Good piece and you were a consistent, impartial and challenging voice throughout.
ISage came across to me as activists and if that’s unfair then they didn’t do enough to quash it.
As you say the name was poor and deliberately confusing and very unfair on the Sage members (who IMHO were doing their best) as it infers they were not.
I really don’t like rewriting history either. I admit I was wrong with a lot of my views that were clouded with optimism due to the impacts on my family. I always looked for positive confirmation of my hopes rather than fears and you helped hugely with grounding me throughout.
Well done and have a great Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.
Thanks! And yes, I agree that there was an implicit slur built into the name that actual SAGE weren't independent. The best answer I got on that was that some of them weren't, because Scientific Advisors are on the Government payroll. But firstly I think that's unfair on people like Whitty and Vallance, who were perfectly capable of speaking their own minds. And secondly a lot of members were regular academics on university payrolls (some of whom had to fight to even be bought out of their teaching responsibilities etc!)
I totally agree, especially about Friston's "dynamic causal model", featuring epediomological dark matter, which was described by his co-author (and indie Sage co-chair) Anthony Costello as "the best model". IIRC the best model got pretty much everything spectacularly wrong.
I agree. Really interesting article and fwiw I thought Independent Sage very political though they did result in Sage being more transparent so that was a good thing.
It’s a longish while ago so who knows after another period of time they might acknowledge that
Good piece and you were a consistent, impartial and challenging voice throughout.
ISage came across to me as activists and if that’s unfair then they didn’t do enough to quash it.
As you say the name was poor and deliberately confusing and very unfair on the Sage members (who IMHO were doing their best) as it infers they were not.
I really don’t like rewriting history either. I admit I was wrong with a lot of my views that were clouded with optimism due to the impacts on my family. I always looked for positive confirmation of my hopes rather than fears and you helped hugely with grounding me throughout.
Well done and have a great Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.
Thanks! And yes, I agree that there was an implicit slur built into the name that actual SAGE weren't independent. The best answer I got on that was that some of them weren't, because Scientific Advisors are on the Government payroll. But firstly I think that's unfair on people like Whitty and Vallance, who were perfectly capable of speaking their own minds. And secondly a lot of members were regular academics on university payrolls (some of whom had to fight to even be bought out of their teaching responsibilities etc!)
I totally agree, especially about Friston's "dynamic causal model", featuring epediomological dark matter, which was described by his co-author (and indie Sage co-chair) Anthony Costello as "the best model". IIRC the best model got pretty much everything spectacularly wrong.
Yes, it really wasn't anyone's finest hour. Fine to be optimistic, but stuff like the BMJ piece https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/09/24/karl-friston-how-should-we-respond-to-an-upsurge-in-covid-19-cases/ was really bad IMO - if someone from the GBD side had written that, it would be still being trotted out by people on the cautious side as evidence of folly now
I agree. Really interesting article and fwiw I thought Independent Sage very political though they did result in Sage being more transparent so that was a good thing.
It’s a longish while ago so who knows after another period of time they might acknowledge that
Thanks! And yes, maybe I'll check in another four years or so
"Independent Sage" are & always have been political activists.