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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

#801

Post by mizzao »

nathansherburn wrote: post #795

As much as I love being relatively unrestricted on the internet, is there actually any evidence that censorship decreases trust in institutions? China is notorious for censorship but from speaking to friends there it seems everyone is totally on board with vaccines and very few people doubt climate science. People know everything is censored but trust in science, experts etc is relatively high.

Maybe the known presence of censorship actually trains & increases citizens' ability to question information and search for the truth?

For example, many Chinese know about Tiananmen, and the burying of the high speed rail accident, even though those were heavily censored

Would be an interesting causal relationship.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#802

Post by omosubi »

cgrealy wrote: post #275
omosubi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors

You mean the one for people whose life expectancy was less than half the modern day? Who lived completely different lives?

If your ancestors have a line that was able to create you, clearly they were doing something right

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#803

Post by ben_w »

foxfluff wrote: post #670
erik_seaberg wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elections are determined by people who don’t think about that. If you are probably more informed than the average voter, you can improve the signal:noise ratio.

I'm probably less informed. I don't follow the news (or really any mainstream media) because signal to noise ratio is too bad and there's too much negativity. I have no clue what our politicians are up to.

I sympathise.

There is however a famous quote about this: “the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them” - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/03/misinformed/

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#804

Post by ithkuil »

Chris2048 wrote: post #684
ithkuil wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of failure happens as a consequence of an intellectual environment: the impossibility of carrying a nuanced message. This perhaps can be solved by "more education", in the broader sense. Until then it's hard to blame individual instances of public officials who try to do their best to distill a complex tradeoff in a public announcement where they either have to talk with an authoritative tone otherwise they…

> otherwise they'll be criticized for being weak politicians, sure, but public officials such as the EPA?

Ok. Replace weak with "shifty" and "unclear". In any case a public communication that doesn't reassure will quickly be replaced by one that does, by escalating the issue to the nearest political figure who takes on the job of providing such assurance.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#805

Post by nautilius »

b112 wrote: post #323
nautilius wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I played in the local soccer club once, and can now confidently tell you that every professional athlete is an alcoholic. “

Or, such narratives are created, just as narratives that all politicians are corrupt, that meritocracy is wrong, as an attempt to weaken western democracies.

Not arguing one way or another, but what is the evidence?

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#806

Post by Semaphor »

immibis wrote: post #786
mike_hearn wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sort of mis-use of logic that has led to so many problems. "Lockdowns" is shorthand for "people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus" It's shorthand for a set of government policies that were intended to reduce contact, not eliminate it, because "not coming into contact with other people" is impossible. People still have to go to shops, hospitals, care homes, live with…

you're exposed to the virus normally 10 times per week every week. With lockdowns that drops to 5 times a week. In this scenario, lockdowns work fine, but are insufficient! Perhaps with stringent use of N95 masks during contactless food ration delivery it can be reduced to 0.05 times per week. Then the pandemic ends and we go back to normal. Also, if you only go out half as often, that's not exactly a lockdown either…

> A lockdown is people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus. It's not people still often coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus but not as often as before.

That might be a definition issue. Here in Germany, we had several lockdowns. Many (most?) countries would say we had no lockdown at all.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#807

Post by martincmartin »

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 scientists themselves are often complicit in the misrepresentation of their own research as it means more of those sweet, sweet grants.

The grant agencies are at least part of the problem. They seem to have set up the wrong incentives.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#808

Post by helsinkiandrew »

ironyholder wrote: post #685
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say you are no longer highly 'pro science' would you say that you would rather people take advice from scientists or from people who have a background of "Ultimate Fighting Championship color commentator, comedian, actor, and former television presenter". Because that's the level we're at at the moment. The current climate we're in means that consensus science from 50+ years of research and medical practice…

Several things that really truck me with this comment: > consensus science from 50+ years of research and medical practice [...] being questioned This is precisely what scientists should have been doing! I'm afraid having your work done for you by unqualified amateurs is a kind of punishment for skimping on it for too long. > a background of "Ultimate Fighting Championship color commentator, comedian, actor, and form…

>> consensus science from 50+ years of research and medical practice

>This is precisely what scientists should have been doing!

My reference was to the years since we've virtually eliminated the deaths from polio, TB, and measles and other diseases in countries that have used vaccines against them. There have been studies that have shown that some vaccines cause side effects in some people, but none have shown to be comparable to the millions of lives that have been saved from debilitating diseases.

> 5 decades of "belief" in science hasn't done much good.

Says the person writing a comment on HN through a network of hardware and software unimaginable 50 years ago that was at least partly made possible by scientists and academic researchers making real breakthroughs. My comments were to the poster who thought scientific research was a polished turd because of his experience in one part of academia

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#809

Post by lettergram »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #475
sillysaurusx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes. It’s not cool to out someone in front of millions of people. Feel free to dismiss the claim if you wish.

People on HN are so odd sometimes. Ah yes, I must be a liar if I don't want to spill all the details my friends told me in confidence and ruin our relationship. Sure, sometimes people lie on the internet but this is not an outlandish story.

Imagine I did out someone?

“Best case” scenario everyone loses their funding, including the colleagues who did report this stuff. The institution, the lab, etc would lose their funding. Those wanted to get PhDs in those labs will lose theirs. It’ll have a serious negative impact on everyone, even those who did the correct thing.

This is why academia is as corrupt as it is. They all evaluate each other’s paper, give each other grants and anyone who exposes anything loses their entire careers.

Re: Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

#810

Post by immibis »

Semaphor wrote: post #806
immibis wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're exposed to the virus normally 10 times per week every week. With lockdowns that drops to 5 times a week. In this scenario, lockdowns work fine, but are insufficient! Perhaps with stringent use of N95 masks during contactless food ration delivery it can be reduced to 0.05 times per week. Then the pandemic ends and we go back to normal. Also, if you only go out half as often, that's not exactly a lockdown either…

> A lockdown is people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus. It's not people still often coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus but not as often as before. That might be a definition issue. Here in Germany, we had several lockdowns. Many (most?) countries would say we had no lockdown at all.

I call them shopcloses.
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