Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

bmj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 702 posts

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#651

Post by [deleted] »

HideousKojima wrote: post #327
AlexandrB wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion? And if you agree with that, all we're arguing about is where to draw the line between "obviously false" and "disputed" facts. > It becomes necessary when you lie all the time. There are plenty of people lying and/or griftin…

>This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion? The issue is I don't agree with all that. Who cares if crazies share flat earth theories on Facebook? You either trust your fellow humans to be able to think critically, or you don't. And if you don't, then why do you trus…

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#652

Post by poopypoopington »

philovivero wrote: post #623
freebuju wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am sure you can find plenty when you go down this rabbit hole but you can start here: https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839

Thanks for trying to help out, but that's the FDA, not CDC. And this is a much murkier situation. Ivermectin does seem to help Covid, but it looks like that's correlation, not causation. Astral Codex Ten has a great writeup on this, and a big controversial debate with the ivermectin crowd. It's pretty glorious, and I do recommend reading it in its entirety. If you do want to call this a lie, I suppose I could see it.…

Read on hacker news that Ivermectin is correlated with helping covid because often people with covid in developing countries also have parasites, so the covid + parasite can kill them. So if you give everyone in a developing country ivermectin the ivermectin will kill the parasite and they won't have to fight two things at once.

Turns out giving ivermectin (parasite killer) in a country where a lot of people have parasites is good public health policy. It's just butt stupid to use in a developed country like the US where ivermectin probably won't help people, but that doesn't stop people from taking horse dewormer in Florida :/.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#653

Post by headsoup »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #179
goopthink wrote: post #46

In addition to the points raised by BMJ and in the comments below, there is a limit to what independent fact checking can accomplish. For example, are their fact checkers conducting their own scientific experiments validating claims and outcomes of a scientific paper? Are fact checkers reaching out to sources from a news article and verifying quoted information? When “breaking news” or “scoops” are reported presentin…

I don't know in your country, but in Spain most fact-checkers have very evident ties with two political parties, and they handle info in an agenda-setting style. They even have very personal links to politicians. Of course they really polish their communication and websites, and they know how to sound scientific-y throwing in some graphs and stuff. The problem is not only that, but that the same people who works in t…

Definitely wouldn't be the case in the US, they're fact checkers must be entirely legit because the media and politicians say so...

The way a political 'side' can so swiftly (and hypocritically) move into authoritarianism because of self-belief in their moral authority is sad, if unsurprising. Much as religion has justified many atrocities through time for 'good,' people seem terrible at critical thinking once they feel 'right.'

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#654

Post by mitigating »

philovivero wrote: post #621
mitigating wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

". You cannot trust mainstream newspapers. " Which newspapers can you trust?

It used to be a pretty short list, like NYT and Washington Post. But since the Trump era... honestly? None of them. I am literally unaware of a single mainstream television station, newspaper, or magazine that hasn't been caught in blatant politically-motivated lying. My rule-of-thumb for news sources is: I need to see zero lies for at least two years before I trust them again. This is different than mistakes which a…

So where do you get your information? If newspapers can/will lie isn't that also possible with your source now?

Every newspaper is going to "lie" once in a while, there are independent people who write articles. What's important is reputation. The New York Times has been around since 1851. How many truthful articles have they written vs how many were misinformation or biased?

Since the longer a news source exists the more likely it would have lied you will only trust recent news sources? Like if I made a news website then published some random article and sent it to you, I've never lied before but I have 0 reputation are you going to believe me?

That seems like an easy thing to exploit if I was evil I could just keep creating random news websites and you'll trust them. If one is ever caught lying I'll just shut it down and make a new one. However how many "lies" will you believe until I'm caught.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#655

Post by mitigating »

satellite2 wrote: post #568
aqfamnzc wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did the CDC lie about? (Honest question)

About the efficacy of masks. They said they were not efficace to avoid hoarding and to reserve the small existing stock for medical professionals.

A lie is intentional. I'm not saying this is the case here because I haven't checked but if they believed that masks weren't effective then later changed their view because of new information or whatever that's not lying.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#656

Post by Hamuko »

Flankk wrote: post #645
Hamuko wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go read up on Citizens United v FEC.

That is a red herring and has nothing to do with what I said. It is also a highly controversial decision.

>has nothing to do with what I said

Again, read up on it, because they clearly state that the First Amendment extends to corporations as well, since the First Amendment is is about abridging freedom of speech, not about individual citizens.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#657

Post by Bellamy »

rocqua wrote: post #644
jevoten wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder. That's what, at their best, most of the media are doing. Presenting well-researched, balanced, truthful stories, carefully selected to promote their own ideology. Forget journalism - this even happens in peer-reviewed science: Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research proposals hypothesizing ei…

Using an article critical of the pfizer trials in a well balanced truthful way is one thing. Using that same article to argue that e.g. the government is trying to poison us (or microchip us) is another thing entirely. I think we need to work against the latter. I don't think censoring good-faith articles that are often abused is the way to do that.

Spot on, the question is, do you trust BMJ?

I think BMJ has a pretty convincing reputation. So how can ANY fact checker flag an article from them without really good arguments?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#658

Post by satellite2 »

mitigating wrote: post #655
satellite2 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the efficacy of masks. They said they were not efficace to avoid hoarding and to reserve the small existing stock for medical professionals.

A lie is intentional. I'm not saying this is the case here because I haven't checked but if they believed that masks weren't effective then later changed their view because of new information or whatever that's not lying.

As a scientific organisation the public expect them to have opinions that are supported by data.

Already, today appealing to the autority argument while data are widely accessible is graceless. But abusing your expert position is outright deceitful. A scientific should be able to say that they don't have enough information to form a position.

I think medicine more widely is in crisis as they still have not incorporated the digital transformation.

And that can be seen even at your local doctor level. The patients are very informed (and often wrongly) and are coming to the appointment with a lot of data. A lot of doctors simply brush off those concern and go about with their standard diagnostic process.

What patients expect is that the doctor take their proposition at face value, congratulate them for listing their symptoms and coming with a lead, and repeat the process with them, pinpointing the eventual inconsisencies in the symptoms or simply offering them another diagnostic that is also compatible but statistically more probable.

That's the behaviour of the new expert, enjoy sharing informations and discussing them.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#659

Post by xg15 »

BrazzVuvuzela wrote: post #611
rocqua wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, if the idea is to stop wrong conspiracy theories from veing talked about, it makes sense to ban legitimate science that points in the direction of the conspiracy. If you want to do propaganda, then misinformation is useful. But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder. Especially with covid it seems like social media has decided to counter pr…

There is a serious flaw in the way schools teach people about propaganda, that leaves people believing that propaganda is synonymous with lying, and if a claim is factual then it isn't propaganda. Propaganda is any communication that is calculated to further an agenda. Propaganda uses truth, lies, everything in-between, and everything else (claims that don't lay on the truth-lie continuum at all; e.g. subjective valu…

That definition would forbid any kind of "call to action" communication, would it?

Debates are all and good, but at some point, a decision has to be reached. Especially for a problem like the current pandemic, this unfortunately involves calls for every individual to radically change their behaviour. That fits the definition of "agenda" pretty well.

So if any "any communication that is calculated to further an agenda" is forbidden, how would you fight the pandemic?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#660

Post by xg15 »

base698 wrote: post #629
chimprich wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "fact-checking" has been completely subverted to serve the preferred narrative and suppress any heretical thought I don't think this is correct. In my experience, most online "fact checkers" seem to get it right the great majority of the time. Can you point to some examples you are thinking of?

This is a good one: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/

Oof.

Fully agree that Snopes comes off very much in her support here - however, at least they still seem to do their job and describe her actual actions in due detail in the article - even if this leads to a completely ridiculous outcome ("Can bombing a government building really be called terrorism? Hmm, difficult to say...")

This seems better than the OP's fact checker, which just presents the story as "fully debunked" without actually doing so.

Post reply on HN