Quote Originally Posted by Dawgology View Post
Science didn't fail anyone. What you are seeing is scientific research played out in the public forum. Most of this stuff (at least for us anyway) happens behind the scenes and behing closed doors or at professional conventions and/or symposiums. This was an unknown virus as of 6 month ago. There has been aggressive research done on the virus over that time span. Typically, you would do your research, get it peer-reviewed, edited, then published (a 1-2 year process). At that point everyone in the relevant scientific community would read it and offer criticism or support. This would initiate more testing and research by different groups to either replicate your findings or disprove your findings and then the data parsing, writing, peer-review, publishing process would happen all over again followed by the relevant scientific community reading and reviewing the work. This happens over and over again (sometimes over a decade) until the scientific field comes to an understanding and consensus on a matter.

Due to the nature of this virus you are seeing that process sped up. You are seeing non-peer-reviewed articles being published online in order to expedite the process and get the info out as fast as possible due to the emergency of the situation. The problem is that media members then grab these technical articles and treat them as if they are 100% accurate when they are, in fact, theories at BEST and have yet to be fully reviewed by the scientific community.

That's not how science works and the media and other outlets need to be educated that just because a scientific article on researchgate, plos, or pubmed says "we believe XYZ based on the data gathered during the course of our research" doesn't mean that is the answer...it's just a step on the path toward the answer.
99% of media people know as much about science as someone who was born, raised, and lived their entire life in Manhattan does about farming. That goes for politicians too.