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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

#351

Post by slg »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #321
slg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to only be looking at the surface of this issue. I agree that it is appropriate to be concerned about conflict of interest, but what happens when you take it one step further beyond your comment? I decide to "do my own research" and plug the drug's name into Google. The top site that comes up is the same news organization's fact check because no one else has a financial incentive to investigate this issue an…

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... It’s fundamentally an epistemological question: what is the ontological basis for thinking we know something?

>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 billions at stake the manipulator can keep pumping out misinformation. They have a financial incentive to lie and no one has a strong financial incentive for truth so how does this researcher find the needle of truth in the haystack of lies?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#353

Post by jlawson »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #181
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…

All of this may be true, but it leads to the question: if not science, what do you recommend instead? Not being a virologist or epidemiologist, I have to listen to somebody . Are you saying I'd actually be better off listening to Art Bell and Joe Rogan than official sources like Fauci? If so, that's an extraordinary claim if there ever was one.

Accept that there is no source of info you can just believe at face value.

You need to collect information from across your infosphere and intensively de-bias and cross-check it.

It'll take a lot of effort. If that's not worth it to you, go agnostic on things you don't have time to figure out, or join a tribe and shout the slogans with your tribe-friends. Your life choices will depend on your values.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#354

Post by GeekyBear »

cgrealy wrote: post #264
GeekyBear wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion, when was most scientific research not flawed or "useless"? How long has it been since replicating someone else's study to validate the results was routinely part of the scientific process? >The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibility of empirica…

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.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#355

Post by Cyph0n »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #249
Cyph0n wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s that the average person cannot make decisions about complex subjects . This is not a new development: the boundaries of scientific knowledge - across all fields - have required a large amount of specialization for a while now. The barrier to entry is a PhD, and even then you’re only an expert in a small part of your field. If you suddenly decide to jump in without context and make judgements about topics you…

By distrust, do you mean “blindly believe SMEs to be wrong just because they’re an SME” or “fail to blindly believe what SMEs say?” If people don’t understand a complex subject, then I think they should neither endorse nor reject SMEs’ opinions on the matter. People don’t have to have a belief about everything. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re not. Blind trust is dangerous.

More like "blindly believe SMEs to be wrong because I watched a few YouTube videos".

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#356

Post by autoexec »

cgrealy wrote: post #264
GeekyBear wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your opinion, when was most scientific research not flawed or "useless"? How long has it been since replicating someone else's study to validate the results was routinely part of the scientific process? >The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibility of empirica…

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 and replication never takes place. That's because often science isn't really being done. If you're Tropicana you might happily fund study after study after study tweaking it each time until you get the results you're looking for so that you can get "OJ may reduce risk of cancer" into the headlines, then bury the results of all the research you funded that contradicted that, but that isn't science it's just advertising. In a better world, anyone involved in that kind of shit would be blacklisted as disreputable if not charged with something.

Research that isn't or can never be replicated is just barely better than speculation, and not really worth much of anything. If someone wants to fund science, we should be insisting that the process is actual science and the results are meaningful.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#357

Post by jhallenworld »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #282
jhallenworld wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I agree that there are actual valid arguments about priority, by which I mean the math works out- the costs are significant either way. Excess deaths vs. broader economic impact or even questioning how much economic benefit from allaying fear by an otherwise dubious activity (cloth masks..). But in the US, we have this extreme irrational vaccine skepticism where the math just does not work out. People believe th…

I personally think that a lot of vaccine scepticism comes from the perceived force involved. For example, via passports and mandates. I think once you get into the situation in which people think "I'm being forced to do X", you've created an impossible catch-22 and you've basically ensured that some % double down. It's hard for me to explain because it just seems intuitively obvious. I really enjoy a beer after work.…

Yeah, it's not nice but what should be done after the "natural" vaccination rate had been reached by rational argument alone?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#358

Post by aeternum »

concinds wrote: post #219
throwaway22032 wrote: post #9

The issue that plagues us is a lack of trust in long-standing societal authorities. We can't follow the entire scientific proof chain for every piece of information we encounter, because we don't have time. So we rely on authority to some extent, whether that be peer review, government, independent bodies, etc. We need to be able to trust that these bodies are telling us the truth and aren't seeking to mislead us. Be…

I'm skeptical that education is a solution to collapsing societal trust. First, the primary organs that would be capable of this education are the media, who have a profit motive to stoke any and all fears (immigration, radiological warfare, world war, coffee being carcinogenic). Second, I think this distrust goes beyond "the CDC said something wrong once, I don't trust them as much anymore." That could be solved wit…

It's not just that the CDC and other institutions of scientific authority 'said something wrong once.' I think most people understand and accept that science is not perfect.

Instead, those institutions have shown that they are willing to publish nobel lies. Specifically, they are willing to bend the truth and publish false information if they believe it is in the best interest of society / greater good. Given an entity that has shown willingness to bend the truth 'for the good of society', isn't distrust and cynicism is rational?

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-sets-shor...

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#359

Post by Kim_Bruning »

tempnow987 wrote: post #112
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

p.s. I worked on-site at a factory doing industrial automation for a lot of the time; I really liked FFP2 masks because they fit better and my glasses didn't cloud up. Masks with valves were available (because part of one's regular PPE at times before the pandemic), but no longer permitted.

Yeah, that said FFP2's I think are per WHO only supposed to be for medical professionals - so use is discouraged outside that setting. "This said, the World Health Organization does not recommend the use of FFP2 for everyone, stating that non-medical face coverings should be used by the general public under the age of 60 who do not have underlying health conditions. FFP2 masks are best used as personal protective equ…

How odd! Eg. in Germany FFP2 is readily available, and is in fact required in some companies.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#360

Post by swayvil »

judge2020 wrote: post #222
maximus-decimus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just throw out papers that don’t publish datasets and code There was an interesting research paper that claimed you could up your IQ with a computer game called dual n back and a lot of paper tried to replicate it, but my mind was blown when I realized none of them used the same code. None of them actually shared the code they used for their research and then they all claimed they were testing the same thing when…

Exactly, it'd be like omitting the "methodology" section of the paper. There's no way to verify or prove wrong a paper if you don't know how they reached their conclusions.

Remove description of methodology and science becomes mere dogma.
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