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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

#581

Post by tripletao »

freedomben wrote: post #392
ummonk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eric seems lightly inclined to fringe theories and self-importance, but nothing I'd call fraud. Bret has been pushing some pretty unfortunate stuff though, including prophylactic ivermectin as a superior alternative to vaccination:

https://quillette.com/2021/07/06/looking-for-covid-19-miracl...

https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/09/15/a-progressive-biologis...

> “I am unvaccinated, but I am on prophylactic ivermectin,” Weinstein said on his podcast in June. “And the data—shocking as this will be to some people—suggest that prophylactic ivermectin is something like 100% effective at preventing people from contracting COVID when taken properly.”

He wasn't just claiming that ivermectin might have some efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 (possible, though I doubt it), or that the risks of the vaccine were understated to the public (basically true; but it's a great tradeoff for adults, and probably still the right bet for children). Bret was clearly implying that for many people--including himself, and he's not young--the risk/benefit for prophylactic ivermectin was more favorable than for the vaccine. There was no reasonable basis for such a belief, and the harm to those who declined vaccination based on such beliefs has become obvious in the relative death rates.

The first article I've linked above is by Yuri Deigin, who had appeared earlier on Bret's show to discuss the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 arose unnaturally, from an accident in virological research. This was back when that was a conspiracy theory that could get you banned from Facebook, long before mainstream scientists and reporters discussed that as a reasonable (but unproven) hypothesis like now. So I don't think Bret's services as a contrarian are entirely bad, but they're pretty far from entirely good.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#582

Post by rossmohax »

kitd wrote: post #572
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

Tbf, putting any names in that comment would almost certainly land HN with a lawsuit.

When content is not provided by HN itself, HN is not liable: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#583

Post by Gareth321 »

VieEnCode wrote: post #521
lettergram wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Bret and Eric Weinstein are ... to put it politely, utter narcissistic charlatans themselves.

I've got not dog in the fight, but I've listened to some podcasts by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and compared to the absolute nonsense I see on TV today, it is a breath of fresh air. They're reading scientific articles, discussing implications in long form, and have been open and honest about their mistakes.

I have not seen or heard of Eric Weinstein so I can't comment.

I'm not sure what kind of bar you're using to compare your chosen media, but it seems extremely high, and I'd like to know what you consider to be suitably informative.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#584

Post by max49 »

spion wrote: post #67
strictfp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't social media that eroded the trust in research and science, it was the introduction of politics. We need to separate research from politics. It needs to be a separate pillar of the state. You don't want reseachers chasing funds continously and doing short-term research for local sponsors. You want sizeable investments in long-term research projects, high autonomy and following of the scientific method. This…

It really was social media. Tell an algorithm to optimize for engagement and it will promote the content causing the most engagement: novelty, conspiracy theory, outrage, surprising "revelations" and all sorts of clickbait. If we removed Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok and reverted YouTube to the pre-algorithmic (subscription based) era, we'd still have free speech on the internet but probably a lot less bullshit. Note…

It wasn't social media who decided that the government should strait up lie to people just because it was the best way (in their opinion) to get the best outcome.

A big part of the anti-vaxx movement comes from the fact that the government have made it very clear they will lie and misrepresent data whenever it is politically advantageous for them.

If you want a very recent exemple, just look at this interview from someone very high up in the food chain at Bayer (youtube.com/watch?v=qowDwaYx7vI) and then try googling about whether or not mRNA is gene therapy. it was considered dangerous misinformation to say what he just did and yet he is overseeing the fabrication of covid vaccines.

It's far from the best example, but it's one where I won't have to waste an hour getting proper sources

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#585

Post by AllegedAlec »

Infernal wrote: post #333
slg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first comment was effectively "Everyone knows this person is a fraud and no one is willing to stand up and put a stop to it". Your second comment was effectively "Well I don't know they are a fraud and I'm not going to be the one who upsets people by trying to put a stop to it". I don't say this as a criticism of you. I say this a defense of the people you are criticizing. Stopping people like this takes a lot o…

>Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. I don't recall where I first heard it, but the principle that it takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bullshit as it does to generate it certainly seems to apply in this case.

A post-doc of a collaborator of a professor of mine was once found to have doctored data. The professor and her collabs only found out when they looked at the images and found out that there were sections that seemed to have been copy/pasted. Getting the papers retracted was a gruelling process that (iirc) took over 3 years.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#587

Post by DeWilde »

slickrick216 wrote: post #567
Nitrolo wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop here apparently, is margarine bad now? What's consequences does long term use have?

It turns out it’s been a long term indicator of covid as those that eat it have no sense of taste.

Touché.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#588

Post by ungamedplayer »

zrm wrote: post #541
nextos wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more than sharing code, I think the key is to share raw data, postprocessed data and describe methods as exceptionally clear equations and pseudocode. Some well intentioned papers share code which is hard to run years afterwards. It's sometimes much simpler to reimplement things that to get the code to run if they are described accurately. Besides, some articles hide ugly things, nasty tricks and lies in the cod…

> Perhaps depositing a VM with everything ready to run. The danger then is that the VM has so much undocumented complexity that if anything goes wrong, or goes "well" when it shouldn't, no one can explain why. Which also reintroduces a vector to hide nasty tricks.

But you can at least figure that out. If U don't have it all results are suspect.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#589

Post by lodovic »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #516
3pt14159 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some well intentioned papers share code which is hard to run years afterwards. Umm, not really? How many years are we talking about here? Because even Cobol is runnable. Sure some OS related quirks may need changing but getting the raw source is much more likely to expose a subtle flaw in the researcher's method than just the equations. For example, an incorrect negative check (to string vs < 0) or an off by one er…

Don't think COBOL; think Python 2.1 (not 2.2) with this specific version of PIL, and some of the code implemented as a CPython module (for speed) in C that only compiles properly with one specific EGCS fork that adds support for IA-64. Parts of the code are written in slightly-buggy inline IA-64 assembly, but it's okay because after a system call, that particular operating system makes sure those registers are zeroed…

Indeed, that's not proper science, too many moving parts. If it cannot be easily replicated by anyone at any time, it is just an experiment which would need more refinement to get published. No experiment should be accepted if it requires a Rube-Goldberg machine.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#590

Post by pastacacioepepe »

teekert wrote: post #574
lettergram wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

it's almost like our fav person Ayn Rand got that right [0]. Wat is pure science? It's little without a consciousness and there are a lot of perverse stimuli. For one, I found the requirement to publish (something "worthwhile", which is subjective) during my PhD so stupid. You can work hard and cleverly in science for 4 years yet only debunk stuff or not even find anything at all (but that by itself should be publish…

I wonder how many people actually believe Ayn Rand to be "their favorite person", after having met her. I believe one could count them on one hand.
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