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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

Ethics in Science: Fauci Must Go

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As a scientist who publishes peer-reviewed research, I strongly support and favor scientific work, the scientific method with reproducibility and falsifiability, and science as problem-solver for human civilization. However, I’m not one of those who raises science to the level of a false god, to be served at all costs, morals and ethics be damned. I also cringe and anger when government gets unethical with science in any way, because that unfairly smears me by association.

Science should help to solve our problems, not cause them, nor make them worse! This is why I oppose such “scientific” endeavors as human experiments that are involuntary, unknowing, misrepresented, or deliberately physically or psychologically damaging (say, Tuskegee syphilis experiments by the United States Public Health Service, Wendell Johnson stuttering-orphan “experiments”, anything involving eugenics, “Little Albert” infant-fear test, 1955 CIA whooping-cough release near Tampa, human radioactivity experiments at the Universities of Rochester and Cincinnati, CIA’s MKULTRA subproject 68, 1950s/60s covered-up toxic, radioactive chemical releases in St. Louis, and many more).

[Have you ever noticed how many of these inhumane “experiments” have been performed or funded by government? Do you still wonder why so many people don’t trust government science? I have to deal with that blowback even in weather science, where harmful ethical problems have been extremely rare.]

Animal testing is a gray area for me, context-dependent, case-by-case. I’m not some PETA extremist who worships worms, roaches and rats. I gladly eat meat and lots of it. I don’t have a problem with most animal experimentation involving mice, insects, fish, etc. However, some are clearly and obviously cruel to anyone with even the most minuscule conscience. Pretty much anything that causes harm to animals that are common human pets definitely crosses my line.

Enter Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health. Some background…

On Fauci’s watch: Chinese gain-of-function experiments on viral bat coronaviruses were backdoor-funded via third party with taxpayer money, after it was banned in the U.S. (for good reason). This provided plausible deniability on direct funding of any sort of corona gain-of-function work in Wuhan, a semantics game Fauci cunningly and misleadingly played in testimony. Four days ago, in a latter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, DHS admitted to very limited coronavirus GoF money laundering through a third party (EcoHealth Allaince Inc) to Wuhan Institute. Your tax money, folks! I’m highly skeptical this was limited to viruses unrelated to the one now causing so much human devastation, and am confident more will trickle out over many years, until all this smoke reveals the ultimate fire.

This full stream of Glenn Greenwald’s tweets summarizes this NIH/EcoHealth/gain-of-function insanity succinctly. Greenwald is hardly a Q-anon right winger. In fact he quotes a story from Vanity Fair, of all things, that damns Fauci badly. [Vanity Fair? Also hardly a right-wing rag — in fact, quite the opposite! Yes, it’s fair to ask why that outfit investigated this, instead of supposed journalistic titans turned woke-cult mouthpieces like NY Times or Washington Post.] I agree with Greenwald that Rand Paul is owed an apology he’ll never receive, from Fauci and NIH.

Greenwald ignores Red Commie China too much in his statements — they obviously know everything about everything happening in that country through their deep, pervasive, Orwellian surveillance state — most certainly at the Wuhan lab, and all of EcoHealth’s involvement. They knew all too well about how the pandemic began (and aren’t telling nor permitting full outside investigation) — then incompetently responded to the disease emergence, leading to its worldwide spread. Not to mention cooking their own books with low fatalities and case numbers. The CCP is very much culpable here *also*, even as Greenwald hyperfocuses on encouragement and financial support via the U.S. bureaucracy, NIH. So, back to NIH and Fauci…

Bottom line: Fauci either didn’t know about the EcoHealth GoF work, and should have (malfeasance, incompetent leadership), or did know (per the 2018 grant report Greenwald notes) and is lying. Either way, he needs to go. But wait, there’s more!

Do you like beagle puppies? Stop now if you wish not to know of recent “experiments” on them that you and I unknowingly funded, that if any of us did in our own homes, rightfully would land us in jail and labeled as psychopaths. I hate stories like this, and almost never share them. However, this is a rare exception, because you are paying for this every week out of your salary, and should at least have the option to know about it. NIH funded the needless medical torture of beagle puppies.

From another bipartisan House report: “NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them. Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for ‘cordectomy.’ As you are likely aware, a cordectomy, also known as ‘devocalization,’ involves slitting a dog’s vocal cords in order to prevent them from barking, howling, or crying. This cruel procedure — which is opposed with rare exceptions by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and others – seems to have been performed so that experimenters would not have to listen to the pained cries of the beagle puppies. This is a reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.”

NIAID is a unit of the NIH, directed by Fauci. This cruelty in the name of science was done on his watch. He is responsible.

I find it ironic, and somewhat pathetic, that Fauci is likely to face far more heat for this than for other ways he has misled (covered up) and/or outright lied. If truly “the buck stops here”, his removal from NIH is long past due.

Governmental Dependency as a Toxic Relationship

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When it comes to logistics and preparedness, the mode of thinking needs to be logic and reason — not emotion. Pretend you’re an interstellar alien, we’ll call him Spock (or her Spockette, if you want to be equal opportunity), evaluating our relationship with central Federal bureaucracy from outer space.

Two pertinent points: First, when an entity has failed, over and over and over, to accomplish goals timely and accurately, is it logical to keep depending upon it, or to demand from it what it has repeatedly foot-dragged and failed to deliver? Spock(ette) says: No. Highly illogical.

What is that entity? Distant, detached, massive, red-tape-ridden, impersonal, faceless Federal bureaucracy. I’m speaking of the whole entity, as a large, bloated mass, not individual right-minded people inside it who are trying to improve things, mostly in futility.

Epidemiologists have been warning of a pandemic like the one ongoing, for over a quarter of a century. Yet through multiple D and R presidencies, multiple D, R and split Congresses, this is the result. Blaming only the current people (while they deserve just the latest few years’ share of it) is purely partisan, shortsighted, ignorant of history, and emotional — not logical, not reasoned.

This scenario has been warned about for DECADES, with only token, window-dressing action. Such longstanding foot-dragging in preparation for what has been an inevitable pandemic is just one example of such lack of foresight and attention to low-probability (in any one year), high-impact events that will happen some year. This is such a year.

Those who expertly predicted it for the last few decades have every right to say, “I told you so, why didn’t you listen to me and prepare?” And they are entirely reasoned and logical in asking such a question. Spock(ette) would approve.

This is why foreseers and visionaries get disillusioned: government bureaucracy — too debt-ridden and bloated from generations of exceeding its literal Constitutional authority in many areas — is too focused on the here and now and the pork-barrel pandering that doesn’t lend itself to accommodating accurate expert farsightedness. This is objectively demonstrable in the lack of preparedness in numerous crises — not just this coronavirus. And when it comes to logic and reason, objective evaluation is what matters.

Is it logical to expect quick deployments and resolutions when, as only a mild exaggeration, it takes 37 layers of approvals and nine months to unlock a door latch? Spock(ette) says: no. Highly illogical. We see it over, and over, and over, from slow hurricane response, to days/weeks wait for Federal deployment on wildfires, to the CDC bungling of this virus disaster, to weekly politicization of nonpartisan issues.

Yet I see so many people demanding more involvement of the very same thing that keeps failing, over and over and over: Federal “help”! That’s not only illogical, but irrational, unhealthy, toxic! And also: Sisyphean.

Second: Disasters really are local. This is because individuals are affected.

States (especially for their resource/economically poor rural areas) and major cities need to learn to prepare as if they essentially will get zero help from above in a timely way. Quite often, after all, that’s the brutally honest truth. This way, if help does arrive, it’s a bonus, a relief.

Dependency on big, inefficient, untimely, unreliable Washington is really a form of unhealthy codependency — akin to a neglectful, often gaslighting, sometimes abusive personal relationship, but wrought on a broad scale.

Think about this, please. Relate to it. Would you tell your friend in such a relationship to stay the course, stick it out, trust the abuser/neglector will somehow, someday reform? If you have been in such a relationship personally, you will get what I’m saying. Why encourage such relationships of cities, counties and states with Washington, who has and will let them down, gaslight, neglect, attach strings, token-“help”, or even trample them as often as fully assist?

Abusive relationships don’t just arise from individuals, but also…see encircled. The question isn’t which of these federal government has done at some point or another, but which it hasn’t! It’s not hard to find historic examples of every pie piece above.

If you still don’t understand the concept of betrayal by centralized DC bureaucracy, and how systemically destructive that can be, ask our native American Indian tribes.

Exactly as we correctly advise friends in toxic relationships, states and cities need to learn to get out of that bad relationship with Washington and go it on their own, with years to decades of advanced planning for every sort of disaster that could befall them. Spock(ette) would see this through the lens of history and say, “That’s imminently logical.”

Reflections on a Quarter Century of Storm Forecasting

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As of last week, I have been forecasting and researching severe storms (in SELS-Kansas City and its Norman successor) for 25 years, not counting prior time at NHC and NSSL. That’s 1/4 century of living the dream of a tornado-obsessed kid. Much has transpired professionally and personally in that time span, most of it decidedly for the better. The only negative is that I’m a quarter-century older. Give how little I knew then compared to now, and how little I knew about how little I knew, maybe the geezers of my youth were right, in that youth is wasted on the young.

The science of severe-weather prediction has advanced markedly. More is understood about the development and maintenance of severe storms than ever before. Numerical models also are better than ever, yet still riddled with flaws known to forecasters that belie their hype as panaceas. Most weather media, social media weather pundits outside front-line forecasters, and far too many Twitter-active pure researchers and grad students exhibit naivete and ignorance about both the flaws of models in applied use, and the still-urgent need for humans in forecasting (yes, forecasting, not just so-called “decision support services” a.k.a. DSS).

Fortunately, most of those who actually do the job — the experienced severe-storms-prediction specialists who are my colleagues — know better, and incorporate both the science and art (yes, art!) of meteorology into forecasting, to varying extents. Yet pitfalls lie in our path in forms of several interrelated ideas:

    * Automation: Even if the human forecast is better at a certain time scale, at what point does the bureaucracy (beholden to budget, not excellence) decide the cost-benefit ratio is worth losing some forecast quality to replace humans with bots that don’t take sick leave, join unions, nor collect night differential? I wrote in much more detail about this two years ago, and that discussion touches upon some of what I am re-emphasizing below. Please go back and read that if you haven’t already.

    * Duty creep with loss of diagnostic-understanding time: Cram more nickel-and-dime, non-meteorological side duties into the same time frames with the same staffing levels, a social-media nickel this year, a video-briefing dime the next, and something must give. In my experience, that is analysis and understanding, which in an ironically self-fulfilling way, stagnates human forecast skill (and more importantly, sacrificing concentration and situational understanding) whilst allowing models to catch up. Knowing how bureaucracy works, I suspect this is by design.

    * Mission sidetracking – “DSS” including customized media and social-media services: I don’t deny the importance of DSS; in fact I support it! Outreach is good! Yet DSS should not be done by the full-time, front-line forecasters who ideally need to be laser-focused on meteorological understanding when on duty, and making forecasts the most excellent possible. DSS should be a separate and parallel staffing with social-science-trained specialists in outreach everywhere DSS is required. Otherwise, quality above what the models can provide (which still is possible, especially on Day-1 and day-2, and in complex phenomena like severe and winter storms) will be lost prematurely and unnecessarily.

    * Loss of focus — see the last two bullets: A growing body of psychological literature resoundingly debunks the notion of “multitasking”. We lose focus and delay or dilute accomplishment when concentration is broken and interruptions occur. Management should be focusing on reducing, not increasing, distractions and interruptions on the forecast desk. Forecast quality and human lives are at stake.

    * De-emphasis of science in service: Physical and conceptual understanding matter in the preparation of consistently high-quality forecasts — especially on the complicated, multi-variate area of severe local storms. These are not day-5 dewpoint grids, and this is why my workplace has published more scientific research than any other publicly funded forecasting office, by far. Tornadoes, severe hail and thunderstorm winds are highly dependent on time and space overlaps of multiple kinds of forcings that models still do not often handle well, partly because of the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomenon (input observations are not dense enough), partly due to imperfect model physics and assimilation methods. Severe-storms specialists must have both self-motivation and continued support from above to understand the science — not only by getting training and reading papers, but by writing papers and performing research!

    * Model-driven temptation to complacency: This is a form of Snellman’s meteorological cancer. I wrote about some of these topics here 13 years ago in far more detail, under the umbrella of ensemble forecasting. Please read that discussion! I see no need so far to amend any of it, except to add thoughts about focus and concentration (above). If forecasters don’t think they can improve on a model, even if they really can, or just don’t feel like making effort to do so amidst other demands for time, they’ll just regurgitate the output, at which point their jobs can (and probably should!) be automated.

    * Meddling in the mission by distant, detached bureaucratic ignoramuses. Schism between upper-management assumptions and real front-line knowledge is a common theme across all governmental and corporate bureaucracies, and is nothing new across generations. In my arena, it manifests as lack of understanding and appreciation for the difficulty and complexity of the work, and in the difference in respecting the absolutely urgent need for direct, devoted, focused human involvement. The very first people with whom policy-makers should discuss severe-storms-prediction issues are the front-line severe-storms forecasters — that is, if knowledge and understanding matter at all in making policy.

At this stage of my career, I’m neither an embittered old cynic nor a tail-wagging puppy panting with naive glee. I never was the latter and I intend not to turn into the former. Instead I observe and study developments in a level-headed way, as both an idealist and a realist, assess them with reason and logic, and report about them with brutal honesty. I doing so, I’ll say that there is cause for both optimism and pessimism at this critical juncture. I’ve covered the pitfalls (pessimism) already.

How can optimism be realized? It’s straightforward, though not easy. We must continue to grow the science, emphasize the human element of physical and conceptual understanding (including the still-important role of human understanding and the art of meteorology) in such complex and multivariate phenomena, use ever-improving (but still highly imperfect!) models as tools and not crutches, study and learn every single day, minimize distractions/disruptions, and most of all, focus on and fight for excellence!

I’m now decidedly closer to retirement than to the start of my career. Yet you can count on this: you won’t see me coast, nor go FIGMO, nor be merely “good enough for government work”! Such behavior is absolutely unacceptable, pathologically lazy, morally wrong, and completely counter to my nature. The passion for atmospheric violence still burns hot as ever.

Excellence is not synonymous with perfection, and the latter is impossible anyway. I will issue occasional bad forecasts, and I hope, far more great ones. Regardless of the fickle vagaries of individual events, I must start each new day for what it is — a different challenge ready to be tackled, compartmentalized unto itself, not the same as the great or crappy forecast of the previous shift. I must settle for nothing less than consistency of excellence in performance, lead the next generation by example in effort, and advance the science further. I’ll be pouring the best reasoning I know into each forecast, even if that is necessarily imperfect and incomplete. I’ll be doing research and writing more papers. I’ll be educating and speaking and writing and raising awareness on severe-storms topics, trying to pass understanding on to both users of the forecasts and forecasters of the future.

I’m paid well enough, and the taxpayer deserves no less than excellence in return for his/her investment in me. That is my driven purpose in the years remaining in full-time severe-weather forecasting.