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On Thu, 14 Aug 2025, Kevin Chadwick wrote:
"Seems to be a 404 not found"
Dear Mister Chadwick,
I had also gotten a 404 error each time for this webpage (but I have=20 successfully retrieved this webpage as I explain below).
I did not remark about it because I actually remarked about "code
written in the C language that isn't even commented", as complained by=20
Rick Newbie.
As for accessing old, badly presented ex-webpages including this 404=20 ex-webpage in question . . .
HTTP://web.Archive.org
is a possibility for a well behaved ex-webpage. Some badly behaved=20
examples do not work well with e.g. a normal, bad, GUI webbrowser. This is=
=20
one such example. So instead w3m can rescue us as follows . . .
w3m
HTTP://web.Archive.org/web/20200516145237https://ChrisVonCsefalvay.com/= 2020/05/09/imperial-covid-model
said inter alia: |----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"[. . .], the computational epidemiologist who has advised the [. . .]| |government on COVID-19 related steps until his recent resignation. I |
|have previously been a staunch defender of [. . . his] approach =E2=80=93 = his |
|model was (and is) theoretically sound, and probably as good as such | |models will ever get. [. . .] |
| |
|And looking at the code, that raises some extremely serious | |questions. I would like to explore some of these issues, but will not |
|go into a detailed analysis of the code, for one reason =E2=80=93 the code=
|
|eventually (and reluctantly) shared by [. . .] is almost | |definitely not the code used to generate forecasts for [. . .] | |Government. We know that at some point, Github [. . .] |
|has been involved in cleaning up some of the | |quality issues. [. . .] obstinately resists releasing | |original code =E2=80=93 both via Github and under a valid FOIA request tha=
t |
|[. . .] lawyers are entirely misinterpreting.1) We can, however, | |safely assume from the calibre of the people who have worked on the | |improved version that whatever was there was worse. |
| |
|The quality issue |
|First of all, the elephant in the room: code | |quality. It is very difficult to look at the [. . .] code with any | |understanding of software engineering and conclude that this is good, |
|or even tolerable. [. . .] attempts a very thin apologia |
|for this: |
| | |[Indentation apparently as a block quotation:] |
| I=E2=80=99m conscious that lots of people would like to see and run=
the|
| pandemic simulation code we are using to model control measures|
| against COVID-19. To explain the background =E2=80=93 I wrote the = code|
| (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13+ years ago to model flu|
| pandemics=E2= =80=A6|
| |
| =E2=80=94 [. . .] March 22, = 2020|
|[. . . indentation apparently as a block quotation.] |
| |
|That, sir, is not a | |feature. It=E2=80=99s not even a bug. It=E2=80=99s somewhere between negli= gence and |
|unintentional but grave scientific misconduct. |
| |
|For those who are not in the computational fields: =E2=80=9Cmy code is too=
|
|complicated for you to get it=E2=80=9D is not an acceptable excuse. It is = the |
|duty of everyone who releases code to document it =E2=80=93 within the =
|
|codebase or outside (or a combination of the two). Greater minds |
|[. . .] have a tough enough time | |navigating a large code base, and especially where you have | |collaborators, it is not unusual to need a second or two to remember |
|what a particular function is doing or what the arguments should be |
|like. Or, to put it more bluntly: for thirteen years, taxpayer funding|
|[. . .] and all it produced was |
|code that violated one of the most fundamental precepts of good | |software development =E2=80=93 intelligibility. =
|
| |
|The policy issue |
|[. . .] I don=E2=80=99t, of course, know whether that is =
|
|what indeed happened, but I doubt anybody would want to trust their |
|lives to thousands of lines of cobbled-together code. |
| |
|[. . .] |
| |
|The community issue | |Perhaps the biggest issue is, however, the | |response to people who dare question the refusal by [. . .] to | |release the original source code. This is best summarised by the | |responses of their point man on Github, who is largely spending his |
|time locking issues and calling people dumb & toxic: |
| |
|[An apparent quotation which does not prove what it is apparently | |supposed to demonstrate . . .] |
| |
|It may merit attention that [. . .] is taxpayer-funded =E2=80=93 the self-= same|
|taxpayer who is deemed unfit to even behold what he paid for. This is |
|the worst of =E2=80=98closed science=E2=80=99, something many scientists (= myself |
|included) have worked hard to dismantle over the years. Publicly | |funded science imposes a moral obligation to present its results to |
|the funder (that is, the taxpayer), and it should perhaps not be up to|
|the judgment of a junior tech support developer to determine what the | |public is, or is not, fit to see. Perhaps as an epidemiologist, I take| |special umbrage at the presumption that everyone who wishes to see the| |original code base would be =E2=80=9Cconfused=E2=80=9D =E2=80=93 maybe I s= hould write to |
|reassure Dr [. . .] that I do understand a little about | |epidemiology. It is, after all, what I do. |
| |
|The science issue |
|None of these issues are, of course, anywhere near |
|as severe as what this means =E2=80=93 a massive leap backwards, erosion o=
f |
|trust and a complete disclaimer of accountability by publicly funded | |scientists. |
| |
|There is a moral obligation for epidemiologists to work for the common|
|good =E2=80=93 and that implies an obligation of openness and honesty. I a=
m |
|reminded of the medical paternalism that characterised Eastern Bloc | |medicine, where patients were rarely told what ailed them and never | |received honest answers. To see this writ large amidst a pandemic by |
|what by all accounts (mine included) has been deemed one of the | |world=E2=80=99s best computational epidemiology units is not so much =
|
|infuriating as it is deeply saddening. |
| |
|One of my friends, former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, counseled in his | |recent book to =E2=80=9Ctake the high ground, or the high ground will take=
|
|you=E2=80=9D. Epidemiology had the chance to seize and hold the narrative,=
|
|through openness, transparency and honesty about the forecasts |
|made. It had the chance, during this day in the sun of ours, to show |
|the public just how powerful our analytical abilities have | |become. Instead, petty academic jealousy, obsessions with | |institutional prestige and an understandable but still | |disproportionate fear of being =E2=80=98misinterpreted=E2=80=99 by people = who =E2=80=98do not |
|understand epidemiology=E2=80=99 have given the critics of forecasting and=
|
|computational epidemiology fertile breeding ground. They are entirely | |justified now in criticising any forecasts that come out of the |
|[. . .] model =E2=80=93 even if the forecasts are correct. There will no =
|
|doubt be public health consequences to the loss of credibility the | |entire profession has suffered, and in the end, it=E2=80=99s all due to th=
e |
|outdated =E2=80=98proprietary=E2=80=99 attitudes and the airs of superiori=
ty by a few |
|insulated scientists who, somehow, somewhere, left the track of | |serving public health and humanity for the glittering prizes offered | |elsewhere. With their abandonment of the high road, our entire | |profession=E2=80=99s claim to the public trust might well be forfeited =E2= =80=93 in a |
|sad twist of irony, at a time that could well have been the Finest |
|Hour of computational epidemiology. |
| |
|[. . .] |
| |
|(c) Chris von Csefalvay, 2015-. For syndication and reprint | |queries, please use the contact form." | |----------------------------------------------------------------------|
A theme in
HTTP://web.Archive.org/web/20200516145237https://ChrisVonCsefalvay.com/2020= /05/09/imperial-covid-model
which is broader than diseases and software is similar to
HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/Evil_which_is_so-called_science/
An ex-website of "the Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity" used=20
to use bad Scholastica so it is too hard to archive. HTTrack; lftp; Pavuk;=
=20
Wget Version 1.21.3; and Wget2 Version 1.99.1 all failed to archive it so=
=20
I manually archived it:
HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/Evil_which_is_so-called_science/Journal_of= _Scientific_Practice_and_Integrity/
My condolences to persons who need to archive bigger Scholastica websites!
Archives other than Archive.org might also had archived
HTTPS://ChrisVonCsefalvay.com/2020/05/09/imperial-covid-model
- I did not check. I hyperlink to webpages about many other archives=20 websites in the last sentence of
HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/Evil_which_is_so-called_science/devastatin= g_harassment_and_bullying/maladministration_action_or_inaction_of_a_serious= _nature_contrary_to_law_or_unreasonable_unjust_oppressive_discriminatory_im= proper.HTM
If one wants to manually archive something without needing it to be still=
=20
available after this century, then I would recommend
HTTPS://Archive.Li
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