Formal scientific institutions took a battering during the pandemic, and deservedly so. From the wildly
inaccurate predictions of SAGE modellers to the
denial of natural immunity by signatories of the John Snow Memorandum, 'Science' (uppercase 's') has not had a good three years.
A particularly striking illustration of this is citation patterns in the scientific literature. If things were working well, the best studies would get cited the most. Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case: citations have flowed disproportionately to studies that uphold The Narrative.
In June, 2020, researchers from Imperial College London (including our old friend Neil Ferguson) published a
paper in the prestigious journal
Nature titled 'Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe'.
They concluded - on the basis of a complex model-fitting exercise - that lockdowns had saved the lives of 3.1 million people across 11 European countries. That's right, 3.1 million lives saved, and during the first three months of the pandemic
alone.
Doesn't very plausible, does it? After all, Sweden didn't lock down, and they saw about as many deaths - or even
fewer - than the countries that did lockdown. So how did the researchers get to the figure of 3.1 million lives saved?
Comment: Guess it was worth a try.