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Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

royalsociety.org

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Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#71

Post by mandmandam »

CPLX wrote: post #54
hammock wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. What caused that trust to be lost? Is it something they did?

Absolutely. At least here in the United States there’s a full on collapse of trust in institutions and supposed expertise and for extremely good reasons. Over and over again those with authority have squandered it. An opioid epidemic devastated so many communities after doctors, health care executives, and McKinsey and Company said the new class of drugs were non-addicting. Our manufacturing sector evaporated after e…

> in a war all the experts said was necessary

Just to clarify, many experts from generals to peacenik linguists to gonzo journalists predicted immediately that the wars would be an expensive and unwinnable series of atrocities. They weren't given airtime.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#72

Post by s1artibartfast »

1270018080 wrote: post #57
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let people draw their own conclusions and don’t censor or otherwise penalize them for questioning one interpretation of data vs another. Encourage people to do their own research and investigate who is funding the sources used for that research. There is no need for conspiracy theories when financial incentives exist.

Do you mean "Do their own research" like make up conspiracy theories out of thin air and parrot nonsense deep state rhetoric? Completely divorcing yourself from reality? You want more of that?

The world will always have heathens and heretics. Some people will always come to the wrong conclusion some of the time.

Skepticism of any claims is a pretty good heuristic, but should be equally applied to counter claims.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#73

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tempnow987 wrote: post #65
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.microcovid.org/ You can do a rough risk computation yourself I guess. Both ingress and egress is worse if you have a valve though. Does seem like egress is still a bit better than what other people do (in this model at least - which could be wrong), but one shouldn't set one's standards by "what other people do".

"one shouldn't set one's standards by "what other people do"" In policy matters one can and should. This is the stupidity I think of the scientists here. If others are wearing surgical and little cloth masks, only wearing them a little bit, but then they say I can't wear my valved N95 (which I do very carefully) it's both totally arbitrary and unfair (my exhalations are still equal too or less others). They also miss…

The perception, of course, is that you are not filtering egress. Since the objective is/appears to be to filter egress, people will obviously take askance.

This can't be resolved without a bunch of additional training.

Of course if we'd done THAT, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place, and the whole discussion would be moot. %-/

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#74

Post by slg »

urthor wrote: post #60
strictfp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. We need to separate research from politics. It needs to be a separate pillar of the state. You don't want reseachers chasing funds continously and doing short-term research for local sponsors. You want sizeable investments in long-term research projects, high autonomy and following of the scientific method. This…

I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be. If you ask anyone who was senior working in these institutions in the 1970s, things were far more dodgy back then. Corruption and bigotry were rampant. But it was far easier to cover up back in the day. Politicization is mostly driven by transparency . Politicization is not a new thing, it's a fact tha…

>I strongly protest the concept that the recent introduction of politics is making things worse than they used to be... Corruption and bigotry were rampant.

It is wild how people think things like institutional bigotry aren't politics. How is a scientific organization that excludes large swaths of the population due purely to the circumstances of their birth apolitical? Science has always been political because politics is how people interact with each other. That is true whether we are discussing how governments behave on the world stage or how that big project is being managed at your job. Wherever people exist, politics exists.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#76

Post by raziel2p »

Lammy wrote: post #24
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

> because we don’t have time This part is a huge society-wide problem that can theoretically be fixed so people can become more informed and active participants in the framework of their daily lives. Don’t ask me how, though, because I just got off work and am too exhausted to do anything except let the news tell me what to be afraid of today, then probably binge The Office and slam a few brewskis until I fall asleep…

Even if I do have time and energy, my lack of knowledge on the subject matter would probably lead me to waste that time on dead ends, wrong conclusions, or learning things I will never use again outside of fact-checking one study.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#77

Post by rob_c »

It won't be listened to.

The lack of public understanding of the scientific process and ability to parse published articles in context over the last year unfortunately shows the desperate need for scientific outreach to explain the current state of research to there public.

And obviously nobody listens anyway because everything has become overly polarised.

Maybe journals should be behind some sort of access restriction (not cost) so that the scientific method is less disturbed by the public and political idealogs...

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#78

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tempnow987 wrote: post #65
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.microcovid.org/ You can do a rough risk computation yourself I guess. Both ingress and egress is worse if you have a valve though. Does seem like egress is still a bit better than what other people do (in this model at least - which could be wrong), but one shouldn't set one's standards by "what other people do".

"one shouldn't set one's standards by "what other people do"" In policy matters one can and should. This is the stupidity I think of the scientists here. If others are wearing surgical and little cloth masks, only wearing them a little bit, but then they say I can't wear my valved N95 (which I do very carefully) it's both totally arbitrary and unfair (my exhalations are still equal too or less others). They also miss…

p.s. I worked on-site at a factory doing industrial automation for a lot of the time; I really liked FFP2 masks because they fit better and my glasses didn't cloud up.

Masks with valves were available (because part of one's regular PPE at times before the pandemic), but no longer permitted.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#79

Post by cletus »

The only positive for me from this misinformation plague is that as soon as the next issue comes along all of the anti-Covid vaccine sentiment will be completely forgotten.

Don't believe me? When was the last time you heard about the MMR vaccine causing autism?

The "good" part of this is that rejection of science, politicization of science and the use of this issue to manipulate people who somehow claim to be "free" yet are the most easily manipulated aren't new issues. There was the MMR autism issue, resistance to polio vaccination and resistance to smallpox vaccines before that.

The damage is of course huge. The US is sitting at >3,500 Covid deaths per day currently. Annualized this is well over 1 million people per year (although it'll likely trail off), 90-95% of whom are now unvaccinated. These are people who are now steadfastly choosing to die. The government has moved on from this (eg the updated CDC guidelines on isolation to keep the economy going). People seem to have moved on (IME).

I don't think we should be worried about censorship of misinformation. Credible-sounding misinformation is easy to produce and hard to refute (aka the bullshit asymmetry principle). Leaving it out there does more harm than good (IMHO). You'll never completely get rid of it but the less of it out there the better.

As to what to do about this, the only cure is to teach critical thinking at a relatively young age so people can ask questions like "who is telling me this?", "what are their sources?", "why shouldn't I trust the CDC?" and "who benefits from me believing this?". Conservatives know this which is why they're busy passing laws to prevent such teaching.

It's why college graduates tend to be more liberal: colleges generally teach critical thinking and that tends to kill conservatism. Of course this is predictably painted as colleges being hotbeds of political indoctrination. So here we are.

A big problem with misinformation being out there is how people can fall into the trap of bothsidsing the issue (which is a logical fallacy, for the record).

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#80

Post by christkv »

colechristensen wrote: post #33
toolz wrote: post #12

So many "misinformation censorship" proponents seem to have quickly forgotten just how much literally everyone in public health has spread misinformation this pandemic. It's unavoidable being wrong and often the cost of making claims without unimpeachable evidence is higher than the cost of being wrong. Name me a public health official who regularly made recommendations this pandemic and I'll show you misinformation.…

There is a difference between "malice" and "intentional misinformation". Authority figures are not accurately representing risks and rewards of different actions and have deliberately shaped their messaging to achieve outcomes. Direct from the horse's mouth: https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1233134710638825473 "CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel #coronavirus. Take everyday pr…

Our whole family had mild delta two months ago, even then we are now finishing quarantine after everyone catching omnicron. Neither vaccines or previous infection seem particularly effective at stopping re infection. The virus seems significantly different to previous iterations meaning it might as well be a different virus altogether.

It felt like a medium flu for the adults and just bounced off the kids.

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