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It's become sadly common to suppress true research results because gatekeepers are afraid of the wrong people using them. It's gotten so bad that when I see an

It's become sadly common to suppress true research results because gatekeepers are afraid of the wrong people using them. It's gotten so bad that when I see an instance of egregious academic censorship, I think to myself "Yep. That's probably true.". At both society and personal levels, the truth is always the best policy. Suppressing the truth, even for an ostensibly good reason, never ends well. Maybe there's something to the censored article. Maybe there isn't. But whenever I see heavy handed censorship, I have to ask myself, "is there something here?"

eesmith 6y ago
There absolutely is a general issue about suppressing "true research results", as with government scientists who have been forbidden from speaking when that research opposes the interests of politicians (for one example, "Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires" at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scientist-blocked-from-talking-about-climate-and-wildfires/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scient... ). However, this doesn't appear to be true search result. If it is indeed an erroneous conclusion published in a newsletter by JH students, and people implied ("Johns Hopkins published a study") that it was actual research result published by JH staff, then is there anything JH can do to suppress falsehoods that wouldn't be interpreted by the uninformed as heavy handed censorship?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Why not rebut the study at all? A free society doesn't "suppress falsehoods": it rebuts them.
  - eesmith 6y ago
    There's no study to rebut. We're talking about something published by a student in an undergraduate newspaper. The information I've looked at is clearly wrong, as I've highlighted elsewhere in these comments. I used "suppress" because you wrote "suppress true research results" - given your qualifiers, I assumed you thought suppression was appropriate for other contexts. For example, isn't retracting a paper a way suppress the propagation of egregiously wrong research results?
  - holyavengerone 6y ago
    They clearly have debunked the original article that was published here: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19 https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-... (including a copy of the original article), saying: "Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19. Additionally, Briand presented data of total U.S. deaths in comparison to COVID-19-related deaths as a proportion percentage, which trivializes the repercussions of the pandemic. This evidence does not disprove the severity of COVID-19; an increase in excess deaths is not represented in these proportionalities because they are offered as percentages, not raw numbers. Briand also claimed in her analysis that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may be incorrectly categorized as COVID-19-related deaths. However, COVID-19 disproportionately affects those with preexisting conditions, so those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus. Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers." That's rather clear and unequivocal. Reading that, in conjunction with the original article and other science papers, it appears clear that none of that minimizes in any way the impact of the pandemic if you know how to read those sources properly. That is apparently not the case for everyone.
holyavengerone 6y ago
However there was no actual suppression, given the explanation and link in lieu and place of the article : https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19 https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-...

eesmith 6y ago

There absolutely is a general issue about suppressing "true research results", as with government scientists who have been forbidden from speaking when that research opposes the interests of politicians (for one example, "Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires" at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scientist-blocked-from-talking-about-climate-and-wildfires/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scient... ). However, this doesn't appear to be true search result. If it is indeed an erroneous conclusion published in a newsletter by JH students, and people implied ("Johns Hopkins published a study") that it was actual research result published by JH staff, then is there anything JH can do to suppress falsehoods that wouldn't be interpreted by the uninformed as heavy handed censorship?

quotemstr 6y ago
Why not rebut the study at all? A free society doesn't "suppress falsehoods": it rebuts them.
- eesmith 6y ago
  There's no study to rebut. We're talking about something published by a student in an undergraduate newspaper. The information I've looked at is clearly wrong, as I've highlighted elsewhere in these comments. I used "suppress" because you wrote "suppress true research results" - given your qualifiers, I assumed you thought suppression was appropriate for other contexts. For example, isn't retracting a paper a way suppress the propagation of egregiously wrong research results?
- holyavengerone 6y ago
  They clearly have debunked the original article that was published here: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19 https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-... (including a copy of the original article), saying: "Briand was quoted in the article as saying, “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.” This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19. Additionally, Briand presented data of total U.S. deaths in comparison to COVID-19-related deaths as a proportion percentage, which trivializes the repercussions of the pandemic. This evidence does not disprove the severity of COVID-19; an increase in excess deaths is not represented in these proportionalities because they are offered as percentages, not raw numbers. Briand also claimed in her analysis that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may be incorrectly categorized as COVID-19-related deaths. However, COVID-19 disproportionately affects those with preexisting conditions, so those with those underlying conditions are statistically more likely to be severely affected and die from the virus. Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers." That's rather clear and unequivocal. Reading that, in conjunction with the original article and other science papers, it appears clear that none of that minimizes in any way the impact of the pandemic if you know how to read those sources properly. That is apparently not the case for everyone.

holyavengerone 6y ago

However there was no actual suppression, given the explanation and link in lieu and place of the article : https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19 https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-...