Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

royalsociety.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 970 posts

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#691

Post by HeavyStorm »

We should never forget that Galileo almost burned for spreading what was "misinformation" back then. The science WAS in the hand of the church (whatever little science it was), so he was actually going against "scientific" consensus. I'm sure many more were actually burned, but I'm no historian.

Misinformation isn't harmful in itself, what is harmful are the choices people make based on that (mis) information. That's what legislation should fight, that's what society should fight.

Instead of censorship, how about more information, more education? People, even antivax and the like, have a good measure of cognitive capacities. We should strive to educate and inform them, and accept that some people are just gonna think differently. If they are 5%, well, that's alright. Maybe one of them is the next Galilee.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#692

Post by mike_hearn »

typicalset wrote: post #631
dannyw wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're also living in the world where certain governments are mandating vaccines that pose 50% higher excess risk of myocarditis compared to an infection[1] for those aged under 40, according to a peer-reviewed, UK population-level study. Or shutdowns of discussion that some health authorities, like Sweden, have (IMO correctly) judged that there is no clear benefit to vaccinating kids under 12 against COVID [2]. The i…

Your first study does not show what you claim it does, or at least it is a gross simplification. These statistics are at the 10 per million scale i.e 0.001%, which is smaller than fatality rates for unvaccinated under-40s. That is to say that there is a selection bias for people who did not die, and this is a significant oversight in your interpretation.

The argument he/she's making is that specific findings are being suppressed, so nobody has a full and accurate picture. Thus you cannot refute it with a statistical argument that assumes you do have the full picture.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#693

Post by unmole »

mrjangles wrote: post #681
unmole wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who was part of the team who invented RNA-based vaccines. Yeah, no: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

Is this comment satire? Robert Malone is the person Joe Rogan interviewed, and that everyone is up at arms about. He is literally the first name that appears in the first sentence of that article you linked.

> He is literally the first name that appears in the first sentence of that article you linked.

Right, because there is no way a 5000 word article could in anyway clarify or add context to a specific claim once it mentions a name.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#694

Post by numpad0 »

Nitrolo wrote: post #524
WalterBright wrote: post #75

I remember when the government and scientific consensus informed me that margarine was good for me. For decades. Who knows what damage that has done to my internals.

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

Multiple theories and trains of thoughts exist for margarine:

- it plastic no food

- it’s vegetable good

- it’s cholesterol bad

- it’s trans fat bad, butter no trans good

- cholesterol ain’t real, margarine good

I don’t care :p

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#695

Post by rob_c »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #120
rob_c wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think unfortunately we also need to protect science from idiots making very bad conclusions based on not understanding a paper... That's how we end up with 'bacon cures cancer' headlines in the daily fail...

How do you protect science from idiots? Is science going to stop working if some people think that bacon cures cancer?

OK so to counter,

Do you think 'scientific research' is in a great position from a funding perspective right now?

Have you looked at the press or out the window as to how "science" is portrayed due to covid? The lack of sanity in both political directions is alarming and depressing all at the same. Both sides of the public on this are both, equally, damagingly, wrong. However, they pick up and throw around scientific papers as though it gives them the right to be the next pope...

If science is paraded around like nonsense in the press there's a matter of time until we end up with politicians who make the decisions sit there and say "I don't see any public benefit in researching this".

That day will only come sooner if things carry on as we head into a recession.

Edit: My proposal to fix, as I've suggested elsewhere, keep scientific papers behind some (non-for-profit) walled access, obviously that has damaging impacts when you say X from country Y can't read paper on Z, but frankly maybe the public isn't grown up enough for completely open discourse when they can't understand the material.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#696

Post by sampo »

mike_hearn wrote: post #606
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re running the authors code with their data will likely just repeat any methodological issues they had (either accidentally or fraudulently). In medical studies, one level is to reevaluate the data from the same set of patients to see if any bias or errors wasn't included, perhaps with a different or newer statistical idealogy. The best is for the study to be repeated with a fresh set of patient data to see if the un…

"Re running the authors code with their data will likely just repeat any methodological issues they had" Yes, but that's useful too. COVID-19 lockdowns largely kicked off in the west due to an epidemiological model from Imperial College London, written over a period of many years by the now notorious Professor Neil Ferguson. When his team uploaded a pre-print of his paper and started sending it to government minister…

John Carmack, of computer games and graphics programming fame, had pretty positive comments on the Imperial College CovidSim model code:

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1254872369556074496

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#697

Post by dftygfhdgf »

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…

After years of studies and working for university I got to agree, at least for most parts. However, I think there are significant variation in quality of science between different fields.

Some fields, like social sciences have long been very politicized and ideological, and this situation hasn't changed for better. I wouldn't take most studies from fields like social sciences, business and humanities very seriously, especially qualitative ones.

Secondly, pay and working conditions in academia generally suck, which means most actually competent people avoid it like plague. This also has an effect on the quality of research. Becoming a researcher these days in my country at least generally means becoming a working poor, who wants that?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#698

Post by elondaits »

iqanq wrote: post #642
mfer wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just this weekend I was reading that more than 60% of the research into cholesterol is funded by the egg industry. Research funded by industry overwhelmingly shows things in as positive light for industry whether it does or not. This kind of example is common. It tells me its worth questioning research and looking deeper at what ever is released. When someone questions research to look at the merits of what they say.

Exactly. The guy who is an "Ultimate Fighting Championship color commentator, comedian, actor, and former television presenter" doesn't have a conflict of interest, which makes him less biased and more believable.

BIG conflict of interest… if someone goes on his show stating something like “brushing actually destroys your teeth, you should take X supplement which I developed and read my book” he gets money and viewers interested in this “no brushing” thing. If the conclusion is that you should brush and use toothpaste he doesn’t have a podcast.

He’s in the industry of going against “mainstream [ie scientific] knowledge”… which provides him and endless stream of salesmen who cherry picked scientific papers that support their schtick… and a lot of interested listeners who get an excuse for everything they don’t feel like doing (“oh, this guy on Rogan said brushing destroys your teeth, so I guess I’m better off leaving them alone”)

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#699

Post by rob_c »

vkou wrote: post #199
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…

> 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 themselves. You're correct, in that what you describe isn't a threat to the ivory towers of 'science'. Unfortunately, here in the real world, outside of academia, those people's unassailable belief in all flavors of bullshit has quite a…

Given the boogey man was that we'd be out of coal by 2020 in the late 90s (I can dig out the material from British schools to show you this!) I think we can survive the over-exaggeration of how soon and alarmingly and the end of the world is coming.

As I keep saying, why can't we just make the planet better? Why is that so difficult? What's the risk?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#700

Post by mike_hearn »

im3w1l wrote: post #411
nsainsbury wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science does eventually self-correct, but unfortunately it takes far too long to do so. One area I've studied pretty extensively is the history of cancer treatment. In the long story of the history of cancer treatment, it is absolutely scandalous how often the scientific consensus was wrong and persisted for years in spite of the evidence. For example, the radical mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer continu…

And yet scientific cancer treatments are miles and miles better than quackery.

But the difference came about only due to relentless informed written criticism of scientists, many of whom happily described their critics as spreading misinformation (or similar words from their era).

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-0348-9008-3_...

"Even individual fanatic scientific advocates of the Einsteinian theory seem to have finally abandoned their tactic of cutting off any discussion about it with the threat that every criticism, even the most moderate and scrupulous ones, must be discredited as an obvious effluence of stupidity and malice"

People often present science as some sort of free-floating edifice that "self corrects" through mysterious mechanisms. It doesn't. Scientists with wrong ideas have to be explicitly corrected by other people, some of whom will be random Swiss patent clerks and other outsiders. Therefore you cannot have science without free speech, because otherwise there's no way for bad ideas to be corrected. It's as simple as that. And yet, academic "scientists" are often at the forefront of demanding it be shut down.

Post reply on HN