Gregg Gonsalves: John Moore, virologist/immunologist from Cornell Weill Med in NYC and I take the NYTimes to task for two opinion pieces on #COVID earlier this month. Both pieces are examples of "science opinion", where non-experts weigh in on topics beyond their ken. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

John Moore, virologist/immunologist from Cornell Weill Med in NYC and I take the NYTimes to task for two opinion pieces on #COVID earlier this month. Both pieces are examples of "science opinion", where non-experts weigh in on topics beyond their ken. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

“The New York Times” Is Failing Its Readers Badly on Covidwww.thenation.com A pair of shoddy opinion pieces proves that the paper is letting its audience down and undermining the fight to improve our knowledge of the virus.

And criticism is healthy, in fact there are lots of battles to be fought on many issues on our response to COVID, but these two pieces are examples of how to do it badly, not in good faith, playing into the hands of those who aren't interested in the issues, but see public health as a punching bag.

Holy moly, Gregg, not mincing words here. 100% on point and really appreciate you and John took the time to write this - so very important.

Thanks for this. In this part of the world masks were used once they were available to buy. The bizarro world commentary that ignores real shortages of masks is some of the worst preaching to the choir. Will let the approximation of the equivalence of 6 ft and 2 m slide.

On social distancing, obviously it works even if you posit, wrongly, zero distance dependance on transmission likelihood. Fewer sources and fewer sinks in the same space… but I’ve heard people arguing about 6 ft infinitely more than this.

Because we aggressively ignored the data that it was an aerosol, and we are still ignoring that. We have done little to improve indoor air quality, we still push hand sanitizer and hand washing as covid preventions (useful for other things, pointless for covid), no pushback on mask restrictions, etc

Usual MO. If you can’t do the science yourself, write an unsubstantiated opinion and try and get all the real science retracted.

I'm begging everyone to cancel the #nytimes

Washington Post, also. The NYT has many people “hooked” because of games and cooking. Just like the printed paper once did. Alas, I use the cooking app too much. I know, I know. I’m working on it!

You're right. I usually attach which ever is mentioned.

I'm seriously considering it. NYT seems to have become too absorbed in office politics, to pay sufficient attention to their actual avowed purpose (ie. quality journalism).

I've had them blocked forever, their unwillingness to call waterboarding torture if the USA did it for me (and they reversed that in 2014, I've been disgusted with them for a very long time).

Excellent article. I would love it if someone in the bz would explain how these generalist op-ed writers land their topics. The implication here is that they are independent but misguided. But surely some are spoon-fed or simply contracted to peddle stories. Op-eds should come w COI warnings.

I think sometimes these generalist critiques can work: but when you’re staking out a minority opinion like Chan, the question of grounding in expertise is fair to raise. I don’t know how they get these pieces greenlit.

Here’s the NYT opinion public statement on how solicits and publishes essays. It open with a lie, because they notoriously do NOT fact check. help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/art...

New York Times Opinion Guest Essayshelp.nytimes.com Learn more about New York Times Opinion guest essays, including how to submit a guest essay for review and publication. New York Times Opinion guest essays deliver an argument in the author’s voic...

I have a question about this - would it be possible to get an oped published there as a counter argument that more broadly criticizes these practices?

I used to work for Zeynep and can speak knowledgeably on this. idk what is "spoon-fed" here. No one tells Zeynep what to write. She would ignore them. Nor pays her for a specific tale. I guarantee no one pulls her strings. Feel to disagree and critique! Right or wrong, hers are sincere views.

And she has written some good things; this piece isn’t one of them.

I understand. Your arguments are very clear and logical. I adore Zeynep and she knows I'm not a yes person; but I don't need to get into the mix on this. I'm just weighing in to say she cannot be bought. Or else, the tech companies that were desperate to own her, would.

I really feel like journos need a primer in STEM that include lessons like “when they don’t commit to an answer it means they legit don’t know” and “how to find that one guy who specializes in this”

Thanks for this. NYT knows how to sell papers, and for a long time now that’s become a higher editorial priority than truth telling.

Remember… the opinion section is run separately from the newsroom. For the life of me, I do not understand why the paper has been painted as “liberal.” Look at how the newsroom treated Lindbergh and Hitler in the 1930s.

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You can include the mysteriously over hyped Zeynep Tufecki in that.

NYT really has gone to shit in the past few years. It's good having articles like this reminding people of how things actually went down in the early pandemic days. There's far too many people who seem to have forgotten the PPE shortage for hcw and debate on transmission.

That shortage alone was brutal. I'm in a couple social media circles with hcw, scientists and others who promote good public health practices. We were literally checking local med supply retail shops etc to purchase and send PPE to areas where it was sorely lacking.

My hometown was an early disaster, Albany GA. They ran out of a year’s supply in a snap - because they stocked for natural disasters like floods that did not go on for months.

Ya, anti-maskers/vaxxers use it as an argument against preventative measures. We already saw what a SARS left unmitigated could do to health care staff with the first SARS CoV back in the early 2000s. It royally screwed my city's health care staff.

That’s not a “like” but a 😕

TY. The NYT opinion section has been amazingly bad for years, now. They do no basic fact checking of the columns they publish.

You had me at “The New York Times Is Failing Its Readers.”

TY🙏 Now for the annoying part- Zeynep Tufekci is playing the victim card. Insult to injury at the end "Worse, they do the same to Alina Chan, who is junior and has been harassed endlessly." Alina Chan is a hack. Dare any of us say it then Zeynep Tufekci thinks we're all just misogynists. 🙄

I believe that the lab leak theory was given so much credence because Trump was promoting it as a way to make ‘China’ the bad guy in the face of his own shortcomings on pandemic response

I keep hearing "they told us not to wear masks"...but both my mother and I, from opposite ends of the spectrum, picked up the clear message- "dont buy masks because healthcare workers need them, make your own until the supply improves" ...right?

Whenever I hear the phrase "science opinion" I instantly think of Bret Stephens. Is he one of the perps?

Thanks for sharing this,Gregg!

Thank you for writing this necessary article

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I think it’s an excellent discussion.

Lots of valid points. Unfortunately i can't access the NYT opinion piece, but hopefully the @nytimes.com will in due course respectfully respond to your Nation piece here or elsewhere. Or perhaps Dr. Zeynep Tufekci ( @zey.bsky.social ) will do so directly? Let's not keep this in a bubble.

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That’s rather a lot of shade thrown at Zeynep.

Zeynep Tufekci deserves all that shade, and more. She's coyly been pushing the lab leak hypothesis for years, all the while pretending to be open-minded. She's done a great deal of harm meanwhile, pushing her false narrative.

"Weill Cornell" not "Cornell Weill"

Finally got to read this now that I'm back from my holiday. It's great! It's these overconfident and largely ignorant pundits that put me off discussing the issues openly (I couldn't compete with their verbosity). Also galling, was seeing them coauthor with people who should have known better.

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