Alex Washburne, Author at Brownstone Institute

Science Is Not to Be Trusted

Alex Washburne March 12, 2023 March 12, 2023 Media, Public Health, Society 20 minute read

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Science is not a belief system, so it’s not something to be trusted. Science is a social process which anyone can join, it is a conversation with evidence to be examined, discussed, questioned, and tested. Science is not limited to Ivory Towers and people with PhDs. Anyone, no matter how anonymous or weird they are (in our idiosyncratic views of “weird”), can examine a paper, question some results, discuss them, and change our perspectives. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

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What Is the Value of a Covid Test?

Alex Washburne June 10, 2022 June 13, 2022 Public Health 9 minute read

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If you tested yourself on a random day when you had no symptoms, your one test would probably say “You’re Negative,” and that wouldn’t change your behavior at all. Such a negative test used with a low pretest probability of being positive is like firing a bullet haphazardly into the fog, long before you see the whites of your enemy’s eyes with a low pre-shot probability of hitting anyone.

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Justice Department Appeals to Get Masks Back on Airlines, Buses, and Trains

Alex Washburne June 1, 2022 June 1, 2022 Law, Policy, Public Health 11 minute read

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Over a silly definition of “sanitation”, the CDC appears willing to gamble a pillar of our modern society’s constitutional law, a legal cornerstone of our executive agencies, and perhaps, should the CDC lose, its willingness to gamble will be precisely the reason why we can’t have that nice thing of Chevron deference.

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Ethnocentrism and Political Intolerance: A Two Year Retrospective on the Pandemic Response

Alex Washburne May 31, 2022 May 31, 2022 History, Public Health 30 minute read

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Across our vast, heterogenous human populations of the US, a policy or a public health message that works where you live may very well harm people who live somewhere else, who have different cultures, beliefs and values. As one size may never fit all, it becomes increasingly important for scientists helping a pluralistic world to avoid political monism at all costs, to deliberately create space for alternative ideas.

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The Silencing of the Scientists

Alex Washburne March 21, 2022 March 21, 2022 History, Media 10 minute read

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As the pile of unshared science grows, our scientific understanding of crises like pandemics suffers from the attrition of the science it doesn’t know. It should be in the interest of all scientists to facilitate the sharing of scientific ideas to ensure no science goes unshared from fear of ridicule or public execution.

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Why Were They So Obtuse about the Terrible Harms They Would Inflict?

Alex Washburne December 8, 2021 January 23, 2022 Economics, Policy, Public Health 7 minute read

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It’s essential we debrief on the harm we caused – the epidemiological harm we simply displaced andconverted to economic harm that, at the end of the chain, has caused equally real people to suffer and die at higher rates than they would’ve had we acted differently. It’s irresponsible and unscientific to suppress discussions on the inconvenient truth that our response to the pandemic likely indirectly killed people.

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