Another field where science is on a collision course with online (and offline) activists is genetics. As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of tabula rasa hold for truth. And unless the political climate evolves, in a power struggle between activists and science, I wouldn't bet on the scientists.
Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
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Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#32It's not just scientists. It's most fields and most opinions that don't agree with whatever the cause of the day is.
I deleted my twitter account over a year ago (after ten years of it), and stopped using twitter. However, I still refrain from saying what I actually think about an issue online now. It doesn't matter if it's a left wing or right wing opinion, nor does it matter what the issue is. If you fall afoul of the online activists (regardless of left-wing or right-wing) it can suck up all your time and energy and ruin you.
The big problem is that it's easy to publicly shame and silence someone, with little to no consequence for doing so. And I place most of the blame here on Twitter.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#33I feel like posting your personal science based work on social media walks the thin line between education and self interested-marketing. What if after a year of posting, you find an error in your study? You have just misinformed everyone for a year. How do you backtrack on that?
Given the number of times I've tried to read a paper and found that it's locked behind a paywall, I'm all for the idea.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#34Over the next 20 or so years, expect a lot of syndromes/conditions to be reclassified, as Michael Sharpe puts in the article, as "biological condition[s] that can be perpetuated by social and psychological factors.". I struggled with RSI for a couple of years until I read John Sarno's "The Mind-Body Connection" on the recommendation of someone from HN. Sarno's thesis is that many chronic pain conditions (those withou…
> that the pain is real, it's just caused by processes in your brain, not the rest of your body.
I was also helped by Dr Sarno's book, and for me the news that it was "all in my head" was encouraging.
I can control my mind[1], and if my mind is the source of the problem, it's a lot easier for me to fix it that if I required surgery or medicine.
[1] At least partially, the mind is a slippery thing too.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#35This is the problem when a society manufactures self-proclaimed experts on everything that do no actual research or scientific studies in the field they discuss. It's one of the many vices of the Internet.
Snowflakes everywhere.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#36Another field where science is on a collision course with online (and offline) activists is genetics. As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of tabula rasa hold for truth. And unless the political climate evolves, in a power struggle between activists and science, I wouldn't bet on the scientists.
> As we decode and understand more of the genome, it is possible that our genes affect more of our behavior than what the partisans of the tabula rasa hold for truth
What “partisans of the tabula rasa”? Activists of both the left and right seem more likely to be partisans of genetic determinism, though of which aspects of intellect, identity, and behavior varies between them.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#37This is not scientific research, it's chronic fatigue researchers getting hate mail. Also, it's not activists, it's random crackpots. Edit: look, read the article, and then downvote me if you must. I am sure that online activists in many areas are reducing public discussion. I'm not addressing the subject in general; just this article. Specifically, the article talks about a very particular narrow, topic (chronic fat…
> Also, it's not activists, it's random crackpots. The difference being?
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Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#38Why does a medical researcher need to be on Twitter?
Because they can and want to. Why are you on HN?
Because I want to comment. But if someone replies to my comments with the equivalent of hate mail, I won't say that they are "silencing" me.
If I go to that scientist's profile I can read his tweets just fine. Someone quoting him and saying he's an idiot is not "silencing" him.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#39I feel like posting your personal science based work on social media walks the thin line between education and self interested-marketing. What if after a year of posting, you find an error in your study? You have just misinformed everyone for a year. How do you backtrack on that?
>What if after a year of posting, you find an error in your study? You have just misinformed everyone for a year. How do you backtrack on that? If a paper turns out to be flawed, then you retract the paper. In order to retract it, someone needs to figure out that it was in fact flawed. Most scientists don't knowingly publish bad research, they just make mistakes that get missed in peer review. Keeping research hidden…
> If a paper turns out to be flawed, then you retract the paper. In order to retract it, someone needs to figure out that it was in fact flawed. Most scientists don't knowingly publish bad research, they just make mistakes that get missed in peer review. Keeping research hidden away in paywalled journals isn't going to improve the quality of science one iota.
Except OP wasn't suggesting keeping silent, he was suggesting not broadcasting it on social media. You can broadcast it through scientific channels of course, because scientists generally know to preserve some healthy skepticism until something is replicated.
Some new result on social media could easily go viral so almost everyone hears about it, but do you think the retraction on social would get the same attention? Of course not, so it's about stopping the spread of misinformation, which I hope you agree is a problem these days.
Re: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've ever spent any time around "activists" you'd realize there's not much of a difference.
What nonsense is this? I know many activists and they are dedicated, smart, passionate, clued up people with a social conscience to be envied.
In my experience, sane people volunteer for a cause they believe in. "Activists" grab a megaphone and disrupt any gathering of people who disagree with them on said cause, because they've convinced themselves that they are morally superior for their beliefs.