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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

#81

Post by WalterBright »

strictfp wrote: post #38
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…

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…

> We need to separate research from politics.

That absolutely will never happen as long as the funding comes from the government.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#82

Post by librarianscott »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #50
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…

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.

But people should be helped to draw their own conclusions with annotations where every time some crazy idea is repeated it is automatically flagged with "This idea has repeatedly been debunked by 37 national societies of medicine and 19 meta analyses of 2,000 peer-reviewed studies with a quality deemed high or superb," etc.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#83

Post by henrikschroder »

tempnow987 wrote: post #37
toolz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I don't understand generalized masking. At best they flatten the curve, which I think at this point I believe flattening the curve is dangerous. We have pretty well defined risk demographics and if we could have covid seasons come and go quickly I think it gives the high risk demographics the best chance of applying multi-layered defenses against a shorter season of risk. There is of c…

The issue for me is I have elderly parents one of which does have a health condition (serious) that makes some breathing and other issues hard. They wanted to fly out to visit me. The absolute best way to avoid covid for yourself in my view is an N95 masks with a vent, because you can actually wear that thing for hours comfortably. I have friends who treated folks with covid wearing N95's and did not get covid. So I…

The most mindbogglingly dumb part about masks on planes is that there's still meal service on longer flights, at which point everyone takes off their masks at the same time to eat the food. Are we supposed to believe that the virus takes a little nap while everyone eats, and then only goes back to spreading itself when everyone has finished eating?

Detailed rules always lead to insanity. The best way is always to be upfront about the risks, how to mitigate them, and then let people make their own risk assessment and do whatever they're comfortable with.

But instead of saying "Flying carries a risk of exposure to this virus and others, here's what you can do", we're saying "If everyone engages in this piece of safety theater, flying is perfectly safe and fun for everyone!"

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#84

Post by pjscott »

zzyzz wrote: post #22

I always think about this. If you can't trust people with the ability to see or hear certain information, how can you even trust them to vote?

You shouldn't expect voting to yield good decisions even if voters are individually rational [1], which they mostly aren't [2]. However, voting does have a big civil rights benefit: it lets minority groups protect themselves from the tyranny of the majority in cases where they have a strong preference one way (e.g. because their rights are being blatantly violated) and the majority has a weak preference the other way. A few percentage points one way or another can swing elections, so a sufficiently pissed-off minority can have surprising political power on the margin.

[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/PublicChoiceTheory.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#85

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#86

Post by overgard »

I think the US has caught this cancerous idea that the average person can't be trusted to think for themselves. The amount of condescension in that thought process is disgraceful. They think, someone has to tell the average person how to think. And the baffling thing is that supposed liberals think that thoughts should be policed by corporations, government, and self styled intellectuals (which seems so much against what classic liberals stood for). I think Matt Taibbi said it best recently, the most dangerous lies come from government and powerful institutions. People really need to stop focusing on dumb culture war stuff like trying to cancel Joe Rogan and really think hard about if they really want a society where google and facebook and whoever screams loudest on twitter are the deciders of societal truth. I don't want that.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#87

Post by AussieWog93 »

Just throwing my 2c into the well, as someone who used to be highly "pro-science" but lost confidence in much of academia and the validity of scientific research in general after starting a PhD and seeing how the sausage is made.

The biggest problem science is facing is not an external threat from a rabble of ignorant science deniers, but the complete degradation of quality within the scientific institutions themselves.

Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. Plenty of useful or interesting angles are not investigated at all because doing so would risk invalidating the expert status of the incumbents. Of the science that is communicated to the public (much of which is complete horseshit), the scientists themselves are often complicit in the misrepresentation of their own research as it means more of those sweet, sweet grants. The net result is the polished turd that is scientific research in the 21st century.

"Educated" people can say what they want about how important it is to believe in the science and have faith in our researchers and the institutions they work for.

The fact remains that if one were to assume that every single scientific discovery of the last 25 years was complete bullshit, they'd be right more often than they were wrong.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#88

Post by rob_c »

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…

This is not helped by the lack of scientific and logical literacy in the public at large who will cherry pick to support either position on a topic and call that "homework done".

The scientific process involves testing the accepted and pushing ideas to there extremes. The fact there is a test of 5G on mice isn't surprising, but when these show a statistically insignificant blip and it's not in the conclusion that's not "big science hiding the real truths", it's that this blip in isolation is a true statistical anomaly...

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#89

Post by cdot2 »

alar44 wrote: post #55
toolz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I don't understand generalized masking. At best they flatten the curve, which I think at this point I believe flattening the curve is dangerous. We have pretty well defined risk demographics and if we could have covid seasons come and go quickly I think it gives the high risk demographics the best chance of applying multi-layered defenses against a shorter season of risk. There is of c…

I have no idea how to respond to the overcrowded hospitals. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-... Hospitals have been jam packed the entire time. There is data everywhere to support this. Tons of procedures are not being done due to beds and ICUs being full. Ask anyone who works in a hospital. Call one if you'd like.

Then why did the USS Mercy which was in New York during the beginning of the pandemic only ever treat 48 patients? 77 while she was in Los Angeles. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/military/infected-usn...

https://news.usni.org/2020/05/15/usns-mercy-leaves-los-angel...

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#90

Post by toolz »

alar44 wrote: post #55
toolz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I don't understand generalized masking. At best they flatten the curve, which I think at this point I believe flattening the curve is dangerous. We have pretty well defined risk demographics and if we could have covid seasons come and go quickly I think it gives the high risk demographics the best chance of applying multi-layered defenses against a shorter season of risk. There is of c…

I have no idea how to respond to the overcrowded hospitals. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-... Hospitals have been jam packed the entire time. There is data everywhere to support this. Tons of procedures are not being done due to beds and ICUs being full. Ask anyone who works in a hospital. Call one if you'd like.

ICUs are at max capacity all the time pre-pandemic. In fact a study done in 2013 IIRC showed that you could pick any random date and any random hospital in the U.S. and there was a 16% chance it was at max capacity.

So again, my question is this - if hospital capacity is truly a crisis, why have staffed beds been in decline since the beginning of the pandemic? Half a million healthcare workers have left their jobs since just the start of the pandemic. If this is a crisis, why isn't there any initiative to get them back? Instead the only initiative we've seen with regards to healthcare workers is massive layoffs firstly because of lockdowns, but then later also massive layoffs because of vaccinate rules.

So either this is a terrible problem with no solution, or the problem is exaggerated and it's not really a crisis.

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