest, have for the most part been ignoring the null hypothesis. And so, the science hasn’t been working as it should.
I think the solution is to fix the normal science and stay the hell away from the post-normal stuff. That way lies madness.

Hysteria Based on Unvalidated Models: From BSE-vCJD to H1N1
BSE-vCJD
FMD
Avian Flu H5N1
SARS
H1N1 First Wave
H1N1 Second Wave
All the above were characterized by scaremongering based on unvalidated models. All the above scares were examples of what Ravetz calls “Post Normal Science”. While climate catastrophe is the poster boy of PNS, it is far from the only example of the co-optation of science for political ends. Unfortunately we have an epidemic of what Ravetz calls PNS.
Thank you very much Dr Ravetz. Your protestations very much confirm the original diagnosis that one cannot prescribe a technical solution (i.e. modifying/corrupting normal science) to solve a political problem (the political co-optation of science)
All the Best
brent
Can we really trust chief scientific officers?
The predictions for swine flu (and bird flu, Sars, vCJD) were embarrassingly inaccurate
There was a time when, if you read a scientific scare story, you tended to put it down to the over-active imagination of a redtop journalist. No longer: nowadays it is outwardly sober government scientists who spin the biggest scares. They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.
That much was proved by the 1963 Milgram experiment in which the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram persuaded volunteers to administer a — simulated — potentially fatal electric shock to another human being when instructed to do so by a man in a white lab coat.
http://tinyurl.com/y9kbzpj
Britain’s most expensive myth
Everyone knows that the claimed link between BSE and the singularly unpleasant disease “new variant CJD” set off the greatest and most expensive food scare in history. In the days that followed the health minister Stephen Dorrell’s fateful announcement in March 1996, predictions of deaths from eating beef ranged from 500,000 by the government’s chief BSE scientist, John Patteson, to many millions (The Observer).
With very few exceptions (this column being one), the media unquestioningly accepted that there was such a link. As one result, #3 billion of public money was spent on incinerating elderly cows. The costs to industry and the UK economy, not least from a consequent thicket of further regulations, have been many times that, and are still continuing.
The chief reason for doubting a link between beef and CJD lay in the epidemiological evidence, which even in 1996 suggested that the promised epidemic was a fantasy. Over the past seven years, as the incidence curve has begun a steady fall, that has seemed ever more certain. Now, after reviewing the evidence, Professor Roy Anderson and his Imperial College team have published a revised estimate of the total number of victims likely to die of vCJD in the future (link available through http://www.warmwell.com). Their figure? Not 400,000, or 40,000, just 40.
As Britain’s farming and food industry grapples with the latest regulatory insanity inspired by the BSE scare, the EU Animal By-Products Regulation that is predicted to drain billions more pounds from the UK economy, it is clearer than ever that Mr Dorrell’s monumentally foolish statement in 1996 was the most costly blunder ever perpetrated by a British minister.
http://www.warmwell.com/vcjd.html
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR INSTITUTIONS?
Roger Windsor’s talk, read on his behalf, to the Central Veterinary Society
The College and the profession should have refused to act when the direction of the campaign was taken over by politicians, and the Chief Scientist. The CVO stated that he was in control the whole time, but the public perception was that the Chief Scientist and his side-kicks Prof. Roy Anderson and Sir John Krebs had taken over. They decided that killing all animals on neighbouring farms and all animals within three kilometres of an outbreak was the only way to stop the disease, in time for a June General Election. Why anyone should listen to Anderson, a proven liar who was forced to resign his chair at Oxford is beyond me? (Ref for this statement is an article in Private Eye last year) Did he offer the politicians a quick fix ? His mathematical model indicated that a two km kill would be adequate. However, MAFF decided to follow EU advice and stuck to 3 km which more than doubled the number of animals that were killed. Roy Anderson should be called, not the Professor of Epidemiology, but the Professor of Extermination at Imperial College, London. I understand that he subsequently revised his model and came to the conclusion that the virus travelled no more than 500 metres. Too many animals (probably five million) were killed in the name of elections and mathematics. Alan Richardson considers that this was the largest animal experiment ever carried out, and that it was done without a Home Office licence.
http://www.warmwell.com/nov11windsor.html
Oxford scientist wins the battle for her reputation
http://www.warmwell.com/andersonstories.htm
Animal cull ‘based on incorrect assumption’
Prof King’s foot and mouth Science Advisory Group was dominated by the work of Prof Neil Ferguson, Dr Christl Donnelly and Prof Roy Anderson, all epidemiologists at Imperial College
http://www.warmwell.com/shannonfeb19.html
March 6 2006 Veterinary Times
Silence of the lambs, calves, sheep, cattle and mathematicians
Bob Michell, BVetMed, BSc, PhD, DSc, MRCVS
REMEMBER, and understand.
March; lambs leaping among the shining tussocks of young grass. But it was not so just five years ago.
In the name of veterinary disease control, we were about to embark on the greatest unnecessary slaughter of healthy animals in the history of our profession. It cost £10 – 12 billion and involved, to the European Parliament, the slaughter of 10 million animals.
http://www.warmwell.com/silencemichell.html
Predictive models and FMD: the emperor’s new clothes?
R.P. Kitching
National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, 1015 Arlington Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3E 3M4
So how could the control policy for a major disease outbreak be based on models which had never been validated? If the predictions for the number of new variant Creutzfeld–Jacob disease (vCJD) cases in the UK made in the late 1990s had not been suffcient to undermine the credibility of the predictive modellers, surely the FMD experience should have made the modellers appreciate the limitations of their science and accept at least some responsibility for the misery and expense that their models initiated. Predictive modelling has become fashionable but, often without much evidence that it serves any useful purpose, is the science based too much on reputation?
http://www.warmwell.com/04feb17kitching.html
Carnage from a computer
WE ARE USED to politicians suppressing the truth. When scientists do it as well, we are in trouble. Not one of the Government’s senior advisers, from Sir David King, the chief scientist, downwards, has yet dared to confirm in public what most experts in private now accept, that the mass slaughter of farm animals in the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak was not only unnecessary and inhumane, but was also based on false statistics, bad science and wrong deductions.
The mistakes that were made in attempting to control the outbreak are laid bare in a devastating paper recently compiled by Paul Kitching, one of the world’s leading veterinary experts, and published by the World Organisation for Animal Health.
Snip
The language used in Dr Kitching’s report has a controlled anger about it. He talks of “a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models”, mentions the “public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter” and concludes: “The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models [statistics used to predict the course of an epidemic] can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.”
http://tinyurl.com/28z67y
Use and abuse of mathematical models:
an illustration from the 2001 foot and mouth
disease epidemic in the United Kingdom
R.P. Kitching (1), M.V. Thrusfield (2) & N.M. Taylor
Summary
Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a major threat, not only to countries whose economies rely on agricultural exports, but also to industrialised countries that maintain a healthy domestic livestock industry by eliminating major infectious diseases from their livestock populations. Traditional methods of controlling diseases such as FMD require the rapid detection and slaughter of infected animals, and any susceptible animals with which they may have been in contact, either directly or indirectly. During the 2001 epidemic of FMD in the United Kingdom (UK), this approach was supplemented by a culling policy driven by unvalidated predictive models. The epidemic and its control resulted in the death of approximately ten million animals, public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter, and political resolve to adopt alternative options, notably including vaccination, to control any future epidemics. The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism.
http://www.oie.int/boutique/extrait/23kitching293311.pdf
How Vaccination was used for Foot and Mouth Disease in Uruguay in April 2001 and subsequently
http://www.warmwell.com/oct11jamesuru.html
VACCINATION FOR FOOT AND MOUTH
A Personal View by Dr James Irvine,
Cultybraggan Farm, Comrie, PERTHSHIRE PH6 2HX
The Scottish Farmer,
27 October 2001, pp. 18-19
SIR, – Some weeks ago (Sept. 29), The Scottish Farmer published in juxtaposition on the same page the comments of Professor Fred Brown and those of Professor David King.
As you pointed out, Prof Brown is the world’s leading authority on foot-and-mouth disease, with vast experience of how the disease behaves throughout the world and how it has been controlled in differing circumstances.
He has made major contributions to the development of “new” foot-and-mouth vaccines and diagnostic tests to distinguish between vaccinated and infected animals.
He has collaborated with eminent virologists in the study of the structure of the foot-and-mouth virus and its sub-strains with spectacular success. That is indeed why he is acknowledged as the world’s leading expert on the disease. What he is quoted as saying in The SF article makes clear sense. It is what he said as principal guest speaker at the Royal Society of Edinburgh Conference on foot-and-mouth disease, at the University of Glasgow, on September 7 this year.
By contrast, Professor King, while having the status of the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, has no training in biology let alone virology, being an eminent physical chemist.
It would be hard to think of an academic scientific discipline more remote from the study of a highly infectious virus affecting the nation’s farm livestock. Yet he could be expected to have sufficient critical acumen to assess basic scientific facts and not to be manipulated by political pressures or misinformation such as to distort these basic facts.
Bearing in mind that the UK foot-and-mouth epidemic is the worst the world has ever seen, Prof King’s arguments against vaccination and justifying that culling had been the only way to bring the recent foot-and-mouth outbreaks under control and would remain so in the future are as follows:
– Since vaccinated animals can still carry the disease and harbour it for some considerable time, vaccination would be ineffective.
Does Prof King not understand even the fundamentals of any vaccination programme, be it for measles, smallpox, poliomyelitis etc?
You do not have to vaccinate every potential host for the virus, but a sufficient percentage to ensure that the virus does not have an adequate number of hosts left in which to replicate. That is why the Chief Medical Officer is so keen that the uptake of the triple vaccine for children does not fall below a certain percentage of the population.
It does not matter as far as epidemiological control is concerned whether children incubating the virus may remain infectious. If sufficient numbers of the total children at risk are vaccinated, the virus will die out of the population because in a relatively short time there will be nowhere for it to go. Likewise with foot-and-mouth disease in sheep and cattle.
– He states “that nation-wide mass vaccination does not necessarily stop the disease spreading from generation to generation.” He argues that since mothers can pass antibodies to their offspring through their early milk, this gives temporary protection, but at the same time, interferes with the young animal’s immune response.
So what? If sufficient numbers of farm livestock have been vaccinated, sooner, rather than later, there will be no infection for the young animals to pick up. How else does Prof King reckon that the devastating epidemics of viral infections in man have been controlled by vaccination? By worrying about whether an infant will have its immune response to the virus in question modified by antibodies from its mother? It sounds much more like a disingenuous justification for advising against vaccinating. Where has intellectual scientific honesty gone?
– He argued that mass vaccination was unacceptable because, in the absence of a recognised test to distinguish between antibodies caused by infection and antibodies caused by vaccination, it would have been impossible to tell the true extent of viral presence in the country’s livestock.
He is quoted as saying: “If we had embarked upon such a programme, we would not have been able to free up large areas of the Scottish, English and Welsh countryside.” What Prof King did not acknowledge was that the science of distinguishing antibodies produced by infection as opposed to those produced by vaccination has been available for a substantial number of years.
He also did not acknowledge that offers from abroad and indeed from within the UK to help were refused by the Government authorities. The Government agencies, although they were informed some years before the UK epidemic (and must have themselves been aware) that the UK was a sitting duck for foot-and-mouth disease, apparently did nothing and refused all help to get such diagnostic tests (or indeed the “new” vaccines) validated for use in this country or indeed the EC.
The scientific basis for such diagnostic tests is sound. To do nothing in the face of such knowledge for so long in the presence of an obvious risk of catastrophe is inexcusable. How can the Government establishment at Pirbright, England, justify its status as a world centre for the study of foot-and-mouth disease? The “new” science (which in reality is several years old) would have predictably led to providing us with a diagnostic kit that could be applied on farm to check for evidence of infection or vaccination, with clear distinction between the two.
http://www.warmwell.com/vaccoct27.htm
Following the outbreak of SARS, one thing was certain: Professor Roy Anderson of Imperial College would soon be hitting the headines.
And so it came to pass. While the World Health Organisation was being severely criticised by the Canadian government and others for “over-reacting”, it found welcome backing last weekend from a report by Anderson which claimed that Sars was twice as deadly as previously thought. “We have not seen the report so we could not comment,” a WHO spokesman said, “except to say that this is a top-class professional and any figure he commits himself to is likely to be as close as possible to accurate.”
Tony Blair would undoubtedly agree. Two years ago it was Roy Anderson who created the computer model used by the government to claim that the number of FMD cases would fall to zero by 7 June 2001. As the Eye noted at the time, a certain amount of statistical jiggery-pokery was required to achieve this desirable if implausible result, but it allowed the Dear Leader to call an election for that very date and boast that he had the crisis licked.
Back in 1987 Anderson’s mathematical talents again proved useful to a politician’s election prospects. He was invited by Norway’s Prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland to help produce an “independent assessment” of how many minke whales Norwegians could sustainably kill each year. The International Whaling Commission had introduced a moratorium on commercial minke whaling, which Brundtland feared would lose her support in the northern whaling constituencies. She hoped that a report by a four-man committee of experts, including Anderson, would persuade the IWC to ease the ban.
Lo and behold, the committee came up with exactly the same figure – 200 whales – which the whalers thought they needed to make a profit. But then a mathematical biologist on the IWC’s scientific committee went through the algebra and found “fundamental flaws in the methodology”: Anderson and his chums had achieved the result Brundtland wanted only by creating unreal (indeed “impossible” ) parameters.
The report was duly rubbished by the experts, just as Anderson’s foot-and-mouth model was two years ago. But politicians continue to admire him, including of course the former Norwegian PM. And where is Gro Harlem Brundtland now? By happy coincidence, she is director-general of the World Health Organissation.
http://www.warmwell.com/2may1pe.html
Government virus expert paid £116k by swine flu vaccine manufacturers
Professor Sir Roy Anderson sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), a 20-strong task force drawing up the action plan for the virus.
Yet he also holds a £116,000-a-year post on the board of GlaxoSmithKline, the company selling swine flu vaccines and anti-virals to the NHS.
http://tinyurl.com/lhnk22
Seven pillars of piffle
The Science and Technology Committee (which now must be termed the “Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee” for reasons hard to fathom) has been taking evidence on the role of the Government Chief Scientific Adviser from Sir David King, today. The parallel universe that he inhabits is rather an odd one.
Here are some of the royal gems:
Ignorance is best.
http://warmwell.blogspot.com/2007/12/seven-pillars-of-piffle.html
Latest flu outbreak is shaping up as fourth pandemic dud in the past six years
Jul 22, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (11)
DR. RICHARD SCHABAS
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH IN HASTINGS AND PRINCE EDWARD COUNTIES
Toronto is gripped in a frenzy of worry about the dreaded “second wave” of H1N1 now scheduled for this fall. A severe “second wave” of H1N1 is possible, in the same sense that it’s possible the Blue Jays will win the World Series this year. Science and public policy need to look beyond possibilities and also consider probabilities. Our appreciation of probabilities should be based on evidence, not speculation.
The evidence strongly suggests that a severe “second wave” of H1N1 is very unlikely. It will almost certainly be merely the latest instalment in a growing list of pandemic false alarms.
Let’s begin by putting this warning in some context. This is the fourth pandemic alarm in the past six years. The first three have been wrong.
The first alarm was about SARS. At the time, pundits predicted that SARS would become a pandemic and that more than 100 million people would die. Wrong. SARS died out because it was not really very infectious outside of hospitals.
The second alarm was for H5N1 “bird flu.” We were told that this disease would leap across the species barrier and cause a devastating human pandemic. More than a billion people were supposed to die in an imminent catastrophe of unprecedented dimensions. Wrong. H5N1 remains a disease of birds that rarely infects people who live in close contact with birds. There is no scientific reason to expect this to change.
The third alarm was for the dreaded “first wave” of H1N1. All of our pandemic planning had been directed toward this “first wave.” It was supposed to hit fast and hard. Eight to 12 million Canadians were supposed to fall ill over two to three months. Between 10,000 and 50,000 Canadians were supposed to die. H1N1 may have hit quickly but in public health terms it has not hit hard. Regular seasonal influenza kills 2,000 to 4,000 Canadians every year. H1N1 has killed fewer than 50 people in Canada in its “first wave.”
So now we are warned about the H1N1 “second wave.” How serious is the risk? There are three general arguments supporting the “second wave” hypothesis. None of them stand up well to scrutiny.
The first argument is historical, based on the 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic. In the spring of 1918 there was a relatively mild “first wave” of influenza followed by a much more severe “second wave” in the fall. The problem is that the cause of influenza was a mystery in 1918. The influenza virus itself was not discovered until 1933. There is no reliable basis to conclude that the two 1918 “waves” were caused by the same virus. Based on everything we have learned about influenza in the last 75 years, it is much more likely that the mild 1918 “first wave” was caused by a different influenza virus. This argument is more folklore than science.
The second argument warns that H1N1 could “mutate” and become more virulent. Mutations are extremely common in all viruses, indeed in all living organisms. Important sustainable behavioural changes caused by mutations are, however, very, very rare. Mutations are just the raw material of evolution. Natural selection favours micro-organisms that don’t kill their hosts. Evolutionary trends in infectious diseases are consistently in the direction of lower virulence. Our experience with influenza and every other infectious disease supports this. The mutation argument is science-fiction.
The third argument is that H1N1 will be more severe when it hits during our normal flu season – the cold, dry months of winter. This hypothesis is, at least, coherent. It is also testable. Our eyes should be glued on the southern hemisphere where H1N1 is now active during their normal flu season. And the news is good. Australia is now two months into its H1N1 “first wave” and it hasn’t been substantially more severe than what we faced. Furthermore, the data now suggest the Australian outbreak is ending. The seasonal hypothesis may be reasonable but the evidence is against it.
Why is H1N1 so mild? I think the reason is becoming increasingly obvious. It relates to the demographics of this outbreak.
Influenza is a benign and short-lived illness in the great majority of people infected. Seasonal influenza is an important public health problem because of the secondary complications of influenza – most typically pneumonia. These complications occur almost exclusively in older people, particularly those with underlying chronic illnesses. Influenza can cause serious illness in young people but this is rare.
Most of the serious illness from H1N1 is in relatively young people. The pundits are presenting this as bad news. It is actually very good news.
The key epidemiological characteristic of H1N1 is that it is not affecting older people. By and large, people over the age of 50 appear to be protected, probably because of exposure to similar H1N1 viruses prior to 1957. This is why H1N1 is such a pandemic dud. The people who should be dying just aren’t getting sick. There is no reason to think this is going to change.
The proportion of serious illnesses in young people is high by default. The actual number of these cases in young people is actually very, very small. Is H1N1 more serious in young people than seasonal influenza? Maybe, but even if it is it’s not very much more severe. We won’t know for sure until we know the actual infection rates in this age group.
So, we should relax and enjoy the summer. H1N1 may well return in the fall but we should expect attack rates to be modest and the incidence of serious illness to be very low. There are lots of good reasons to get Toronto municipal workers back on the job but urgent pandemic planning is not one of them.
I’ll end with a challenge to the media. The media love this story and accept the pundits’ gloomy predictions uncritically. If this turns out to be the fourth pandemic false alarm in six years, as I think it will, it will be time to start asking some probing questions.
Dr. Richard Schabas was Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health from 1987-97.
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/669727
Dr. Richard Schabas, medical officer of health for Hastings-Prince Edward, told The Intelligencer reporter Steve Pettibone last month, “That’s the worst that we should expect- H1N1 hitting at the typical flu season time,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s much more likely that what we’ll see will be milder than that because a lot of people in Canada are already immune to this virus.”
http://tinyurl.com/mqs9rn
How scared should we be?
So how scared should we be of this looming storm?
Really not very much, say some experts like former Ontario chief medical officer of health Dr. Richard Schabas. Despite spreading to more than 160 countries on all continents, the virus has only caused mild flu from which most people have recovered, Schabas says .
Relatively few have died. Indeed, since the novel virus erupted in Mexico in April, it has killed about 1,300 people worldwide, and nearly 200,000 confirmed cases in 168 countries and territories have been reported. The World Health Organization believes about one million people have been infected. In Canada, swine flu has killed 72 people and hospitalized more than 1,300 so far — all in all not the kind of numbers that presage Armageddon, says Schabas.
More significantly, in southern hemisphere countries such as Australia and New Zealand, which are in the middle of their flu seasons, H1N1 has so far been relatively mild, suggesting there might not be a virulent second wave in Canada. Schabas says the WHO and most of the public health officials in Canada have handled the H1N1 outbreak badly, using harsh rhetoric and projections that often fly in the face of the evidence. He says the constant drumbeat of impending calamity only helps to fan public hysteria.
“They’ve consistently exaggerated the impact of H1N1, they’ve consistently exaggerated the potential impact of H1N1, and they’ve been intent on presenting this as some sort of impending public health disaster when the evidence has been very strong from earlier on that this is nowhere near as serious as they’ve been presenting it,” says Schabas, now medical officer of health for Hastings and Prince Edward Counties.
As experts go, Schabas is in the minority. To bolster his argument, he points to several false alarms the WHO and others have sounded on the “next big pandemic.”
Indeed, from the avian flu to SARS, experts have called it wrong time and again. In 1976, a huge scare swept through the U.S. after a young soldier died of what later turned out to be swine flu. Fearing a new “killer epidemic,” government officials rushed through a massive vaccination program against the supposedly deadly flu that ended up claiming only the life of the soldier. More people actually died of complications from the vaccination than the swine flu that never was. In 2003, when SARS burst out from China, predictions of another global catastrophe filled the headlines and the airwaves. Millions could die, experts said. In the event, SARS fizzled. About 800 people died.
The predictions were equally dire in 2005 when the H5N1 avian flu fear gripped the world. The H5N1 virus decimated poultry around the world and there were fears that it could spread to humans. At the time, the WHO said it was only a pandemic threat, and projected that if it developed into the real thing, a low-level pandemic would claim the lives of two to seven million people. Up to 100 million could perish in a worst-case scenario. Until now, fewer than 300 have died, but H5N1 avian flu is still considered a potential pandemic threat by the WHO.
“We were told SARS was going to be a pandemic. It didn’t happen,” says Schabas. “We were told bird flu was going to be a terrible pandemic. It didn’t happen. And then in April we were told to brace ourselves for the terrible wave of swine flu. It didn’t happen.
“Now, they are saying ‘brace yourselves for the terrible second wave of swine flu.’ It is not going to happen. They are exaggerating the danger, basically scaring people.”
John Herbert, executive director of the Ottawa Homebuilders Association, reflected Schabas’s skepticism when he told the Citizen that his members are not making any contingency plans to deal with swine flu. They think the danger is manufactured.
“People think the health authorities and the media are crying wolf, and they don’t see it as a legitimate threat,” he says.
http://tinyurl.com/kpz39k

Post Normal Science sounds very much like Sociology. With PNS, facts don’t matter so much, it’s more about consensus building, herd mentality, and feeling good about what you are doing. It also provides a good excuse for making a bad decision. However, it does no provide a reason not to continue to pursue the truth.
I could be completely off base, but I found it difficult to pull the main points out of this post. I always found that a paper written in the format of Summary, Conclusions, Recommendation and Discussion works best when trying to cover a complex subject.

brent (20:03:16) :
Hysteria Based on Unvalidated Models: From BSE-vCJD to H1N1
BSE-vCJD
FMD
Avian Flu H5N1
SARS
H1N1 First Wave
H1N1 Second Wave
All the above were characterized by scaremongering based on unvalidated models.
———
REPLY: I agree with you on all of these except for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Very few people outside of my field (infectious disease epidemiology) have any clue as to how close we came to a really deadly pandemic with that one. WHO organization did an outstanding job with their Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). The Canadian government also did a great job, tamping down the outbreak in Toronto. It was scary to go through. The rest? Meh.
I salute Dr. Carlo Urbani, the WHO epidemiologist who recognized the SARS outbreak for what it was (novel coronavirus), directed the response and paid for it with his life.

The rise of Flu Inc
How vaccines became big business
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-rise-of-flu-inc/article1414474/
Swine flu’s ‘WHO’dunit
It is still not clear as to why the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised its alert on swine flu to pandemic levels last June. Top global healthcare officials have called for investigations into the whodunit
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/02/01/stories/2010020150300800.htm
Swine flu was a textbook case of a scare
Swine flu corresponds to the classic “beneficial crisis” model, says Christopher Booker
http://tinyurl.com/yjszs79
WHO Scientists Corruption Scandals Appear Endemic
http://financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2010/0111.html
Scientists to probe global warming’s impact on avian flu virus
http://www.littleabout.com/news/53038,scientists-probe-global-warming-impact-avian-flu-virus.html
WHO= World Hoax Organization?
Is the WHO any better than the IPCC?
They share some common characteristics as sister UN agencies

If one can interpret Normal Science as science based on an over-simplistic demand for certainty and failure to comprehend complexity in its deepest sense, then I would agree with Dr Ravtez that we indeed need a Post Normal Science. An alternative name for Normal Science would be “Jar of Fleas” science (JFS).
Why Jar of Fleas? Tsar Alexander 4 of Russia (“Alexander Grozniy or Alexander the Terrible”) used to have a game he would play with princes or Boyars who fell out of favour with him. As a punishment they would be required to give him a jar full of fleas. The point being that this is an impossible task. Fleas being so small, the number of fleas that would have to be collected would be many tens of thousands. So failure to accomplish this form of community service was guaranteed – thus Ivan T. would have as he saw it a prerogative to banish or execute the said individual.
“Normal Science” in the hands of many environmental and anti-industry (anti-science) activists also asks for a jar of fleas in the form of an impossible degree of certainty in relation to a complex situation:
Global Warming – you must “prove” that CO2 is not increasing global temperature (in order to challenge our political agenda)
Nuclear Power – you must “prove” that even tiny doses of ionising radiation cause no excess of cancer or genetic problems etc.
Nuclear waste dumping – you must “prove” that waste under the ground wont escape for hundreds of thousands of years (in order to justify keeping it in tinny drums at the surface).
Genetic modification – you must “prove” that GM crops will not cause any environmental or ecological harm for hundreds – thousands of years to come.
Nanotechnology – you must “prove” that it wont turn the world into a “grey goo”.
Hadron collider – you must “prove” that it wont create a singularity and swallow up the world.
etc..
In important areas of science policy, the demand for an impossible degree of certainty is equivalent to demand for a jar of fleas. An intentionally impossible task to give pseudo-scientific self-righteousness to an activist environmental anti-industry agenda. PNS should oppose and correct this abuse of science.
Dr Ravetz may be right that “quality” is the best solution we have available, however that is defined. It must include epistemological quality – i.e. scientific work done according to Karl Popper’s principles of deductiveness and falsifiability, as opposed to massively inductive edifices like global circulation models that adapt to any changing input to give the desired prediction of global warming. The moral quality of individuals is also an inescapable component. A good system run by bad people will fail. A bad system run by good people will succeed.