** From Center for Inquiry:

***Here's an example of what's great about skepticism and the science-based mindset: The ability to admit when we're wrong and then even explain how we were wrong. Steven Salzberg at Forbes recants his piece from just a few days ago in which he urged rushing trial vaccines:

***I wrote a blog post over the weekend that has generated tremendous pushback, including an op-ed in the New York Times as well as thousands of comments on Twitter.

• In my previous post, I suggested that while we’re pursuing Phase 3 testing of several promising Covid-19 vaccines, we could simultaneously offer those same, unapproved vaccines to a wider community of volunteers, as long as those volunteers were fully informed. The benefits of moving quickly, I argued, would outweigh the risks.

***I was wrong. After reading many of the responses to my article, some of them outlining the risks in greater detail, I have concluded that (1) the risks are greater than I presented them, and (2) the benefits are not as great as I had thought.

Another risk is that of trust: as many people pointed out on Twitter, if we expand the distribution of vaccines too quickly, and then the vaccine doesn’t work, we may seriously undermine the public’s trust in any eventual vaccine that really does work. That in turn will reduce the number of people willing to be vaccinated, which could cause serious harm to public health.

One thing I’ve learned as a scientist is that if you get something wrong, you need to admit it, learn from the experience, and move on. I was wrong.