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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

#291

Post by TimTheTinker »

oh_my_goodness wrote: post #269
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…

It's fun to complain about the lack of perfection in science, while posting on an instantaneous, free world-wide forum.

This forum and all the infrastructure that supports it was based primarily on hard science and conducted in the "hot path" of tech progress where inaccurate results are both unacceptable and quickly falsified: mathematics (Shannon, etc.), physics, chemistry, materials engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science.

There's a reason technology has changed the world significantly in the last 50 years and other scientific areas (e.g. medical research) haven't as much.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#292

Post by nradov »

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…

For background I highly recommend this article.

Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#294

Post by headsoup »

The biggest problem is the labelling of anything outside the 'consensus' as unscientific 'misinformation.' This is particularly problematic where it is the media and government representatives determining what is consensus.

Many scientific breakthroughs did not come from repeating the established consensus and a lot of scientific consensus has been horrifically wrong in the end.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#295

Post by Dylan16807 »

slg wrote: post #262
Dylan16807 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. They deserve the criticism.

>The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared. But either way, this has been proven time and time again whether we are talking about simple corruption like OP mentioned or more serious forms of injustice. People will judge themselves based off motivations and others based off actions.…

> That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared.

Which part do you disagree with? Maybe the 'much' on much less risk?

'given evidence' is true unless OP made op the story. (And even if OP made up the story then we're judging fictional people and the judgements are still valid.)

I think 'less risk' goes part and parcel with being administration rather than someone lower rank reporting a problem.

And it seems clear to me that it's their job.

So, criticism. Which is not a particularly harsh outcome. And doesn't necessarily mean they made the wrong decision, but them providing a justification would be a good start.

Inaction is often excusable when it's not your job. It's always important to look at motivations, but vilification can also be appropriate when there's dereliction. Sometimes there are no significant motivations leading to lack of action, there's just apathy and people that shouldn't have been hired to the position.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#296

Post by CPLX »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #279
CPLX wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry nobody gives a fuck that our global military dick swinging prevented Senegal and Guatemala from sailing into New York harbor and carting off our treasures. The outrage economy tends to focus on people and interpersonal drama. Some comedian said this, or maybe some company did something stupid and there’s a walkout. If anything there’s a massive shortage of outrage. Given the degree of misery the entrenched elit…

Outrage is only good in that it generate interest in the topic. There is a surplus of hot-headed illogical people bogging down any real constructive discussion. There is a shortage of people that understand the realistic challenges involved and working to come up with viable Solutions on either side of a given issue

The problem is that the only viable solution is for an entrenched elite with disproportionate power and money to lose much of that power and influence.

It’s a struggle between the masses and the ruling class about who gets to make decisions in our society, not like lunch meeting where we can find common sense action items to agree on.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#297

Post by SMAAART »

> The report says there is little evidence that calls for major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific misinformation’s harms and warns such measures could even drive it to harder-to-address corners of the internet and exacerbate feelings of distrust in authorities.

This is a known fact.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#298

Post by lstodd »

ransom1538 wrote: post #241
maximus-decimus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just throw out papers that don’t publish datasets and code There was an interesting research paper that claimed you could up your IQ with a computer game called dual n back and a lot of paper tried to replicate it, but my mind was blown when I realized none of them used the same code. None of them actually shared the code they used for their research and then they all claimed they were testing the same thing when…

"To me, refusing to share the source code to a program that could be used to replicate your research seems like a big middle finger to science itself." It is done on purpose.

> It is done on purpose.

The sad thing is that it isn't. It's just how the things are done.

src: friends in HEP

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#299

Post by lovecg »

chr1 wrote: post #203
bluedays wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who also works in Academia it is astonishing how many people come into this thread who have no background in the field cast doubt on you. There is a serious degree of conservatism there is among liberals who think that science and academics should not dare be questioned.

Funny how "don't believe, always question everything" have transformed back into "believe in science". Believing in science is a very old thing, Maya have believed in their eclipse prediction science so much that were even making human sacrifice to save the sun from being eaten. We should teach the public not to "believe in science", but the main skill of any scientist: to try to find errors in the theory you think i…

I think we got there by mixing up science and policy. In an emergency (like a pandemic) you can’t have an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty in decision making - someone have to make the tough calls and stand by them. Unfortunately we don’t have clear delineation between “science” (what and how we know, and how certain we are) and “policy” (what should we do based on this information) in the public discourse - the same talking heads are often representing both. Then we naturally end up at a place where we have to either “believe in science” or cast doubt on policy decisions, which seems suboptimal.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#300

Post by kolbe »

pjscott wrote: post #84
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…

That’s a lot of ifs that need to be fulfilled. I don’t think your italicized “does” is warranted with so many unrealistic conditions.
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