Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #127

chronofar wrote: post #94

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I don’t think there’s nearly as much daylight between these as you’re suggesting. Just look at how current beliefs in COVID or climate science fall along political preference lines. Scientific literacy is absolutely important to express coherent preferences on how policy should address these matters.

My take would be that precisely because we've democratized science there is now such a thing as a political preference on scientific matters. Which shouldn't exist, because science should not be in the business of adjudicating political preferences. And we now often have the worst of both worlds. Politicized scientists and a pseudo-scientific public. discourse about values in regards to covid or climate is sensible.…

Post by pronlover723 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:18 AM UTC

bmc7505 wrote: post #238

atom_arranger wrote: post #163

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That might be what comes to pass in the far future. It's possible for something to be a good and creative tool and also capable of terrible things. I think the gain of function research that may have lead to covid could possibly have had interesting applications, but it also (possibly) lead to something terrible, probably best to regulate it more. In fiction AI is banned in Dune and Warhammer 40k because of past even…

I think that banning general purpose computers only makes sense if you believe AI cannot be controlled. A more reasonable approach would be to design the program in such a way that by its very nature, fulfills certain criteria that cannot be escaped. Think of a linear type system or substructural logic. You have a core calculus which keeps track of resources and effects so that computation has no way to propagate out…

Post by pharrington » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #242

pharrington wrote: post #169

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In your opinion, when was most scientific research not flawed or "useless"? Remember, the Einsteins, Clarks, etc of the world were wildly exceptional outliers. Do you really think that if you were to look at most research done between 1897 and 1922, the overall quality would be higher? And that there would be less social factors competing with the integrity of work?

> In your opinion, when was most scientific research not flawed or "useless"? How long has it been since replicating someone else's study to validate the results was routinely part of the scientific process? >The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibility of empirica…

Post by mendercap » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #113

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…

> 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…

Post by ozfive » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #18

limecat wrote: post #6

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You're taking an experimental prophylactic against a disease with a 99.9% survival rate. Probably higher if you're under 50. And we still don't really know how safe it is, because the 'gold standard' data (double blind testing) is absent, save for 2 months' of Pfizer data. Your benefit has apparently outweighed your cost. Fine. Mine hasn't. I like to read any and all opinions, regardless of 'bias'. We all have biases…

> I'm intelligent enough to figure them out. That's the epistemological problem with misinformation. How does one know one is intelligent enough if one is trying to evaluate from misinformation? Shouldn't the premise "garbage in, garbage out" apply?