Eric Feigl-Ding

Eric Liang Feigl-Ding (born March 28, 1983) is an American public health scientist who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists^[1] in Washington DC. He was formerly a faculty member and researcher at Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the Chief Health Economist for Microclinic International. His research and advocacy have primarily focused on obesity, nutrition, cancer prevention, and biosecurity. Feigl-Ding is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.^[2]

Feigl-Ding was a candidate in the 2018 Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district.^[3][4] His January 2020 early alarm and call for COVID-19 preparedness went viral on Twitter was called the 'Tweet Heard Around the World'^[5].^[6][7] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Feigl-Ding's Twitter posts on the matter have been popular.^[6] He also commented on the pandemic and mitigation efforts in various media, urging action.^[8][9][5]

Early life and education[]

Feigl-Ding was born in Shanghai, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was five years old.^[10] He was raised in South Dakota^[11] and Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Shippensburg Area Senior High School^[12] and is an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence.^[13]

In 2004, he completed his undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University with Honors in Public Health.^[1] He completed his dual Doctor of Science doctoral program in epidemiology and doctoral program in nutrition from Harvard University in 2007.^[1] He attended Boston University School of Medicine, but did not complete the M.D. program.^[14][15]

Work[]

Research and work[]

Feigl-Ding's work focuses on epidemiology, health economics, and nutrition. He is a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. He was a researcher at the Harvard Medical School, and at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.^[1]

Feigl-Ding is also the Chief Health Economist at Microclinic International,^[16] as co-principal investigator of several intervention programs for obesity and diabetes prevention in the US and abroad. He developed a 130-year cohort study of Major League Baseball regarding the relationship between obesity and mortality in athletes.^[17] He has also developed and led public health programs for Bell County, Kentucky,^[18] the Danish Ministry of Health,^[19] and as a report chairman for the European Commission.^[20]

In 2006, while completing his doctorate at Harvard, Feigl-Ding became known as pharmaceutical industry whistleblower for a JAMA study he co-authored on COX-2 inhibitors.^[21] The research confirmed serious risks specifically associated with the drug, VIOXX.^[22] Given the data, Merck should have known of the serious health risks years before the drug was pulled off the market.^[23][24]

He also developed a direct-to-science model for accelerating cancer research, and is advocate of crowdfunding for medical research.^[25] His efforts, including the creation of the now-defunct Campaign for Cancer Prevention,^[26][25] raised over $500,000 in public donations, and he led cancer prevention advocacy platforms totaling over 6 million members.^[27]

He founded Toxin Alert, as a public alert tool to warn communities about drinking water contaminations to prevent future lead poisonings like the Flint Water Crisis.^{[28][29][30][31]}

Feigl-Ding has published over 100 scientific papers in journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, PLoS Medicine, and The Lancet. As of December 2021, his h-index is 82, and his publications have received over 98,000 article citations.^[32]

Coronavirus preparedness advocacy[]

On January 20, 2020, Feigl-Ding went viral^[7] on Twitter after expressing his worries about the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak virus' basic reproduction number (R₀) of up to 3.8.^[6] He compared the virus pandemic potential to the 1918 influenza pandemic^[6] which has an estimated R₀ of 1.8 and which killed ~50 million people out of 2 billion, and called for WHO and CDC to preemptively declare public health emergency and monitor aggressively the situation.^[6] With the thread going viral, his appeals were criticized by his epidemiologist peers as alarmist and based on anecdotal data,^[6] by journalists as misleading and misinforming the public,^[33]. While Feigl-Ding deleted his earliest tweets,^[34] the rapid development of the epidemic, first in China in January, then in Europe in February–March and in the United States in March, together with more studies on the virus, turned his perceptions into that of an early messenger,^[6][9] and he was invited as a commentator on the pandemic by news media.^[35] Subsequently, earlier criticisms from certain colleagues have been deleted,^[36][5] and an earlier Atlantic article^[33] by Alexis Madrigal has been recanted^[36] by Madrigal publicly^[37] after his realization of the pandemic and reading of the assessment by David Wallace-Wells.^[34]

A case study of social web early alert[]

Feigl-Ding's alert was used to hypothesize that such early reactiveness to weak signals, if it had occurred in the relevant governmental health leadership circles, could have prevented the pandemic.^[6] Following Feigl-Ding's call and his raising of the alarm in January, better responses by government authorities could have led millions to have prepared earlier and better to the pandemic, upgrading their hygiene, such as hand-washing and implementing social distancing measures.^[6] It was proposed^[who?] that public policies and actions should be based on precautionary principles rather than waiting for incontestable and inarguable evidences or the tide of public pressure.^[6] Feigl-Ding's early pandemic alert was compared to the warnings since the 1970s about human-induced global warming, which in the 1980s had sufficiently strong early signals to have started actively planning for and responding to, reducing the disasters and costs of global warming during the 2000s and 2010s.^[6]

Feigl-Ding argued that the data alone were clear, for someone with trained engineering, statistical, or business analytical skills to see the pandemic potential early on.^[7] It was hypothesized that social media constant noise made relevant alarms such as Feigl-Ding's inaudible,^[6] while Feigl-Ding argued that media reliance on vetted experts on a given topic might reduce access to relevant early alarms.^[7]

Debate over epidemiological expertise[]

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Feigl-Ding's rapid rise to prominence as a leading TV and media commentator during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite his lack of formal training in infectious diseases, has led to much criticism and controversy.^[38][39] He received early criticism for offering public warnings on the COVID-19 pandemic as well as praise from David Wallace-Wells,^[34] editor-at-large at New York Magazine. A January 2020 article published by The Atlantic covered the early controversy of Feigl-Ding's social media presence,^[33] however, the author of the Atlantic piece, Alexis Madrigal, soon recanted and expressed regret for writing the earlier January criticism article.^[36] While Feigl-Ding admits he has made some mistakes, and one of his supporters, Ali Nouri, the president of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a scientific think tank dedicated to science communication,^[40] attributed some of the criticism of Feigl-Ding down to stylistic differences in information dissemination.^[39][41]

Feigl-Ding holds doctorates in both epidemiology and nutrition, with his professional experience in nutritional epidemiology and epidemiology of chronic disease.^[7][39][41] Since this professional experience and research work are not in the subfield of infectious disease epidemiology, the subfield most relevant to COVID-19, Feigl-Ding has been criticized for offering viral social media and other media commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic.^[7][39][41] His research work and expertise primarily focuses on the health effects of diet and exercise. Feigl-Ding has said he is not an expert in infectious diseases and has never misrepresented himself as such.^[39] Nevertheless, Feigl-Ding was identified in FAS analysis to be a leading online advocate against Scott Atlas's 'herd immunity' by mass infection strategy, as among the top voices against the 'herd' strategy.^[40]

Political campaign[]

On February 27, 2018, Feigl-Ding announced his candidacy in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district.^[15] He campaigned on a progressive platform advocating for science, universal healthcare, and public health.^[15] During the run up to the election, Feigl-Ding did not take corporate PAC money.^[4] He received 18% of the vote and lost the primary to George Scott.^[3]

Recognition and awards[]

Feigl-Ding has received the Boston Chamber of Commerce's Outstanding Young Leader Award (2012),^[42] the American Heart Association's Scott Grundy Excellence Award (2015),^[43] the Sigma Chi Mark V. Anderson Leadership Award (2016),^[44] the CUGH's Global Health Project of the Year Prize (2014),^[45] the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans (2008).^[46] He was recognized by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark as one of “16 People and Organizations Changing the World in 2012”.^[47], and named in 2018 as among the 6000 most 'Highly Cited Researchers' worldwide and the 186 top cited scholars across Harvard University.^[48]

References[]