[Goose]

I apologize.  I didn't realize the slang use of "tool" required you to form or change your beliefs to please someone else as opposed to just being used to advance their agenda.  If I offended people because of my lack of slang knowledge, I apologize.  So I amend my comment to say he's unqualified, patently wrong, and being used by others to advance their agenda.

I think the term that best describes what you are seeing here is the concept pioneered by the CCP. He is a "useful idiot". He actually believes what he is saying.

I guess Einstein was also on the wrong side of the "scientific debate" when he said "God does not play dice with the universe". Fortunately for him, there was no Hippocratic Oath to violate.

For your analogy to hold, Einstein, in addition to appearing on talk shows and writing opinion columns saying how the quantum physicists were silly, would have to join a task force that actively suppressed funding to those physicists :)

Fortunately, no such joint task force existed and science was allowed to play out with only minimal government intervention. It is however unquestionably true that the fact Einstein did not embrace quantum mechanics held back it's acceptance by the "scientific community".

Do I know that he has ignored the fact he has been wrong and has failed to examine arguments against his position? No, I don't know that. With respect, I don't think you know that either.

I disagree.  Show me one piece where he acknowledges his massive underestimate of the death count or even thinks about the reasons why that was the case?  I can show you many pieces where he continues to advance his "overreaction" theme in April, May, June, July and now.  He went on a talk show after the WHO expert backtracked from her asymptomatic transmission comment, described her backtracking as just political pressure, and completely ignored the WHO statement that 40% of transmission could be asymptomatic.  Just left that little tidbit completely out of the interview.

You are correct I know of no example of him acknowledging  his underestimate or that he contemplates why he was wrong. That doesn't prove he didn't do so. It is the old "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I would hope a member of the press would question him about this. It is also not uncommon not to cite every counterargument to the point you are trying to make. That is kind of up to the interviewer, or to the rest of us following along at home. In fairness, asymptomatic transmission has gone from "probably not much" to "could be 40%". However, we still don't really know where we stand there. "Could be" is not "is". However, we are certainly beyond "probably not much".

I'll give you that another interpretation is that he does know about all of the counter evidence and never addresses it or publicizes it to advance his own agenda.  If that's the case, then he really has violated his Hippocratic Oath in much the same way as a doc who continually performs non-standard procedures and consciously ignores bad outcomes.  He is a neuroradiologist, not an epidemiologist or an infectious disease expert, pushing dangerous health care policy at a large scale.

Could be true. However, what agenda is he advancing, other that he is right and others are wrong? There are Docs who make money from being quacks, and it is obvious what they gain. In some cases, they believe they are doing the right thing and have all kinds of excuses about why things didn't work out. This doesn't make them less liable, just less venal.
However, assuming Scott Atlas is doing something to advance "his own agenda" without any evidence is too big a leap for me. I have found that arrogance and pride is usually sufficient to explain such behavior, particularly among academics. For now, why he is doing what he is doing is much less important than debunking any errors that he is making. To do so effectively, we need to stick to where we can show he is wrong and not reach into areas we can't prove. That would make us like him.

[Goose]

I apologize.  I didn't realize the slang use of "tool" required you to form or change your beliefs to please someone else as opposed to just being used to advance their agenda.  If I offended people because of my lack of slang knowledge, I apologize.  So I amend my comment to say he's unqualified, patently wrong, and being used by others to advance their agenda.

I think the term that best describes what you are seeing here is the concept pioneered by the CCP. He is a "useful idiot". He actually believes what he is saying.

I guess Einstein was also on the wrong side of the "scientific debate" when he said "God does not play dice with the universe". Fortunately for him, there was no Hippocratic Oath to violate.

For your analogy to hold, Einstein, in addition to appearing on talk shows and writing opinion columns saying how the quantum physicists were silly, would have to join a task force that actively suppressed funding to those physicists :)

Fortunately, no such joint task force existed and science was allowed to play out with only minimal government intervention. It is however unquestionably true that the fact Einstein did not embrace quantum mechanics held back it's acceptance by the "scientific community".

Do I know that he has ignored the fact he has been wrong and has failed to examine arguments against his position? No, I don't know that. With respect, I don't think you know that either.

I disagree.  Show me one piece where he acknowledges his massive underestimate of the death count or even thinks about the reasons why that was the case?  I can show you many pieces where he continues to advance his "overreaction" theme in April, May, June, July and now.  He went on a talk show after the WHO expert backtracked from her asymptomatic transmission comment, described her backtracking as just political pressure, and completely ignored the WHO statement that 40% of transmission could be asymptomatic.  Just left that little tidbit completely out of the interview.

You are correct I know of no example of him acknowledging  his underestimate or that he contemplates why he was wrong. That doesn't prove he didn't do so. It is the old "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I would hope a member of the press would question him about this. It is also not uncommon not to cite every counterargument to the point you are trying to make. That is kind of up to the interviewer, or to the rest of us following along at home. In fairness, asymptomatic transmission has gone from "probably not much" to "could be 40%". However, we still don't really know where we stand there. "Could be" is not "is". However, we are certainly beyond "probably not much".

I'll give you that another interpretation is that he does know about all of the counter evidence and never addresses it or publicizes it to advance his own agenda.  If that's the case, then he really has violated his Hippocratic Oath in much the same way as a doc who continually performs non-standard procedures and consciously ignores bad outcomes.  He is a neuroradiologist, not an epidemiologist or an infectious disease expert, pushing dangerous health care policy at a large scale.

Could be true. However, what agenda is he advancing, other that he is right and others are wrong? There are Docs who make money from being quacks, and it is obvious what they gain. In some cases, they believe they are doing the right thing and have all kinds of excuses about why things didn't work out. This doesn't make them less liable, just less venal.
However, assuming Scott Atlas is doing something to advance "his own agenda" without any evidence is too big a leap for me. I have found that arrogance and pride is usually sufficient to explain such behavior, particularly among academics. For now, why he is doing what he is doing is much less important than debunking any errors that he is making. To do so effectively, we need to stick to where we can show he is wrong and not reach into areas we can't prove. That would make us like him.