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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

#141

Post by mistrial9 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #124
lettergram wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. For the record I now know a professor at one of the premier institutions in the world, who is a total fraud. Their research was fraudulent in grad school. Their lab mates tried to raise concerns and nothing happened. That person graduated, with everyone on the committee knowing the issues. Then they got a premi…

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

the two parent comments speak to me (uninvolved) as wholly throwing all people, institutions, grant selection and everything else, under the bus without distinction. The drivers for that are unknowable, but I guarantee that neither these statements, NOR their complete compliment, are Truth. Proof is that without sufficient distinction, nothing claimed is distinguishable enough to even weigh. Add that the selection pressure in many institutions is many orders of magnitude more than ideal, and the consequences of the outcomes, similar.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#142

Post by throwawayacc2 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #124
lettergram wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. For the record I now know a professor at one of the premier institutions in the world, who is a total fraud. Their research was fraudulent in grad school. Their lab mates tried to raise concerns and nothing happened. That person graduated, with everyone on the committee knowing the issues. Then they got a premi…

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

Presumably OP does not have hard evidence and is only relating an anecdote. There isn’t much of an incentive to waste time and resources fighting for academic integrity or some other high minded concept like this. Baring those incentives we’ll be left with anecdotes on forums and a continued sense of a diminished trust in academia.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#143

Post by ozfive »

yucky wrote: post #106
ozfive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So share the argument against if you are so compelled to reject it. Please also reject all other scientific advanced that have made it possible for you to live a longer life no matter how small those advancements seem to be. For if you choose to reject the scientific community and their solutions than you should then refuse the rest right down to the safety of the roads you drive on now. Making this argument is a lux…

In all honesty, we probably owe the existence of Covid to the scientific community doing gain of function research. We never did find evidence of it in a bat, either in a wet market or elsewhere in Wuhan. We do know it existed in the WIV lab though.

Do you know that the particular strain of Covid-19 was in WIV without a doubt or is it still speculation? You could argue that indeed this was a lapse of protocol through disposal of lab specimens but does that mean we need to condemn an entire group of people for the mistakes of a few within a group that was studying this gain of function? I just don't buy that we should somehow make this into a holy war against an entire country if indeed this was a mistake in the scientific community within that country. If this were to happen in the U.S. (I'm assuming you are American, but this can be applied to anywhere) than who would we have to blame? What about the mistake of dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki? That in itself is a specifically horrific mistake. Even if it is proven that a lab was the origin of this virus will be ultimately forgotten like the people who dropped the bombs themselves and the people that made nuclear bombs a reality. We still pay the price for the mistakes of nuclear armament by the logistics of disposal and the logistics of multiple entities who are now proven to be unstable in the long run that hold that power. This is why biologic warfare is outlawed and why nuclear war is something to be avoided based on our first hand experience of what that could potentially look like for all of humanity. A mistake has many outcomes. Don't assume just because something may have happened it was with intent by proxy.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#144

Post by nautilius »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

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 themselv…

“I played in the local soccer club once, and can now confidently tell you that every professional athlete is an alcoholic. “

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#145

Post by maskil »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #99
1270018080 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You have it backwards. Discussing controversial issues in the clear minimizes conspiracy theories (no, it doesn't completely eliminate them). The volume of conspiracy theories was driven up precisely because our epistemological institutions (e.g., media, academy, etc) abandoned the pursuits of objectivity and neutrality. To get back to a semi-rational state of affairs, we need to get the ideology out of our instituti…

There are far more MRNA vaccine skeptics than moon landing deniers.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#146

Post by megaman821 »

spion wrote: post #67
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…

It really was social media. Tell an algorithm to optimize for engagement and it will promote the content causing the most engagement: novelty, conspiracy theory, outrage, surprising "revelations" and all sorts of clickbait. If we removed Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok and reverted YouTube to the pre-algorithmic (subscription based) era, we'd still have free speech on the internet but probably a lot less bullshit. Note…

It really is just people. Look at all the information about HIV in the 80's, long before social media. People believed some truly crazy, racist, and misinformed things about HIV and its spread.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#147

Post by andrecarini »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

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 themselv…

What's the alternative?

While I agree with the general sentiment, science and academia is still better than random YouTube videos.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#148

Post by Dylan16807 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #124
lettergram wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most research is flawed or useless, but published anyway because it's expedient for the authors to do so. For the record I now know a professor at one of the premier institutions in the world, who is a total fraud. Their research was fraudulent in grad school. Their lab mates tried to raise concerns and nothing happened. That person graduated, with everyone on the committee knowing the issues. Then they got a premi…

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

They brought it up. That's not how suppression works.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#149

Post by raziel2p »

sega_sai wrote: post #111
AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

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 themselv…

As a person working in science (long past PhD), I disagree. There are tons of problem in science: grant system, pressure to publish etc. Also everyone in science is still a person with standard people problems: ego, desire to be right, wanting recognition etc. Also some fields had more issues because of poor statistical methods etc. But the self-correcting nature of science is still its biggest redeeming feature. And…

It may be useful to separate science itself (with its self-correcting nature and such) from academia and the community/economics of scientists and research. Furthermore, if the incentives for publishing research are wrongly aligned, can you really trust published papers in mass?

Scientific consensus can be a hard thing to define sometimes. Climate change is an example where there are enough studies out there that a meta-study can prove consensus, but what about something more recent and difficult to measure, like the effectiveness of covid vaccines/measures?

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