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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

#391

Post by cgrealy »

GeekyBear wrote: post #354
cgrealy wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that an economic problem rather than a scientific one? Science doesn't exist in a vacuum, it still needs humans to do grunt work and those humans need to be paid, and there isn't much money in replicating an existing study and saying "yep, that's what we thought".

> Isn't that an economic problem rather than a scientific one? I'll add the other sentence from the first paragraph of the source above. >Because the reproducibility of empirical results is an essential part of the scientific method, such failures undermine the credibility of theories building on them and potentially of substantial parts of scientific knowledge.

I'm not disagreeing that reproducibility is a problem. Of course it is.

I'm asking how to fix it. How do we incentivise reproducibility?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#392

Post by freedomben »

ummonk wrote: post #216
kingTug wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible that you cite Brett and Eric Weinstein as credible sources of information. Those guys are charlatans through and through.

Yes, it’s incredibly ironic to be recommending Brett and Eric Weinstein in a comment about fraudulent researchers.

Source? I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm legitimately interested in seeing some substance to backup these charges, which are pretty serious.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#393

Post by throwaway22032 »

yanmaani wrote: post #343
shadowgovt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

That's ... not true? Children can learn a basic model of the greenhouse effect in school, and do so in most civilized nations. Whether this is sufficient is another thing entirely, but I would personally contend that (non-propaganda) education can never be 100% effective at causing someone to believe something?

Right, this hits at the more fundamental issue which is that the purpose of stuff like "misinformation" filters is not to affect what people believe, but the second order effect - how they act.

Loads of people are well aware that wearing a mask would result in less coronavirus particles being emitted from my face if they were infected.

But they don't act on that for various other reasons unrelated to the virus.

The same is true of climate change. You can think that it's real and still drive your car for precisely the same reason that you can think that cirrhosis is real and still drink a few beers.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#394

Post by WalterBright »

vimacs2 wrote: post #266
WalterBright wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to separate research from politics. That absolutely will never happen as long as the funding comes from the government.

I'd add that even if it received funding through private enterprise, it would still be infused with the politics of said backers - whether intentionally or not. The best you could possibly achieve is funding purely through small time (non business) donations from the public - and I'm still a little skeptical as to the scope of research that could realistically fund.

> it would still be infused with the politics of said backers

Of course it would. Whoever pays the piper always calls the tune.

It's no surprise that NPR and PBS advocate for the government point of view.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#395

Post by BurningFrog »

cgrealy wrote: post #275
omosubi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors

You mean the one for people whose life expectancy was less than half the modern day? Who lived completely different lives?

This argument pretends that diet is the only cause of death.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#396

Post by newbie789 »

lettergram wrote: post #381
newbie789 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously. It takes five seconds to make a throwaway and another three to post a name. While I agree that there are frauds out there in academia and elsewhere, I have no reason to believe that you’re not yourself some sort of fraud. You’ve essentially posted “I have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraud in which somebody claimed to have direct knowledge of [unspecifi…

> 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the…

> To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change.

Sorry, I don’t mean to pick at you but… what?

If you were to anonymously post the name of an academic fraud, you personally would necessarily be found out, and it would ruin multiple careers?

The powers that be know who you are, know of the fraud and its nature and those involved? You’ve been privy to this big juicy secret that’s shared by many, but if its content were to be revealed, you would certainly be the one pointed out?

Are you the only person that could reasonably know about and publicly object to this fraud? If so, is it a necessary function of your social or professional life to cover up this fraud? If so, I’ll go back to “why did you post?” (“Sharing anecdotes” isn’t really an answer to “Why did you share this anecdote?”)

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#397

Post by cgrealy »

autoexec wrote: post #356
cgrealy wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that an economic problem rather than a scientific one? Science doesn't exist in a vacuum, it still needs humans to do grunt work and those humans need to be paid, and there isn't much money in replicating an existing study and saying "yep, that's what we thought".

Even new research needs funding. The point is that you can't trust the findings of research to be accurate if it hasn't been proven to be reproducible. When it comes to science it doesn't do any good to fund research into X if you don't actually do the grunt work and part of that work needs to be seeing the initial results carefully reviewed, and then replicated. Right now, far too often "review" is a rubber stamp an…

Yeah, I completely agree with all of that.

But again, this is an economic problem. In a perfect world, we'd have an infinite fund for doing science and you couldn't publish a paper until your results were reproduced.

But we live in a capitalist society where incentives are profit-driven (mostly). That's a reality regardless of whether you think it's good or bad.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#398

Post by WalterBright »

jdminhbg wrote: post #319
cgrealy wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the one for people whose life expectancy was less than half the modern day? Who lived completely different lives?

Pro or con the diet, the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics.

> the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics

Life expectancy made huge gains throughout the century before antibiotics.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#399

Post by slg »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #372
slg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’d be willing to bet that most people with the gall to do their own research will look beyond the first result that appears on the SERP... Once again this is thinking that doesn't go beyond the first layer. If this situation is possible for the first link, it is possible for the second and the third and everything on the first 5 pages. However deep this hypothetical researcher is willing to go, if there are enough…

It goes far beyond the first layer, to the ultimate layer: what is the basis of our presuppositions about knowledge? How do we authenticate what we think we know?

We fundamentally can’t for most of our knowledge given the complexities of the modern world. Which is why the whole “do your own research” suggestion is BS. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to become an expert in everything in order to be able to accurately judge the validity of most research. That is why stopping the spread of misinformation has value because most people do not have the expertise to identify all misinformation.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#400

Post by NmAmDa »

lstodd wrote: post #298
ransom1538 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Sharing source code for a HEP experiment is not that easy or possible at sometimes. A lot of stuff is done by different group and whole framework used and overall a lot of raw data collected and reconstructed involved. To analyze those even if available you willl need a lot of people with a lot of resources. So even it made available (which would be a lot of efforts itself) it wouldn't make much sense for replication purpose.
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