Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#31

Post by throwaway2474 » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

I hope that at some point we get to see an in-depth business case study of Pfizer and how they’ve been so successful out of the pandemic. They seem to have an unbelievable grasp of the science-marketing game and how to navigate it successfully at scale.

Without getting too far into controversial territory, I’ve observed that

- Out of many competing vaccines, Pfizer was always the “cool” one, in both scientific and lay circles

- The vaccine has caused a significantly higher number of cardiac side effects than initial studies reported, which has just sort of been swept under the rug

- It’s failed to stop the pandemic in any meaningful way

And yet

- You still won’t read this in most mainstream media, and still can’t mention these things in many social contexts

- Governments around the world are still pushing Pfizer/Moderna over all other vaccines (hear about AZ recently?)

This article is another example of how their marketing machine is working for them.

If I ran a multimillion dollar company in a highly regulated industry, I’d be taking very careful notes of him how Pfizer is playing this one.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#32

Post by largbae » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:08 AM UTC

alignItems wrote: post #17

The BMJ itself tightly controls who can say what on its platform, and that is precisely why it gained its reputation. Granted, Facebook is supposed to be more open for everyone, but it’s still their platform, their reputation, and they can decide what to filter - and people can decide to take their discussions somewhere else.

The BMJ does not claim protections as a platform, whether you call it one or not. BMJ is a publisher, and takes responsibility for the content that it publishes. The argument here is that FaceBook is now also a publisher.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#33

Post by fabian2k » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:12 AM UTC

NoPie wrote: post #26

fabian2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but really hard to interpret what that means in this case. Peer review is for scientific content, and there is no science in this article. It's investigative reporting, so this would require an entirely different kind of review, and probably not one by scientists.

Nothing prevents to peer review an investigative article. Clinical trials are complicated and reviewers were probably professionals who have at least some experience in clinical trials. Clinical trials are all about science. Everything is important, including data collection.

For scientific papers I have a reasonably good idea what a competent reviewer would do. It's a lot less than what many non-scientists seem to think when they read "peer review", you can't rely entirely on it but it's a useful indicator.

Investigative reporting on how a clinical trial was performed requires a different skill set and also a very different attitude.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#34

Post by gadders » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:12 AM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#35

Post by roenxi » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:13 AM UTC

azalemeth wrote: post #4

Frankly, if I were the BMJ I would start contacting lawyers and issuing writs. I'm unsure of exactly what or where or how , but the principle that peer-reviewed scientific articles are being shadowbanned as "false" and unshareable by a for-profit, unqualified US organisation is...deeply offensive. A large lawsuit by an organisation such as the BMJ (an impact factor 40 journal first published in its current form in ab…

That seems excessively litigious. And very questionable on a fundamentals level - nobody except Facebook and idiots will believe that Facebook's fact checkers have a better grasp of reasonable medical opinion than the BMJ editorial team.

The real story here is that we have one more item of evidence that Facebook doesn't have an algorithm to deduce truth from the cacophony of opinion. I'm not sure why we need evidence of this, but hopefully the people who thought the censorship teams were a good idea will eventually be persuaded that banning ideas outside the political mainstream leads to stupid results. And persuaded that Facebook should stop attempting the impossible and embarrassing themselves in the attempt.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#36

Post by Avamander » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:14 AM UTC

NoPie wrote: post #11

nickelpro wrote: post #3

From the last discussion: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-t... The BMJ is not the shining city on the hill here. You can have problems with Facebook policing information, but Thacker is unquestionably an anti-vax conspiracy theorist and the BMJ is allowing him to use their reputation to push that narrative.

It states that Thacker has been double vaccinated with Pfizer vaccine. Anti-vax conspiracy theorist? That is clearly nonsense.

Plenty of quacks follow the principle of "do as I say, not as I do." It's a very common behaviour amongst populist politicians to talk shit about vaccines and then being fully vaccinated.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#37

Post by nickelpro » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

jjgreen wrote: post #13

nickelpro wrote: post #3

From the last discussion: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-t... The BMJ is not the shining city on the hill here. You can have problems with Facebook policing information, but Thacker is unquestionably an anti-vax conspiracy theorist and the BMJ is allowing him to use their reputation to push that narrative.

Then there will be response articles which expose those errors as such, a consensus will be reached and we will move on to other issues. That is the nature of scientific discourse. Expecting everyone to shut up just because you shout "ANTIVAX" is not.

I posted exactly such a response. I don't expect everyone to shut up. The response addresses both the inaccuracies of the BMJ opinion piece and, more interestingly, explores how such a piece came to be put out by the BMJ in the first place.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#38

Post by alibarber » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #19

jjgreen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there will be response articles which expose those errors as such, a consensus will be reached and we will move on to other issues. That is the nature of scientific discourse. Expecting everyone to shut up just because you shout "ANTIVAX" is not.

We all know it this ideal of "just debunk it" doesn't work. Not just because a correction doesn't have the same reach, but because one audience will actively reject and ignore the evidence and then continue using the article on social media as "evidence" itself.

The audience for the BMJ is clearly listed as 'intended for health professionals'. I do think that these people would take seriously evidence for opposing views or experiments and draw their own - valid professional conclusions. These people are also unlikely to get their information from social media and take action on patient care because of it.

I am firmly against this lowest common denominator approach of people not being able to publish any 'hard science' anywhere through fear of it being taken out of context on social media - particularly after the push of recent years to do the exact opposite and make such stuff open access for all.

The BMJ is not the problem in the world of fake/outrage/out of context news online.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#39

Post by InsomniacL » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:17 AM UTC

"Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong"

Where has it gone wrong?

“We did not call into question the integrity of The BMJ’s story, only the comprehensiveness of it. That’s the point of a ‘Missing Context’ rating.

The BMJ article is being used as evidence of Vaccine Conspiracy theories, it's not like the warning is on the Article, it's where it's shared on Facebook and the missing context label is relevant in that context. A context where the vast majority of people viewing the facebook posts will not understand the BMJ may cover a sub-topic where the results do not reflect on the outcome of the parent topic...

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#40

Post by fabian2k » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:18 AM UTC

throwaway2474 wrote: post #31

I hope that at some point we get to see an in-depth business case study of Pfizer and how they’ve been so successful out of the pandemic. They seem to have an unbelievable grasp of the science-marketing game and how to navigate it successfully at scale. Without getting too far into controversial territory, I’ve observed that - Out of many competing vaccines, Pfizer was always the “cool” one, in both scientific and la…

Myocarditis is a very rare side effect, you generally can't see those in phase 3 trials. You need a lot of people for these to show up, simply because they are so rare. That's nothing new here, this applies to every new drug or vaccine. And Biontech/Pfizer doesn't have the highest myocarditis rate, that is for Moderna.

The vaccines also simply work. They worked very well against the wild type where they also prevented infection, and not only drastically reduced death and hospitalisation. They still reduce death and hospitalisation against Omicron. We figured out now that you really want a third dose for best protection, but that is simply something that you can't know if you have to develop a vaccine on such a compressed timescale.

The mRNA vaccines are the best ones against COVID. AZ and J&J have more serious rare side effects, and they are simply less effective. They're still dramatically better than no vaccine, but once the vaccines were not scarce anymore in the developed world, it made sense to focus on the better ones.