[LINK] r/Physics: ethics of putting out a preprint outside our immediate area of expertise during a major public health crisis

[Glen Turner]

Seeing this reposted throughout the physics community concerning the
"ethics of putting out a preprint outside our immediate area of
expertise during a major public health crisis".


"THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO TO FIGHT COVID-19 IS NOTHING. STOP WRITING
THAT PAPER. DON'T PUT IT ON THE ARXIV.

u/VeryLittle
2020-03-31

"In recent days we've seen an influx in papers on the arxiv modeling
the spread of COVID-19. Many of these are relatively simple papers
clearly written by physicists using simple SIR models, some basic curve
fitting, and even Ising models to model the spread of COVID-19.

"I'm writing to ask you, from the bottom of my heart, to cut that ****
out.

"This is not an unexplained X-ray line from the galactic center. This
is not the 750 GeV diphoton excess. This is not something where the
first paper to correctly guess the peak number of COVID-19 cases on the
arxiv gets a Nobel prize. People's lives are at stake and you're not
helping.

"At best, you make physicists look bad. Epidemiology, as a field,
already exists. Any prediction from a physicist tinkering with
equations pulled from Wikipedia is not going to be a better prediction
than that of professional public health experts whose models are far
more sophisticated and already validated.

"At worst, people die.

The remainder of the statement and the subsequent discussion is worth
reading:

[Some NSFW language]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/frsd16/the_best_thing_you_can_do_to_fight_covid19_is/

-glen