{"id":146731,"date":"2022-05-26T09:06:59","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T13:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=146731"},"modified":"2022-05-27T16:21:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T20:21:36","slug":"dr-nirav-shah-uses-twitter-humor-to-build-support-for-maines-covid-19-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/05\/26\/dr-nirav-shah-uses-twitter-humor-to-build-support-for-maines-covid-19-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"10 ways Bates Commencement speaker Dr. Nirav Shah uses Twitter humor to build support for Maine’s COVID-19 fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Among this season’s Commencement speakers, Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control who will deliver the Bates Commencement address on Sunday, May 29<\/a>, owns one of the most active and entertaining feeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How to Watch Commencement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commencement will be livestreamed on the Bates website<\/a> and also on the college\u2019s Facebook page<\/a>. The livestream starts around 9:30 a.m. with the arrival of the academic procession.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the pandemic, Shah has peppered his serious and straightforward public-health guidance \u2014 and there’s lot of it \u2014 with social and scientific insights often delivered with wit and humor, serving his 30,000-plus followers a steady diet of puns and dad jokes, plus parody, satire, and outright sarcasm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The net effect: galvanizing popular support for COVID policies while dismantling specious arguments against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are 10 of our favorite Nirav Shah tweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Pointing out the danger of confirmation bias<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At Bates, students are encouraged to interrogate their biases, an important tool for sorting out fact from fiction. In this tweet, Shah reminds us all how easy it is for our brains to assign truth to the findings that we’re already inclined to agree with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Study whose findings I agree with: \u201cwell-designed, done by top researchers, and suitable for publication in this top journal.\u201d

Study findings I disagree with: \u201cpoorly designed, biased, wrong endpoints, not adequately powered, 2nd tier journal.\u201d

Confirmation bias is pernicious.<\/p>— Nirav D. Shah (@nirav_uscdc) March 31, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>