Iowa COVID tracker

[rogpodge]

Dog Walker to Data Scientist: A prominent voice in Iowa media is not who they claim to be

But newly revealed court documents obtained by Iowa Field Report show that Willette is not the expert that she claims to be. Rather than a trained data scientist, public health official, or epidemiologist qualified to offer opinions on the pandemic and responses to it; she is a former dog walker with no academic training in the subject of her prolific Twitter feed and frequent news hits.

According to court documents, Willette completed her undergraduate training at the University of Iowa, which focused on medieval history, religious studies, and classical languages. She completed that undergraduate work in 2005, and her resume shows no work history until 2013, when she started working as a dog walker under the trade name of “Furry Friends Pet Care.”

Welp.

After the publication of this article, Willette tweeted that she had been listed as the co-author of two academic articles. Both articles listed her husband, Iowa State University Associate Professor Auriel Willette as the primary author. One article, titled “Using machine learning to predict COVID-19 infection and severity risk among 4,510 aged adults: a UK Biobank cohort study” was published January 5, 2021. It listed Sara Willette’s academic affiliation as “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, Ames, IA, USA.”:

The second article, from July 2021, was titled “Inflammation, negative affect, and amyloid burden in Alzheimer’s disease: Insights from the kynurenine pathway.” It listed Sara Willette’s academic affiliation as “Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.”:

But a review of that department’s website by Iowa Field Report does not list Sara Willette as a member of its staff or faculty. Iowa Field Report has submitted an inquiry with the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition to learn of Sara Willette’s affiliation with it. This story will be updated when we receive a response.

COVID is an avenue for people who desperately want to feel superior to others to get dopamine hits from feeling superior to others.

[Legend]

Before getting all inflamed, ask yourself whether a person needs to have a degree in data science to speak with authority on data issues.

I admit to being from Missouri on this one. Credentials actually tend to create as many problems as they solve.

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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)

[rogpodge]

I agree to some extent.  When a person isn’t just collecting data and putting it into a tracker, but is being consulted about policy, being cited as an authority on causation and correlations, and commenting on policies (masking, super-spreader events, etc.), then credentials begin to matter.  Iowa has been okay, on the whole, but like Rebekah Jones, this woman is being quoted as an expert, and followed on Twitter as a source for news regarding forecasting outbreaks, when she has no qualifications for doing so other than inputting government data into graphing software.  Otherwise, it’s just another way the media confirms its priors and manufactures “evidence” for things that aren’t supported by the data.

[Author]

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