Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 3:42 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 patcassidy2000 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 3:44 AM UTC

NmAmDa wrote: post #400

lstodd wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Post by vba616 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 3:45 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #371

Retric wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only person who really understood how to do independent validation. Of course the code MUST be different.

Post by vba616 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 3:48 AM UTC

wumpus wrote: post #329

chana_masala wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you r…

Great choice of critic -- who has written many books about scientists commiting fraud because of their lust for grant money. Too bad his criticism comes from fantasy, instead of facts. And of course he's a climate change denier.

Post by fictionfuture » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 3:54 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #39

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?

That question is the type of thing that a backdoored voting machine or corrupt election board could solve. Luckily, so far there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.