The Maddening Mystery of Imperial’s Invulnerable Reputation Despite its Dire Record of Failed Model Predictions
Phillip W. Magness in AIER has crunched the numbers and shown how poor Imperial College’s modelling has been at predicting the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic under different policy responses in every country in the world (well, 189 of them). Yet for some unexplained reason Neil Ferguson and the rest of the Imperial team remain respected authorities on epidemic modelling and management. Magness writes:
COVID-19 has produced no shortage of doomsaying prophets whose prognostications completely failed at future delivery, and yet in the eyes of the scientific community their credibility remains peculiarly intact.
No greater example exists than the epidemiology modelling team at Imperial College-London (ICL), led by the physicist Neil Ferguson. As I’ve documented at length, the ICL modelers played a direct and primary role in selling the concept of lockdowns to the world. The governments of the United States and United Kingdom explicitly credited Ferguson’s forecasts on March 16th, 2020 with the decision to embrace the once-unthinkable response of ordering their populations to shelter in place.
Ferguson openly boasted of his team’s role in these decisions in a December 2020 interview, and continues to implausibly claim credit for saving millions of lives despite the deficit of empirical evidence that his policies delivered on their promises. Quite the opposite – the worst outcomes in terms of Covid deaths per capita are almost entirely in countries that leaned heavily on lockdowns and related nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in their unsuccessful bid to turn the pandemic’s tide.
Assessed looking backward from the one-year mark, ICL’s modelling exercises performed disastrously. They not only failed to accurately forecast the course of the pandemic in the US and UK – they also failed to anticipate COVID-19’s course in almost every country in the world, irrespective of the policy responses taken.
Time and time again, the Ferguson team’s models dramatically overstated the death toll of the disease, posting the worst performance record of any major epidemiology model.
Magness has put together a table of all the countries with the predictions ICL made for them and their actual outcomes. The results should be fatal for the reputation of anyone whose job it is to make accurate predictions of the future course of events. But not ICL it seems, whose credibility appears to be invulnerable despite repeated and consistent failure. Magness wonders why.
Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions, still viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting? And why is the ICL team still advising governments around the world on how to deal with COVID-19 through its flawed modeling approach? In March 2020 ICL sold its credibility for future delivery. That future has arrived, and the results are not pretty.
Worth reading in full.
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Because he’s a useful idiot?
and a useless idiot.
Bill Gates.
This is how power and influence work. At a certain mid-level it’s a massive back-scratching operation between scientists and politicians with their strings being pulled by international financiers. Isn’t it obvious?
Yes if he didn’t exist it would have been necessary to invent him
The most important question is why a physicist was ever listened to when it comes to epidemiology. Nobody would ask a biologist to model the interactions of subatomic particles. Scientists should stick to their own field of knowledge and be ignored when they deviate into other branches of science.
Fortunately he is one of the useful idiots who is too thick to realise that once he has served his purpose he will be eliminated.
The lack of self awareness is deeply disturbing.
I’d call it narcissism
When? When? Make it soon!
Pantsdown is a useful idiot because his ramblings can be used to induce terror, not only in common-or-garden zombies but in zombie politicians as well. Terror and totalitarianism are synonymous.
“why a physicist was ever listened to when it comes to epidemiology”
No – that’s not the problem. There are common skills that make a background in physics and mathematics quite appropriate. Let’s face it, there are a lot of epidemiologists who haven’t performed very well at all.
The problems lie rather in the areas of honesty, the analysis of evidence and the testing of computer models against reality in a recursive process etc.
If we simply left everything to epidemiologists, we’d still be up shit creek – since that journey starts with a denial of reality, not highly technical knowledge. I’m not an epidemiologist, but I know about research methods using an evidence base and the essential statistical methods – starting with the necessity of simply observing.
And – like others here – I just used those generic skills a year ago to determine – quite easily – that the ‘unprecedented’ nature of Covid was purely mythical, and that forecasts coming out of ICL via SAGE were total bollocks.
No – this isn’t about specific disciplines and recondite expertise.
Physics includes nuclear, theoretical, astrophysics, biophysics, molecular biophysics, cell biophysics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, EM theory, particle physics, medical physics, etc etc etc. Got no issue with someone from physics crossing into other areas, they generally have the basic tools and skills, more so than in other sciences. If you do a PhD the most important lesson to learn is that many people, with aptitude and a reasonable background, can become a world expert in a niche topic in a few months study, ie never dismiss anyone’s opinion just because they are not “formally” qualified.
But the main point is Ferguson’s models are worthless and no-one seems to have the wit and compass to challenge them, which makes me think they have all been bought off.
His modelling has been challenged, but those doing the challenging have been thoroughly (and dishonestly) discredited, ridiculed, and silenced early on. No one in authority wanted to acknowledge that Ferguson’s prediction weren’t worth the paper they were written on.
They weren’t worth the paper they were wiped on
He should be Dumped – failure to predict with any accuracy – and cannot adhere to his own recommendations- What is wrong with Johnson for continuing with him.
I can never get over his statement re lockdowns – “we didn’t think we could Get Away With It”. — Deeply sinister
As an Imperial alumni I really plead to stop calling this drivel the “Imperial Models”. This risible rubbish should be called “Ferguson Models”. The entire institution should not be tainted and, Ferguson should not be allowed to hide behind it either and gain credibility that he never should have had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAfKFKBlZbM
No. Institutions like Imperial College (and others like Oxford University and the BBC and all the rest of the criminal establishment research and agenda setting centres who have lost ALL credibility in this which they will never get back) churning out these good-for-nothing “experts” who have brainwashed British people into submission using fraud to this abhorrent, anti-life, Satanic agenda, are secptic. Imperial College is diseased and it is creating disease with its lies. To make out that it’s all about one man and that the College itself is not part of the problem is a display of the exact breed of naive assumptions people routinely make to excuse the reality of the criminal character of the people and institutions they have been brainwashed in to respecting. There are common themes with these traitorous institutions who provide the research which is used to terrorise and destroy lives. One of the most significant common themes which has been brought to light since this operation went live is a certain Mr Bill Gates. The guy who wants to vaccinate the world has bought favour and loyalty from these institutions, now they produce nothing but what Daddy demands, and they are always ready to… Read more »
Who / what is behind the Jameel Institute of Disease and Emergency Analytics at Imperial College? Also Community Jameel? Never heard of them before, but seems to be some philanthropic organisation?
Here is some info about the ticking time bombs they just injected into millions of people for no good reason:
18 Reasons I Won’t Be Getting a Covid Vaccine
https://www.deconstructingconventional.com/post/18-reason-i-won-t-be-getting-a-covid-vaccine
COVID Vaccines: Necessity, Efficacy and Safety
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/05/covid-vaccines-necessity-efficacy-and-safety/
Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID‐19 vaccines worsening clinical disease
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijcp.13795
Why is Ferguson still employed There?
The Answer. He brings in lots of dirty money that Imperial.gladly accept from Big Pharma Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation
because the predictions that propose a world where big tech thrive and make billions off our misery are the most profitable and you have heard of the golden rule right?
We all have to remember that at the start the population was deemed not to be scared enough. Therefore the more outlandish the predictions the better. We now have to be kept in this state in order for the Government and the media to be able to justify their actions. ICL has consistently produced the most doom laden figures as a result they are always used to justify the actions taken.
Spot on.
A big reason is that people in power in the UK and around the world listened to him and acted based on his, and similar predictions, and to dump him now would mean admitting they are wrong. I don’t believe for a moment it’s because SAGE and govt think Ferguson is some kind of genius – it’s just a question of sticking to their story.
Going out on a limb here: They are still used because they generate the scenarios required to scare people into supporting the state’s agenda?
Not out on a limb. Obvious truth!