It is important, when you write about policy and politics, to try and avoid being personal as much as possible. Although this writer, and many others in society, might fundamentally oppose the policies and ideas being put forward by NPHET and the Government on a daily basis, it does nobody any good to forget that all of these people are in high-pressure jobs and are almost certainly doing what they believe to be the right thing for the country. And, of course, most people in Ireland believe that NPHET is acting on the basis of scientific expertise.
So, it becomes necessary to get slightly personal only in the circumstances where the public might have a false impression about that expertise. As many might have about Philip Nolan.
Philip Nolan is the Chair of the NPHET’s statistical modelling committee. He has produced all of NPHET’s statistical models which project the spread and of the virus in Ireland over time. These models have been used, consistently, to inform public policy. When the Government issues a lockdown order, or other restrictions in Ireland, it generally does so on the basis of a warning from NPHET that their statistical modelling foresees a steep rise in cases in the absence of Government action.
It is natural, then, for the public to assume that the person responsible for producing these models is a statistician, and an expert in numbers. Indeed, for a good portion of the pandemic, that was my own assumption.
It is not true.
It might sound remarkable to say it, but the fact of the matter is that Professor Philip Nolan has no qualification in statistics whatsoever.
Philip Nolan began his professional career in 1991, as a surgical intern in St. Vincent’s University Hospital. He then became a research fellow in physiology, and, immediately after, a Newman Scholar in Human Anatomy.
He lectured in physiology – the study of human body function – for seven years. This was his last active academic role. In 2003, he moved into University Administration. First as Director of UCD’s Conway Institute for Biomedical research, and then as UCD Vice President for Academic Affairs. He became President of Maynooth University in 2011, and held that role until October of this year.
Over the course of his career, he has never had any qualification whatever in statistics, or statistical analysis.
None of this is to impugn Professor Nolan’s actual qualifications: He is a highly accomplished academic with a glittering career. Just not one that has anything to do with numbers.
All of this, a reasonable person might conclude, makes him a strange choice to be the head of NPHET’s statistical modelling committee.
It is also no real defence to note that there are actual statisticians working for Prof. Nolan. After all, the reason those statisticians have somebody in charge of supervising their work is so that their assumptions might be challenged. Prof. Nolan appears to lack any qualification to do just that.
Indeed, it is notable that Prof. Nolan has been involved in several controversies outside of his field of expertise. For example: When he called Antigen testing “snake oil” he was speaking of a field which does not relate to his own subject matter of physiology. Similarly, in recent days, comments he made about ventilation have been ridiculed. Again, this is in an area outside of his own academic expertise.
It is of course possible for intelligent people to be reasonably conversant in a subject without being an expert. It would be a mistake, for example, to assume that only experts are permitted to have views, since even experts can be wrong.
But if there is an area in which expertise might be expected, it would surely be in the area of producing the statistical models on which national policy in a time of crisis is based. In Ireland, and in the case of Prof. Nolan, it might be argued on the basis of his CV that we have entirely the wrong person in that job.