Comment by dartos

Yeah, I think "mettle" here is like a sword and shield and the ability to use them (read and understand scientific literature, and able to do so, self-directed, for years).

But whether a person does use them, and for what, is entirely due to the person themselves.

That’s okay, I know.

Anyone with the wherewithal can learn to “read and understand research” it’s not a magical power bestowed upon the few who receive recognition from some long standing bloated institution.

Attributing the drive and work of an individual to such an institution is weird and elitist.

I should note that if said institution paid for, assembled the team, and provided resources, then that institution obviously deserves credit.

Isn't that just what PhD do? I meant going through piles of papers - most of them bring more new questions than answers - and stay sane

Many academics have these skills; whether the higher education system is effective at teaching them and delivers an experience worth the significant cost to students (or here in Australia, also the publics).

The kind of people who get PhDs can also figure out how to read academic papers on their own. There's a lot of correlation/causation mix up on this thread.

For instance, people who get accepted into Harvard but don't attend have the exact same life outcomes to those who get accepted and do attend. The same is now true for college in general once you account for opportunity costs.

I was in a private discussion group during the pandemic that "did their own research"

First off, this was genuinely valuable during the first few months. Gigantic medical institutions were moving at a glacial pace and were making proclamations literally months behind the state of the research. In order to conserve masks, propaganda was put out that masks were only effective if you were a medical professional, and the most common way I saw this rationalised was that the general public was simply too stupid to wear a mask in a sanitary way. So I proceeded to wear a mask in a sanitary way. Then after a few months mask stocks started to pile up so propagandists THEN pronounced that more science was conducted and masks were actually effective for everybody!

That positive outcome aside, what other people saw was that the younger people got, the lower the risks of COVID, and the higher the risks of getting vaccinated. In fact, it seemed from the numbers (This is for the earlier strains of COVID), that for certain populations (young people who lived like hermits, in other words, hacker news readers) it could be on a selfish individual basis, be irrational to get the COVID vaccine. The risk from myocarditis could actually outweigh the risk of COVID itself. It was however, always in the collective interest for as many people to get vaccinated as possible, to reduce the transmission of COVID, and reduce the consequent strain on medical resources and the direct/indirect deaths this caused. Public health institutions did not get into this nuance, because it wasn't in the collective interest, so they just told everybody the vaccine was good for you. I proceeded to get vaccinated, and the main person I held discussions with did not, after both drawing the exact same scientific conclusion. Not every anti-vaccer was stupid, some of them were just massive civil libertarians.

What I saw from people who DIDN'T do their own research is that they were UNIFORMLY misinformed because they tended to either believe institutions who would lie to them whenever it served their purposes (2 weeks to flatten the curve!), or believed whatever podcaster told them about Ivermectin.