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There are plenty of websites that focus on left-wing talking points that selectively misrepresent actual science. Do you want to ban those too? If so then publi

There are plenty of websites that focus on left-wing talking points that selectively misrepresent actual science. Do you want to ban those too? If so then public health agencies like the NIH and CDC will be the first to lose their bank accounts, because they've repeatedly outright lied about scientific issues (masks, herd immunity, etc) and then even admitted doing so in public. It would be amusing to have a government department get de-platformed for spreading left wing anti-science misinformation, wouldn't it? Or maybe not that amusing actually. Re: climate. Scientists are in fact speaking out against the ever more unhinged rhetoric around climate. Here's Zeke Hausfather, a well known climatologist - who bizarrely and very problematically given this story is a climate research lead at Stripe - saying that even he is now being called a "climate denier": https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1533875297220587520 https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1533875297220587520 That's a guy who's very much done his part to stoke those sorts of claims! Yet he now argues that "Doomerism is a disease, and a self-fulfilling prophesy"! Go outside the field and you can find lots of scientists and people with scientific training who disagree that there's much urgency at all, here's just one example: https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WCD-version-06272215121.pdf https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WCD-version-0... The point is, actual science is a methodology, not a set of people in a set of institutions. The Daily Sceptic has consistently defended this view against people like henearkr above, who is literally arguing that being pro-science means blindly agreeing with whatever someone (him) has declared is the "scientific consensus". It's the opposite of science to believe this. It's pseudo-scientific authoritarianism of the sort that enabled Lysenko and worse.

n4r9 4y ago
> Do you want to ban those too? I've not been calling for banning anything, I'm arguing about whether misrepresenting science causes harm. This whole thread is a response to logicalmonster asking "Who or what is this site harming?". Now it feels like the goalposts are being shifted to "okay but these other things are harmful too!" I've not seen evidence of CDC lying about mask wearing etc.. so you'd have to reference what you're talking about there (I'm not from the US). Re Zeke Hausfather tweet, interestingly he's not denying there's an emergency, he's just saying that doomism is not an appropriate response. Elsewhere he writes: > The environmental crisis is one of the most serious and pressing issues facing the world today. We are already living with impacts of human-caused global heating, and the world is not doing nearly enough yet to put us on a pathway to avoiding potentially dire impacts later in the century to both humans and the natural world. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/06/global-climate-crisis-doom-optimism-emergency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/06/global... This is in line with the consensus claimed (correctly) by henearkr, as evidenced by reference [2] in my post above.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Fair enough. You're right, you didn't call for anyone to be banned, I take that back. The CDC lied about a different topic, whether they would monitor the VAERS database. The NIH lied about masks (Fauci stated in the NYT that he had lied to try and preserve masks for healthcare workers), and herd immunity (Fauci in the NYT again, he changed his claims about the herd immunity threshold based on opinion polling). "Re Zeke Hausfather tweet, interestingly he's not denying there's an emergency" Yes as I said, he's a well known climatologist who very much has done his bit to stoke claims of doom. I picked him as someone who can in no way be labelled as out-of-field, not a specialist or in some way a minority scientist. Yet he is now pushing back on claims that are to be found all over media, politics and even this forum e.g. a well known US politician has claimed that "the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change". That's clearly nonsense but saying so means now even Hausfather finds himself labelled a "denier" who is outside the consensus. If he can be, anyone can. So he's a good illustration of the risks of this ban-anyone-who-disagrees-with-whatever approach, which to your credit you aren't proposing, but obviously PayPal and others are implementing.
  - n4r9 4y ago
    Thanks. I looked up the Fauci mask-wearing incident. So apparently as the Chief Medical Advisor in March 2020 he advised against wearing masks, then shortly afterwards revised it to recommending mask-wearing, and said that his initial advice was based on a lack of data as well as preserving masks for healthcare. I can't find his exact quote, but so far I'm not sure that he actually lied about what the science shows? I mean it does all sound pretty weaselly, but it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing. We genuinely didn't have much reliable data at the time. So to me this seems like a separate issue, what should the government advise, based on the science? There are lots of other factors coming in to play; it becomes a game of predicting how the public will respond to what's said and whether to advise things "just in case". Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed.
    - 4y ago

n4r9 4y ago

> Do you want to ban those too? I've not been calling for banning anything, I'm arguing about whether misrepresenting science causes harm. This whole thread is a response to logicalmonster asking "Who or what is this site harming?". Now it feels like the goalposts are being shifted to "okay but these other things are harmful too!" I've not seen evidence of CDC lying about mask wearing etc.. so you'd have to reference what you're talking about there (I'm not from the US). Re Zeke Hausfather tweet, interestingly he's not denying there's an emergency, he's just saying that doomism is not an appropriate response. Elsewhere he writes: > The environmental crisis is one of the most serious and pressing issues facing the world today. We are already living with impacts of human-caused global heating, and the world is not doing nearly enough yet to put us on a pathway to avoiding potentially dire impacts later in the century to both humans and the natural world. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/06/global-climate-crisis-doom-optimism-emergency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/06/global... This is in line with the consensus claimed (correctly) by henearkr, as evidenced by reference [2] in my post above.

origin_path 4y ago
Fair enough. You're right, you didn't call for anyone to be banned, I take that back. The CDC lied about a different topic, whether they would monitor the VAERS database. The NIH lied about masks (Fauci stated in the NYT that he had lied to try and preserve masks for healthcare workers), and herd immunity (Fauci in the NYT again, he changed his claims about the herd immunity threshold based on opinion polling). "Re Zeke Hausfather tweet, interestingly he's not denying there's an emergency" Yes as I said, he's a well known climatologist who very much has done his bit to stoke claims of doom. I picked him as someone who can in no way be labelled as out-of-field, not a specialist or in some way a minority scientist. Yet he is now pushing back on claims that are to be found all over media, politics and even this forum e.g. a well known US politician has claimed that "the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change". That's clearly nonsense but saying so means now even Hausfather finds himself labelled a "denier" who is outside the consensus. If he can be, anyone can. So he's a good illustration of the risks of this ban-anyone-who-disagrees-with-whatever approach, which to your credit you aren't proposing, but obviously PayPal and others are implementing.
- n4r9 4y ago
  Thanks. I looked up the Fauci mask-wearing incident. So apparently as the Chief Medical Advisor in March 2020 he advised against wearing masks, then shortly afterwards revised it to recommending mask-wearing, and said that his initial advice was based on a lack of data as well as preserving masks for healthcare. I can't find his exact quote, but so far I'm not sure that he actually lied about what the science shows? I mean it does all sound pretty weaselly, but it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing. We genuinely didn't have much reliable data at the time. So to me this seems like a separate issue, what should the government advise, based on the science? There are lots of other factors coming in to play; it becomes a game of predicting how the public will respond to what's said and whether to advise things "just in case". Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed.
  - 4y ago