John Ioannidis - “lockdown is a nuclear weapon that destroys everything“

C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, and (by courtesy) of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics; co-Director, Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS). Born in New York City in 1965 and raised in Athens, Greece. Valedictorian (1984) at Athens College; National Award of the Greek Mathematical Society (1984); MD (top rank of medical school class) from the National University of Athens in 1990; also received DSc in biopathology from the same institution. Trained at Harvard and Tufts (internal medicine and infectious diseases), then held positions at NIH, Johns Hopkins and Tufts. Chaired the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina Medical School in 1999-2010 while also holding adjunct professor positions at Harvard, Tufts, and Imperial College. Senior Advisor on Knowledge Integration at NCI/NIH (2012-6). Served as President, Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, and editorial board member of many leading journals (including PLoS Medicine, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JNCI among others) and as Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (2010-2019). Delivered ~600 invited and honorary lectures. Recipient of many awards (e.g. European Award for Excellence in Clinical Science [2007], Medal for Distinguished Service, Teachers College, Columbia University [2015], Chanchlani Global Health Award [2017], Epiphany Science Courage Award [2018], Einstein fellow [2018]). Inducted in the Association of American Physicians (2009), European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2010) American Epidemiological Society (2015), European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2015), National Academy of Medicine (2018). Honorary titles from FORTH (2014) and Ioannina (2015), honorary doctorates from Rotterdam (2015), Athens (2017), Tilburg (2019), Edinburgh (2019, ceremony planned for 2020). Multiple honorary lectureships/visiting professorships (Caltech, Oxford, LSHTM, Yale, U Utah, U Conn, UC Davis, U Penn, Wash U St. Louis, NIH among others). The PLoS Medicine paper on “Why most published research findings are false” has been the most-accessed article in the history of Public Library of Science (3 million hits). Author of 7 literary books in Greek, three of which were shortlisted for best book of the year Anagnostis awards. Brave Thinker scientist for 2010 according to Atlantic, “may be one of the most influential scientists alive”. Highly Cited Researcher according to Thomson Reuters in both Clinical Medicine and in Social Sciences. Citation indices: h=199, m=8 per Google Scholar. Current citation rate: more than 4,500 new citations per month (among the 10 scientists worldwide who are currently the most commonly cited, perhaps also the currently most-cited physician). When contrasted against my vast ignorance, these values offer excellent proof that citation metrics can be horribly unreliable. I have no personal social media accounts - I admire people who can outpour their error-free wisdom in them, but I make a lot of errors, I need to revisit my writings multiple times before publishing, and I see no reason to make a fool of myself more frequently than it is sadly unavoidable. I consider myself privileged to have learned and to continue to learn from interactions with students and young scientists (of all ages) from all over the world and I love to be constantly reminded that I know next to nothing.