Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

Post by throwawaylinux » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 2:08 AM UTC

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…

Post by yanmaani » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 2:09 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #15

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…

What do you do while education lags where it needs to be? Because enough education to understand, say, climate change takes about a decade. (... And that's assuming it can be provided without being shut down as "indoctrination").

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 2:10 AM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #296

s1artibartfast wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by overgrownzygote » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

nsainsbury wrote: post #157

sega_sai wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Science does eventually self-correct, but unfortunately it takes far too long to do so. One area I've studied pretty extensively is the history of cancer treatment. In the long story of the history of cancer treatment, it is absolutely scandalous how often the scientific consensus was wrong and persisted for years in spite of the evidence. For example, the radical mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer continu…

Post by kortex » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #335

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…

Sharing code and data can be as harmful to science as it is beneficial. You don’t want to reuse the same instruments that conducted the last experiment to validate it. Independent replication is inherently expensive, but also critical to the field at large. Some sort of code vault that releases the code and data after a period could be a solid compromise.