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It was deeply disturbing to me that throughout the COVID epidemic many highly credentialed doctors and researchers were getting de-platformed for anything that

It was deeply disturbing to me that throughout the COVID epidemic many highly credentialed doctors and researchers were getting de-platformed for anything that remotely questioned the government's position on anything related to COVID. Science is about asking questions, testing hypotheses and independent research corroboration. There have to be checks and balances. I expect the chilling effect from this experience will remain in the scientific community for a long time.

_djo_ 4y ago
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  If your response to disagreeing with someone is to censor them, you are not doing science but instead engaging in faith. "Hey, lockdowns may be worse than the disease" is not some evil chain smoking climate skeptic position.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    In isolation that's true. If it's strongly correlated with other assertions like 'it's just a cold', 'only people with unhealthy lifestyles are at risk', 'it's a bioweapon' etc. then people may justifiably suspect it's part of a broad-spectrum attack on public health messaging.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Risk was heavily concentrated among people with unhealthy lifestyles. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take the pandemic seriously, but asserting that fact is in no way an attack on public health messaging. https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-children-in-covid-icus-are-overweight-but-public-health-officials-rarely-talk-about-obesity https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        That's why I'm saying we should look at the correlation between disparate assertions. Uncertainty about the efficacy or necessity of a vaccine is understandable, for example, but if it's coupled with assertions about 5g mind control I'm less willing to spend effort on the conversation.
      - strken 4y ago
        That article states that obesity was a risk factor in 34% of deaths under 65. The US obesity rate is 42% (EDIT: 36%, 42% is the adult rate). I'm not sure how to interpret that.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  > Shutting out the bad faith actors is necessary to ensure science and public policy informed by it can continue to be effective and useful Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you? No. So I'm not sure how your argument holds up.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    Ultimately, yes. It’s impossible to keep this sort of thing up indefinitely, and over the decades the evidence became overwhelming enough that it was impossible to ignore. Researchers who were co-opted were shunned, losing career opportunities, and universities stopped accepting funding from tobacco companies.
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      Will you change your stance on our response to Covid when the evidence of its harms (and lack of positive effects) become so large as to be unavoidable? Because it will. History will not look fondly upon those who pushed these highly destructive mandates. It will be seen as one of the greatest public health fuckups of all time.
  - imustbeevil 4y ago
    > Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you? Yes, 53 years ago. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1089/public-health-cigarette-smoking-act-of-1969 https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1089/public-hea...
  - lovich 4y ago
    We did the other side of the coin in that we mandated their speech in putting a warning label on their product[1]. We didn't let them claim whatever they wanted and stopped them from claiming the health benefits of cigarettes like in this ad[2] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_messages#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_mess... [2]http://stuppid.com/wp-content/uploads/smoking-ad-004.jpg http://stuppid.com/wp-content/uploads/smoking-ad-004.jpg
- musicale 4y ago
  > large corporations had the incentive to prevent a certain type of government action I can see how lockdowns opposed corporate interests, and I'd be interested in hearing more about how corporations influenced anti-lockdown. I don't see how lab leak theory is connected to corporate interests one way or the other. Anti-vax doesn't seem to align with corporate interests and in fact seems to be opposed to it.
  - n4r9 4y ago
    Lockdowns caused a big slump in industries like retail and transport. In the UK, airline bosses in particular were outspoken about their desire to lift lockdown restrictions as soon as possible.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    When you have an interest in creating distrust in using science for policy, anything goes. One of the key anti-lockdown advocacy groups, PANDA, started out fairly sane-sounding and was packed full of hedge fund and other finance people. But once vaccines were widely available they inexplicably turned strongly anti-vaccine too.
    - evilpotatoes 4y ago
      Since when is anti-mandatory vaccination anti-vaccine ? Especially since it demonstrably has zero impact on infection or likelihood of communication. Which the data showed as obvious since about July of 2021 from Israel.
      - nrb 4y ago
        > Especially since it demonstrably has zero impact on infection or likelihood of communication. How about hospitalization and death rates, the outcomes we actually care about?
        evilpotatoes 4y ago
        For which time period? If you look recently, it's not looking so good for covid-19 vaccines.
- ioslipstream 4y ago
  "You can’t discuss this problem without acknowledging the role of bad actors in the system." On both sides. The government, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech were definitely bad actors. We do not live in a nanny state nor do we want to. What happened during the pandemic was disgraceful. Discussion was effectively shut down and science as well as treatment was negatively affected by the actions of censorship.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    That's really not true. It just conveniently played into an existing narrative that the liberal media was trying to shut down other views. The fact that we are so well aware of all the disagreement and skepticism - the fact that many people still have erroneous beliefs about the virus - is a great sign that censorship wasn't effective.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Imagine the Internet didn't exist. Would there have been more of a discussion of fringe views or less? What would the outcome have been on COVID deaths?
- slibhb 4y ago
  Calling an argument "bad faith" means that argument's proponent doesn't believe it's true. I highly doubt that was the case with various people -- some of them doctors -- questioning the party line on the pandemic. Being wrong is not the same as arguing in bad faith. Your attitude is sadly very common. Everyone who disagrees with you is a bad faith actor, engaged in knowing lies to further some shadowy agenda. I think you underestimate how little consensus there actually is, even among the educated.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    - darawk 4y ago
      > I meant it in that sense, that those pushing it knew full well that it wasn’t true but had ulterior motives. Who is an example of that in this context?
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      What, exactly, is “not true” about the great barrington declaration? What is “not true” about the fact that lockdowns were not in any pandemic playbook prior to 2020? What is “not true” about the fact the median age of Covid death is like 5 years higher than the average human lifespan? What is “not true” about the fact you still cannot reliably differentiate between “died of” and “died with” Covid? In your case, I suspect “not true” simply means “I don’t agree”. You should really question why you believe the “facts” you do and examine why somebody else might think different. Who knows, maybe they have very valid points?
      - anon84873628 4y ago
        See the "died with" thing is where you lost me. It was obvious that there was an illness killing lots of people. But then you had people who didn't want to admit it, blamed co-morbidities, said doctors were deliberately inflating the numbers to make money, etc. Those people poisoned the well of discourse. "Died with" was not a meaningful distinction at the time and falls under the "bad faith" category for me.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Speaking out against all the harms and negatives of some highly disruptive non pharmaceutical interventions with unproven efficacy is absolutely not bad faith arguments. It’s the cornerstone of science and democracy. Anybody in a position of power or knowledge who dared to even hint at asking questions got absolutely steamrollered by a very vocal group of “experts”. They were called alt-right selfish grandma killers who watched to much fox (and sorry, I never watched fox but it isn’t my fault they might actually be right sometimes, I’ve also been a solid democrat my entire life until this nonsense started…). What we did the last two and a half years is so incredibly shameful. It was the opposite of science and opposite of “following the data”. It was appeals to authority all the way down. We were all told to shut up, “stay in our lane” and listen to a handful of cherry picked “experts”. The last two and a half years changed my opinion about “fact checkers” and “misinformation” completely. Both of those are nothing more than ways to bully people into submission.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - musicale 4y ago
    I found dang's response[1] to the question "Is fact checking that difficult?" to be insightful: > It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.) > That's why there doesn't seem to be any fact checker whose calls aren't predictable from one of the major ideological partitions. > Another way of putting this is that the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest. It's understandable that people would like to reduce that contest to a simpler subset of factual questions—but you can't. Just the opposite: that apparently simpler subset reduces to it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867
    - 4y ago
- andreilys 4y ago
  There’s no other way to see those types of efforts as anything other than attacks against science itself The funny thing is most of what you call bad faith questioning ended up being approved by “Science” (cloth masks being ineffective, how the virus transmitted, covid origins, etc.) Unfortunately it seems like for you and many others, science has turned into a religion conducted by a priestly class that cannot be questioned.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  Are you claiming this is what happened in this specific case? That the Great Barrington Declaration was promulgated by bad actors due to support from large companies? If that's not your claim, then why are you bringing this up? Are you supportive of government censorship as the article describes: >At least 11 federal agencies, and around 80 government officials, have been explicitly directing social media companies to take down posts and remove certain accounts that violate the government’s own preferences and guidelines for coverage on topics ranging from COVID restrictions, to the 2020 election, to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Ironically it was fauci and friends who wanted to discredit the GBD. That declaration was written and signed by actual scientists, doctors and “experts”… it wasn’t a book of facts. It contained no “misinformation”. It was an alternate viewpoint on our reaction to Covid—nothing more and nothing less. It just happened to be one that went against the narrative pushed by those in power.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- elenaferrantes 4y ago
  I can see the reason the tobacco industry would lie about the effect of tobacco. What would be the reason an expert would show bad faith going against the narrative we saw for Covid ? (Vaccine are effective, masks are effective, lock-downs are effective).
SamPatt 4y ago
The fear and groupthink was so strong at the time that even pointing out the existence of dissenting voices was enough to get you labeled as a selfish grandma killer conspiracy theorist. I'm glad in hindsight more people are willing to see the problems of groupthink in this period, but I do hope they look inward and hold themselves responsible too, and maybe next time not defer to authority and demonize others so willingly.
- musicale 4y ago
  The Washington Post[1] did seem to engage in a a bit of introspection eventually: "The Post originally described Cotton’s remarks as “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory” in a February 2020 article. But last week, The Post rewrote the article’s headline, softening “conspiracy theory” to “fringe theory” and noting that scientists have “disputed” it rather than “debunked” it." [1]"The media called the ‘lab leak’ story a ‘conspiracy theory.’ Now it’s prompted corrections — and serious new reporting." Washington Post, 6/10/21
  - SamPatt 4y ago
    A very small bit. Readers aren't parsing sentences this closely and comparing to previous statements. Unless they come out with an editorial statement apologizing then they aren't really serious about their own involvement in censorship on behalf of those in power.
    - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
      i think a retraction or minor edit after 99.9% of the readerbase has consumed the content, is too little, too late. Damage done.
  - nradov 4y ago
    And a couple months later the US federal government published an official report stating that a lab leak was a possible source of the virus. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
Gordonjcp 4y ago
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  For kids the vaccine almost certainly is more harmful than Covid. That’s why many countries don’t push kids to get vaccinated. As for the “horse dewormer”… don’t you find it at all curious why none of the “experts” ever suggested any kind of treatments for Covid beyond vaccines and paxlovid. No “eat healthy, take your vitamins, exercise, get fresh air”. Nope. Just hunker down in your home and wait for salvation. Any attempt to find other treatments for Covid were immediately shot down and roundly mocked. Weird, eh? Like what kind of assholes shoot down doctors and basically cancel them trying to find treatments for Covid? Who does that? In what world is that normal? Even more odd is none of them bat an eye when they push some omicron specific booster that was only tested on like 8 mice before being deemed legit.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    there was tons of weird stuff that only memetically lasted for a couple of days before fizzling out—remember "deltacron"? whatever happened to that? pretty sure it "existed" for about two days, then everyone silently agreed that name was ridiculous and nobody would take it seriously and it kind of just, uh, disappeared...
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      Don’t forget Covid toes. Or double masking. Crazy stuff…
    - ok123456 4y ago
      "Deltacron" turned out to be a lab error.
      - adamrezich 4y ago
        where were the front-page retractions, telling citizens, "hey, we know you're in a heightened emotional state of fear because of everything that (we told you) has happened, and we just told you to be more afraid of yet another new thing, but, guys, guess what, it was an honest mistake, just a lab error, sorry about that, we'll be better going forward when it comes to getting people who have been in basically a nonstop state of panic for months now riled up about yet another thing, when it turned out to be nothing. again, sorry!" no, nothing, it was just quietly phased out of headlines and trending topics, with zero remorse or reflection. and this is just one of many examples of this happening in the past few years. when are people going to realize that mass-scale emotional manipulation of the populace for political and/or financial gain for an elite few is not only totally viable in this world where everyone has the Internet in their pockets, but actually, provably what has been going on for quite awhile now? that contemporary politician you were taught, at one point (which point exactly? you've long since forgotten), to have endless simultaneous fear of and hatred for? maybe all of that was kind of overblown. maybe you can still dislike him and even be politically opposed to him and everything he stands for, yet still intellectually recognize that you were actively, consciously, willfully gaslit into perceiving him as Mecha-Hitler. or maybe you say to yourself, that was never me, I was never like that. okay, maybe you were one of the lucky ones who saw through at least some portion of the charade, but it is irrefutable that the constant nonstop plural-year top-down entrenched government propaganda has conditioned millions of people to have an entirely irrational set of emotions deliberately programmed into them that trigger upon mere mention of this person's surname. once you understand how conditioned emotional responses are fully capable of entirely overriding the logical faculties of even the smartest people you know or know of, you start to see the scope of what is at play here.
systemvoltage 4y ago
- alexb_ 4y ago
  You actually can, there's just a gigantic mountain of evidence showing that you are wrong. So there's not really an argument to be made there.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Strawman. What if a scientist finds real evidence that goes against the zeitgeist. They'd have a hard time doing anything on today's climate tolatitarianism, no journal would publish them, they'd be outsed by the academic group think. Your argument is dismissive and similar to flat earthers and hoaxers. I am not referring to climate deniers. I just want people to feel that there is room for questioning climate science with science. The litmus test is this: It would be remarkably easy to publish fake climate science if a scientist want to, say due to ideological reasons, since we've completely silenced the criticism machinery in this area. Strangely, the issue is similar to COVID.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      > What if a scientist finds real evidence that goes against the zeitgeist They'd be a fucking hero. I know a few atmospheric science faculty. They are hyper distraught at the data. They'd love nothing more than to find out that actually we are going to be fine. Being able to keep burning coal for centuries would be a huge boon for reducing poverty worldwide. It'd be amazing. This hypothetical researcher would have among the most positive influences on human prosperity of any human to ever live. Journals select for novel results that upend prior work. Strong analysis that demonstrated that the existing research is wrong would be front page cover of Science or Nature shit. By declaring that there is a cabal that will silence quality research it allows people to dismiss the entire professional community without actually doing any work whatsoever. > The litmus test is this: It would be remarkably easy to publish fake climate science if a scientist want to, say due to ideological reasons, since we've completely silenced the criticism machinery in this area. What do you mean by fake? Could you throw together a bunch of fake numbers that match existing expectations and get that published? Sure, so long as it didn't get rejected for lack of novelty. But this is true for everything. I could read that falling objects accelerate at 9.8m/s2 in a book and decide to make up some observations that match this and submit that to a journal. This doesn't demonstrate that gravity is hokey. It just demonstrates that paper reviewers aren't especially well equipped to identify fraudulent observations. Also, the number of grad students working their ass off trying to get their research published and getting their work rejected demonstrates pretty clearly that it is not "remarkably easy" to publish whatever you want as long as it aligns with the existing best thinking.
commandlinefan 4y ago
My reddit account was permanently suspended for upvoting COVID lockdown skepticism. I'm in Texas, too - I'm half tempted to use the recent 5th circuit decision to force them to reinstate my account purely out of spite.
- notch656a 4y ago
  I don't understand the evil-capitalist rationale for that. I would think reddit, like facebook, gets much of its revenue (or viewership, that turns into revenue) from people squabbling over the topic of the day/month/year and thus benefits from outrage at skeptics. Why not keep them around? Anecdotally I've found if I just say something relatively unbacked or 'stupid sounding' that the mainstream can easily attack to make my argument sound dumb, I don't get the ban/removal. It's only when you present a factual argument, and especially if you start winning people over, that reddit is especially quick to ban you. I've noticed this same progression on HN. If I lose the debate due to not enough facts/persuasion, then people tend to leave it at that and rest satisfied they put an idiot in their place -- why would they want that comment removed when it can stay there as a head on a spike. If I introduce facts but they are unpopular, it will get downvoted to hell and people seem satisfied with that. However, if I actually start winning people over then my comment gets flagged, because we can't allow the wrong view to 'win.'
  - flenserboy 4y ago
    It helps the understanding when it is recognized that Reddit, as with other, similar sites, is a propaganda/opinion-reinforcement platform and not primarily aimed at advertising or making money.
  - adamsb6 4y ago
    Truly religious people value their religion and its values over the pursuit of profit.
    - marcusverus 4y ago
      Relevant C. S. Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
tsol 4y ago
There are multiple issues on which asking questions can get you deplatformed, or even threaten your career. I think there were always things that were considered too important to question in society, but those were traditionally relegated to the religious sphere. They were religious facts that are too sacred to question. Now there are scientific facts that are too sacred to question, and that's dangerous.
- colpabar 4y ago
  I think fauci declaring himself to be science incarnate did more damage to science as a whole than any of the bad-faith actors people complain about.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    I must have missed that press conference.
    - hosteur 4y ago
      Might be this https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/fauci-on-gop-criticism-attacks-on-me-quite-frankly-are-attacks-on-science/?sh=10fa92404542 https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/fa...
      - kevinventullo 4y ago
        Oof, yeah fair enough.
    - nradov 4y ago
      It was an interview on MSNBC's Chuck Todd show, not a press conference. "attacks on me are, quite frankly, attacks on science" - Dr. Anthony Fauci, 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/fauci-blasts-preposterous-covid-conspiracies-accuses-critics-of-attacks-on-science.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/fauci-blasts-preposterous-co... In context his statement was a bit more nuanced. But I don't think it's healthy for a bureaucrat to try to personify a process. Taking political opposition personally is seldom productive.
anon84873628 4y ago
Because there were lots of uncredentialed or poorly credentialed "doctors" and "researchers" making destructive claims. Society's meme regulating function is not that nuanced. I blame the whackos for poisoning the well. (Let's also include well-meaning MDs and bio-related fields who don't actually know about epidemiology) And even if you were an appropriately credentialed expert, if you weren't in a position to make policy decisions before the pandemic, then why would you suddenly expect to have influence during a crisis? That only happens in movies.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  Your comment is actually a perfect illustration of the problem the OP described. "I think this is incorrect" is answered with "how prestigious are your credentials?" instead of "what are your reasons?". Prestigious credentials should rest on the foundation of good reasoning, not the other way around.
  - peatmoss 4y ago
    Assessment of what constitutes good reasoning is somewhat dependent on having a lot of prerequisite knowledge. It’s hard, because I think public debate is healthy generally, and I think that some valid discussion was quashed. At the same time, there were loonies spouting dangerous nonsense that did have tangible impacts.
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      > there were loonies spouting dangerous nonsense that did have tangible impacts The loonies were a very small set of people. They were used to tarnish the reputation of anybody who was even a wee bit skeptical of what society was doing. Just because somebody thinks closing schools for more than a year and a half is a bad idea doesn't make them a loony conspiracy theorist. Just because somebody thinks the harms of the mandates were worse than any benefit they provided doesn't make them a loony. 99% of all people were in the "non-loony" bucket. 1% were actual loonies, but according to "the experts" the whole set of skeptics are grandma killing loonies spreading "dangerous nonsense". By the way, multiple times I've been accused of spreading "dangerous nonsense" by linking to state dashboards that clearly demonstrate how age-stratified covid is. Apparently linking to public datasets is now "misinformation". Crazy crazy crazy...
chrisan 4y ago
> Science is about asking questions, testing hypotheses and independent research corroboration. There have to be checks and balances. The problem was a lot of these people that came on TV/radio weren't actually doing anything but being the same thing as Tucker Carlson in just "asking questions" in a provocative way but not actually testing hypotheses or doing research. If you watched something like the UCSF Grand Rounds of Covid you would have seen all the research/questions/hypotheses presented and discussed regularly. They are all on youtube. There will be no "chilling effect" in the scientific community for a long time because the actual practicing scientists/doctors acted as they should have and did the things you claimed to not have been done.
- annad2021 4y ago
  People like Tucker Carson? What about "people" like the CNN saying that Joe Rogan was taking horse dewormer? Like, why? Why can't skepticism over ivermectin be expressed in a normal way?
  - kmlx 4y ago
    > Why can't skepticism over ivermectin be expressed in a normal way? because of the business model of TV channels. outrage sells.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Partly because of the lack of acknowledgment about what was already fairly certain about ivermectin, which was dismissed by a bunch of quacks (including the then POTUS), who were absolutely not interested in any kind of "normal" scientific discussion.
Melatonic 4y ago
Who was de-platformed?
jasonlotito 4y ago
> many highly credentialed doctors and researchers were getting de-platformed for anything that remotely questioned the government's position on anything related to COVID Blame the administration at the time. Judging by comments here, it seems like the current government is a bit more open about things.
PostOnce 4y ago
- gilded-lilly 4y ago
  No, that’s not how this works. You don’t restrict scientific debate or prevent people from speaking. We’re better than that.
  - PostOnce 4y ago
    There's a difference between doing science, and going on a press tour to push a viewpoint, though. I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. If covid was killing 40% of people instead of 1% of people, would we still want to spend 3 years figuring out, on spreadsheets, whether it was really merited based on long-term scientific studies? And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait?
    - warmwaffles 4y ago
      > And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait? That's a very short sighted view. Expanding the power of government is not always the answer.
      - PostOnce 4y ago
        We have the concept of a "state of emergency" for a reason, to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. We don't want a completely powerless government, we invented government and endowed it with certain powers for a good reason. That's why states of emergency, etc, are temporary and time limited because we are aware of the tradeoffs and downsides of additional govt power vs catastrophic immediate necessity. If I lived next to an active forest fire, I wouldn't want the govt to commission a 36 month study to determine whether the fire was spread along the ground, or via airborne flaming leaves and embers. I would want them to put it out, even if that meant exercising temporary emergency powers like closing a road or shutting off a power line.
faeriechangling 4y ago
Define “many”. I saw a handful of high profile cases but how widespread was this sort of censorship in quantitative terms?
vkou 4y ago
> There have to be checks and balances. Correct, but those checks and balances don't come from reaching your hand into the fringe theory hat, grabbing whichever one is most convenient, and proudly demanding that policy should give it equal weight to consensus science.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
The worst thing is, that you could point out the wrong stuff, and both the platform and some very loud users would attack you even for pointing out the conflicting positions from the same source. From "hug a chinese" to "masks don't help" one day, and "mandatory masks" the next. I'm not that old or fat to be in any risk groups, so I got vaccinated to protect my (old) parents... and back then it was "get vaccinated and you won't get it, not spread it" (plus herd immunity), and not long after: "yes, you can get it, you can spread it, but chances of death are marginally lower" Then one discusson on /r/conspiracy about something unrelated, and bam, banned from most of the from page subreddits.
- Arainach 4y ago
  >From "hug a chinese" to "masks don't help" one day, and "mandatory masks" the next. The fact that people keep citing this ridiculous claim is evidence of why this "contradiction" was necessary. People are too selfish and panicky to respond rationally to "although masks are useful, we need current masks for healthcare workers, so please don't go buy any". That message is 4 times as long as the attention span of the average American. As such, it got consolidated into the much more brief (but not strictly accurate) "you don't need to wear masks" until such time as the supply chain could cope. This was a rational and intentional decision, not a contradiction.
  - ahmed3883 4y ago
    You can't lie to people and then expect them to trust you, just because the lie was supposedly in their interest.
  - treis 4y ago
    >That message is 4 times as long as the attention span of the average American. As such, it got consolidated into the much more brief (but not strictly accurate) "you don't need to wear masks" until such time as the supply chain could cope. Well I'm glad they're lying to my face for good reason
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    You really don't see an issue with "science" (=people representing groups of scientists on tv) lying to people? "for the greater good"? But we should still ban people who say otherwise? The first "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists telling you to wear a mask, no matter what fauci says) or the second "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists saying that masks are useless)? Which ones should we ban then? I mean... doing what a youtubeing prepper nutjob said and did, has proven to be safer for you, than following what Fauci (and other local equivalents) say... or you'd atleast have masks, disinfectant and a basement full of toiletpaper and MREs at home, while those listening to Fauci wouldn't. How can we "trust the science", when "the science" has clearly lied to us? What else is "science" lying about right now?
throwawaylinux 4y ago
Also, governments are just about the last organization on earth who should be trusted to be the sole arbiters and deciders of what The Science™ is, and who may and may not question it and in what manner. Truth (and therefore science) is the most powerful tools we have to hold corrupt tyrants and authoritarians who would rule us to account. It's not ta all disturbing or surprising to me to see the ruling government/corporate power structure censor and bully and attack anybody questioning their authority. This is what these people do, it's their nature. What was disturbing to me was how many self-proclaimed people of science, brave resisters of government and corporate abuse, and fighters for rights and freedom immediately turned into government apologists and bullies.
Smoosh 4y ago
Science is not conducted on social media.
O__________O 4y ago
Even now, very little to no science based decision are being made and reporting of test data has all but stopped; would not even be surprised to learn that the reporting of other data, for example deaths, is intentionally being “shaped” to fit the desired narrative.
jimcalvel888 4y ago

_djo_ 4y ago

vorpalhex 4y ago
If your response to disagreeing with someone is to censor them, you are not doing science but instead engaging in faith. "Hey, lockdowns may be worse than the disease" is not some evil chain smoking climate skeptic position.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  In isolation that's true. If it's strongly correlated with other assertions like 'it's just a cold', 'only people with unhealthy lifestyles are at risk', 'it's a bioweapon' etc. then people may justifiably suspect it's part of a broad-spectrum attack on public health messaging.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Risk was heavily concentrated among people with unhealthy lifestyles. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take the pandemic seriously, but asserting that fact is in no way an attack on public health messaging. https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-children-in-covid-icus-are-overweight-but-public-health-officials-rarely-talk-about-obesity https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant-says-9-of-10-c...
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      That's why I'm saying we should look at the correlation between disparate assertions. Uncertainty about the efficacy or necessity of a vaccine is understandable, for example, but if it's coupled with assertions about 5g mind control I'm less willing to spend effort on the conversation.
    - strken 4y ago
      That article states that obesity was a risk factor in 34% of deaths under 65. The US obesity rate is 42% (EDIT: 36%, 42% is the adult rate). I'm not sure how to interpret that.
cloutchaser 4y ago
> Shutting out the bad faith actors is necessary to ensure science and public policy informed by it can continue to be effective and useful Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you? No. So I'm not sure how your argument holds up.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  Ultimately, yes. It’s impossible to keep this sort of thing up indefinitely, and over the decades the evidence became overwhelming enough that it was impossible to ignore. Researchers who were co-opted were shunned, losing career opportunities, and universities stopped accepting funding from tobacco companies.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Will you change your stance on our response to Covid when the evidence of its harms (and lack of positive effects) become so large as to be unavoidable? Because it will. History will not look fondly upon those who pushed these highly destructive mandates. It will be seen as one of the greatest public health fuckups of all time.
- imustbeevil 4y ago
  > Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you? Yes, 53 years ago. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1089/public-health-cigarette-smoking-act-of-1969 https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1089/public-hea...
- lovich 4y ago
  We did the other side of the coin in that we mandated their speech in putting a warning label on their product[1]. We didn't let them claim whatever they wanted and stopped them from claiming the health benefits of cigarettes like in this ad[2] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_messages#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_mess... [2]http://stuppid.com/wp-content/uploads/smoking-ad-004.jpg http://stuppid.com/wp-content/uploads/smoking-ad-004.jpg
musicale 4y ago
> large corporations had the incentive to prevent a certain type of government action I can see how lockdowns opposed corporate interests, and I'd be interested in hearing more about how corporations influenced anti-lockdown. I don't see how lab leak theory is connected to corporate interests one way or the other. Anti-vax doesn't seem to align with corporate interests and in fact seems to be opposed to it.
- n4r9 4y ago
  Lockdowns caused a big slump in industries like retail and transport. In the UK, airline bosses in particular were outspoken about their desire to lift lockdown restrictions as soon as possible.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  When you have an interest in creating distrust in using science for policy, anything goes. One of the key anti-lockdown advocacy groups, PANDA, started out fairly sane-sounding and was packed full of hedge fund and other finance people. But once vaccines were widely available they inexplicably turned strongly anti-vaccine too.
  - evilpotatoes 4y ago
    Since when is anti-mandatory vaccination anti-vaccine ? Especially since it demonstrably has zero impact on infection or likelihood of communication. Which the data showed as obvious since about July of 2021 from Israel.
    - nrb 4y ago
      > Especially since it demonstrably has zero impact on infection or likelihood of communication. How about hospitalization and death rates, the outcomes we actually care about?
      - evilpotatoes 4y ago
        For which time period? If you look recently, it's not looking so good for covid-19 vaccines.
ioslipstream 4y ago
"You can’t discuss this problem without acknowledging the role of bad actors in the system." On both sides. The government, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech were definitely bad actors. We do not live in a nanny state nor do we want to. What happened during the pandemic was disgraceful. Discussion was effectively shut down and science as well as treatment was negatively affected by the actions of censorship.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  That's really not true. It just conveniently played into an existing narrative that the liberal media was trying to shut down other views. The fact that we are so well aware of all the disagreement and skepticism - the fact that many people still have erroneous beliefs about the virus - is a great sign that censorship wasn't effective.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Imagine the Internet didn't exist. Would there have been more of a discussion of fringe views or less? What would the outcome have been on COVID deaths?
slibhb 4y ago
Calling an argument "bad faith" means that argument's proponent doesn't believe it's true. I highly doubt that was the case with various people -- some of them doctors -- questioning the party line on the pandemic. Being wrong is not the same as arguing in bad faith. Your attitude is sadly very common. Everyone who disagrees with you is a bad faith actor, engaged in knowing lies to further some shadowy agenda. I think you underestimate how little consensus there actually is, even among the educated.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  - darawk 4y ago
    > I meant it in that sense, that those pushing it knew full well that it wasn’t true but had ulterior motives. Who is an example of that in this context?
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    What, exactly, is “not true” about the great barrington declaration? What is “not true” about the fact that lockdowns were not in any pandemic playbook prior to 2020? What is “not true” about the fact the median age of Covid death is like 5 years higher than the average human lifespan? What is “not true” about the fact you still cannot reliably differentiate between “died of” and “died with” Covid? In your case, I suspect “not true” simply means “I don’t agree”. You should really question why you believe the “facts” you do and examine why somebody else might think different. Who knows, maybe they have very valid points?
    - anon84873628 4y ago
      See the "died with" thing is where you lost me. It was obvious that there was an illness killing lots of people. But then you had people who didn't want to admit it, blamed co-morbidities, said doctors were deliberately inflating the numbers to make money, etc. Those people poisoned the well of discourse. "Died with" was not a meaningful distinction at the time and falls under the "bad faith" category for me.
spookthesunset 4y ago
Speaking out against all the harms and negatives of some highly disruptive non pharmaceutical interventions with unproven efficacy is absolutely not bad faith arguments. It’s the cornerstone of science and democracy. Anybody in a position of power or knowledge who dared to even hint at asking questions got absolutely steamrollered by a very vocal group of “experts”. They were called alt-right selfish grandma killers who watched to much fox (and sorry, I never watched fox but it isn’t my fault they might actually be right sometimes, I’ve also been a solid democrat my entire life until this nonsense started…). What we did the last two and a half years is so incredibly shameful. It was the opposite of science and opposite of “following the data”. It was appeals to authority all the way down. We were all told to shut up, “stay in our lane” and listen to a handful of cherry picked “experts”. The last two and a half years changed my opinion about “fact checkers” and “misinformation” completely. Both of those are nothing more than ways to bully people into submission.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- musicale 4y ago
  I found dang's response[1] to the question "Is fact checking that difficult?" to be insightful: > It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.) > That's why there doesn't seem to be any fact checker whose calls aren't predictable from one of the major ideological partitions. > Another way of putting this is that the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest. It's understandable that people would like to reduce that contest to a simpler subset of factual questions—but you can't. Just the opposite: that apparently simpler subset reduces to it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867
  - 4y ago
andreilys 4y ago
There’s no other way to see those types of efforts as anything other than attacks against science itself The funny thing is most of what you call bad faith questioning ended up being approved by “Science” (cloth masks being ineffective, how the virus transmitted, covid origins, etc.) Unfortunately it seems like for you and many others, science has turned into a religion conducted by a priestly class that cannot be questioned.
SamPatt 4y ago
Are you claiming this is what happened in this specific case? That the Great Barrington Declaration was promulgated by bad actors due to support from large companies? If that's not your claim, then why are you bringing this up? Are you supportive of government censorship as the article describes: >At least 11 federal agencies, and around 80 government officials, have been explicitly directing social media companies to take down posts and remove certain accounts that violate the government’s own preferences and guidelines for coverage on topics ranging from COVID restrictions, to the 2020 election, to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Ironically it was fauci and friends who wanted to discredit the GBD. That declaration was written and signed by actual scientists, doctors and “experts”… it wasn’t a book of facts. It contained no “misinformation”. It was an alternate viewpoint on our reaction to Covid—nothing more and nothing less. It just happened to be one that went against the narrative pushed by those in power.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
elenaferrantes 4y ago
I can see the reason the tobacco industry would lie about the effect of tobacco. What would be the reason an expert would show bad faith going against the narrative we saw for Covid ? (Vaccine are effective, masks are effective, lock-downs are effective).

SamPatt 4y ago

The fear and groupthink was so strong at the time that even pointing out the existence of dissenting voices was enough to get you labeled as a selfish grandma killer conspiracy theorist. I'm glad in hindsight more people are willing to see the problems of groupthink in this period, but I do hope they look inward and hold themselves responsible too, and maybe next time not defer to authority and demonize others so willingly.

musicale 4y ago
The Washington Post[1] did seem to engage in a a bit of introspection eventually: "The Post originally described Cotton’s remarks as “debunked” and a “conspiracy theory” in a February 2020 article. But last week, The Post rewrote the article’s headline, softening “conspiracy theory” to “fringe theory” and noting that scientists have “disputed” it rather than “debunked” it." [1]"The media called the ‘lab leak’ story a ‘conspiracy theory.’ Now it’s prompted corrections — and serious new reporting." Washington Post, 6/10/21
- SamPatt 4y ago
  A very small bit. Readers aren't parsing sentences this closely and comparing to previous statements. Unless they come out with an editorial statement apologizing then they aren't really serious about their own involvement in censorship on behalf of those in power.
  - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
    i think a retraction or minor edit after 99.9% of the readerbase has consumed the content, is too little, too late. Damage done.
- nradov 4y ago
  And a couple months later the US federal government published an official report stating that a lab leak was a possible source of the virus. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2021/item/2236-unclassified-summary-of-assessment-on-covid-19-origins https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...

Gordonjcp 4y ago

spookthesunset 4y ago
For kids the vaccine almost certainly is more harmful than Covid. That’s why many countries don’t push kids to get vaccinated. As for the “horse dewormer”… don’t you find it at all curious why none of the “experts” ever suggested any kind of treatments for Covid beyond vaccines and paxlovid. No “eat healthy, take your vitamins, exercise, get fresh air”. Nope. Just hunker down in your home and wait for salvation. Any attempt to find other treatments for Covid were immediately shot down and roundly mocked. Weird, eh? Like what kind of assholes shoot down doctors and basically cancel them trying to find treatments for Covid? Who does that? In what world is that normal? Even more odd is none of them bat an eye when they push some omicron specific booster that was only tested on like 8 mice before being deemed legit.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  there was tons of weird stuff that only memetically lasted for a couple of days before fizzling out—remember "deltacron"? whatever happened to that? pretty sure it "existed" for about two days, then everyone silently agreed that name was ridiculous and nobody would take it seriously and it kind of just, uh, disappeared...
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Don’t forget Covid toes. Or double masking. Crazy stuff…
  - ok123456 4y ago
    "Deltacron" turned out to be a lab error.
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      where were the front-page retractions, telling citizens, "hey, we know you're in a heightened emotional state of fear because of everything that (we told you) has happened, and we just told you to be more afraid of yet another new thing, but, guys, guess what, it was an honest mistake, just a lab error, sorry about that, we'll be better going forward when it comes to getting people who have been in basically a nonstop state of panic for months now riled up about yet another thing, when it turned out to be nothing. again, sorry!" no, nothing, it was just quietly phased out of headlines and trending topics, with zero remorse or reflection. and this is just one of many examples of this happening in the past few years. when are people going to realize that mass-scale emotional manipulation of the populace for political and/or financial gain for an elite few is not only totally viable in this world where everyone has the Internet in their pockets, but actually, provably what has been going on for quite awhile now? that contemporary politician you were taught, at one point (which point exactly? you've long since forgotten), to have endless simultaneous fear of and hatred for? maybe all of that was kind of overblown. maybe you can still dislike him and even be politically opposed to him and everything he stands for, yet still intellectually recognize that you were actively, consciously, willfully gaslit into perceiving him as Mecha-Hitler. or maybe you say to yourself, that was never me, I was never like that. okay, maybe you were one of the lucky ones who saw through at least some portion of the charade, but it is irrefutable that the constant nonstop plural-year top-down entrenched government propaganda has conditioned millions of people to have an entirely irrational set of emotions deliberately programmed into them that trigger upon mere mention of this person's surname. once you understand how conditioned emotional responses are fully capable of entirely overriding the logical faculties of even the smartest people you know or know of, you start to see the scope of what is at play here.

systemvoltage 4y ago

alexb_ 4y ago
You actually can, there's just a gigantic mountain of evidence showing that you are wrong. So there's not really an argument to be made there.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Strawman. What if a scientist finds real evidence that goes against the zeitgeist. They'd have a hard time doing anything on today's climate tolatitarianism, no journal would publish them, they'd be outsed by the academic group think. Your argument is dismissive and similar to flat earthers and hoaxers. I am not referring to climate deniers. I just want people to feel that there is room for questioning climate science with science. The litmus test is this: It would be remarkably easy to publish fake climate science if a scientist want to, say due to ideological reasons, since we've completely silenced the criticism machinery in this area. Strangely, the issue is similar to COVID.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    > What if a scientist finds real evidence that goes against the zeitgeist They'd be a fucking hero. I know a few atmospheric science faculty. They are hyper distraught at the data. They'd love nothing more than to find out that actually we are going to be fine. Being able to keep burning coal for centuries would be a huge boon for reducing poverty worldwide. It'd be amazing. This hypothetical researcher would have among the most positive influences on human prosperity of any human to ever live. Journals select for novel results that upend prior work. Strong analysis that demonstrated that the existing research is wrong would be front page cover of Science or Nature shit. By declaring that there is a cabal that will silence quality research it allows people to dismiss the entire professional community without actually doing any work whatsoever. > The litmus test is this: It would be remarkably easy to publish fake climate science if a scientist want to, say due to ideological reasons, since we've completely silenced the criticism machinery in this area. What do you mean by fake? Could you throw together a bunch of fake numbers that match existing expectations and get that published? Sure, so long as it didn't get rejected for lack of novelty. But this is true for everything. I could read that falling objects accelerate at 9.8m/s2 in a book and decide to make up some observations that match this and submit that to a journal. This doesn't demonstrate that gravity is hokey. It just demonstrates that paper reviewers aren't especially well equipped to identify fraudulent observations. Also, the number of grad students working their ass off trying to get their research published and getting their work rejected demonstrates pretty clearly that it is not "remarkably easy" to publish whatever you want as long as it aligns with the existing best thinking.

commandlinefan 4y ago

My reddit account was permanently suspended for upvoting COVID lockdown skepticism. I'm in Texas, too - I'm half tempted to use the recent 5th circuit decision to force them to reinstate my account purely out of spite.

notch656a 4y ago
I don't understand the evil-capitalist rationale for that. I would think reddit, like facebook, gets much of its revenue (or viewership, that turns into revenue) from people squabbling over the topic of the day/month/year and thus benefits from outrage at skeptics. Why not keep them around? Anecdotally I've found if I just say something relatively unbacked or 'stupid sounding' that the mainstream can easily attack to make my argument sound dumb, I don't get the ban/removal. It's only when you present a factual argument, and especially if you start winning people over, that reddit is especially quick to ban you. I've noticed this same progression on HN. If I lose the debate due to not enough facts/persuasion, then people tend to leave it at that and rest satisfied they put an idiot in their place -- why would they want that comment removed when it can stay there as a head on a spike. If I introduce facts but they are unpopular, it will get downvoted to hell and people seem satisfied with that. However, if I actually start winning people over then my comment gets flagged, because we can't allow the wrong view to 'win.'
- flenserboy 4y ago
  It helps the understanding when it is recognized that Reddit, as with other, similar sites, is a propaganda/opinion-reinforcement platform and not primarily aimed at advertising or making money.
- adamsb6 4y ago
  Truly religious people value their religion and its values over the pursuit of profit.
  - marcusverus 4y ago
    Relevant C. S. Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

tsol 4y ago

There are multiple issues on which asking questions can get you deplatformed, or even threaten your career. I think there were always things that were considered too important to question in society, but those were traditionally relegated to the religious sphere. They were religious facts that are too sacred to question. Now there are scientific facts that are too sacred to question, and that's dangerous.

colpabar 4y ago
I think fauci declaring himself to be science incarnate did more damage to science as a whole than any of the bad-faith actors people complain about.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  I must have missed that press conference.
  - hosteur 4y ago
    Might be this https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/fauci-on-gop-criticism-attacks-on-me-quite-frankly-are-attacks-on-science/?sh=10fa92404542 https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/06/09/fa...
    - kevinventullo 4y ago
      Oof, yeah fair enough.
  - nradov 4y ago
    It was an interview on MSNBC's Chuck Todd show, not a press conference. "attacks on me are, quite frankly, attacks on science" - Dr. Anthony Fauci, 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/fauci-blasts-preposterous-covid-conspiracies-accuses-critics-of-attacks-on-science.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/fauci-blasts-preposterous-co... In context his statement was a bit more nuanced. But I don't think it's healthy for a bureaucrat to try to personify a process. Taking political opposition personally is seldom productive.

anon84873628 4y ago

Because there were lots of uncredentialed or poorly credentialed "doctors" and "researchers" making destructive claims. Society's meme regulating function is not that nuanced. I blame the whackos for poisoning the well. (Let's also include well-meaning MDs and bio-related fields who don't actually know about epidemiology) And even if you were an appropriately credentialed expert, if you weren't in a position to make policy decisions before the pandemic, then why would you suddenly expect to have influence during a crisis? That only happens in movies.

ARandomerDude 4y ago
Your comment is actually a perfect illustration of the problem the OP described. "I think this is incorrect" is answered with "how prestigious are your credentials?" instead of "what are your reasons?". Prestigious credentials should rest on the foundation of good reasoning, not the other way around.
- peatmoss 4y ago
  Assessment of what constitutes good reasoning is somewhat dependent on having a lot of prerequisite knowledge. It’s hard, because I think public debate is healthy generally, and I think that some valid discussion was quashed. At the same time, there were loonies spouting dangerous nonsense that did have tangible impacts.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    > there were loonies spouting dangerous nonsense that did have tangible impacts The loonies were a very small set of people. They were used to tarnish the reputation of anybody who was even a wee bit skeptical of what society was doing. Just because somebody thinks closing schools for more than a year and a half is a bad idea doesn't make them a loony conspiracy theorist. Just because somebody thinks the harms of the mandates were worse than any benefit they provided doesn't make them a loony. 99% of all people were in the "non-loony" bucket. 1% were actual loonies, but according to "the experts" the whole set of skeptics are grandma killing loonies spreading "dangerous nonsense". By the way, multiple times I've been accused of spreading "dangerous nonsense" by linking to state dashboards that clearly demonstrate how age-stratified covid is. Apparently linking to public datasets is now "misinformation". Crazy crazy crazy...

chrisan 4y ago

> Science is about asking questions, testing hypotheses and independent research corroboration. There have to be checks and balances. The problem was a lot of these people that came on TV/radio weren't actually doing anything but being the same thing as Tucker Carlson in just "asking questions" in a provocative way but not actually testing hypotheses or doing research. If you watched something like the UCSF Grand Rounds of Covid you would have seen all the research/questions/hypotheses presented and discussed regularly. They are all on youtube. There will be no "chilling effect" in the scientific community for a long time because the actual practicing scientists/doctors acted as they should have and did the things you claimed to not have been done.

annad2021 4y ago
People like Tucker Carson? What about "people" like the CNN saying that Joe Rogan was taking horse dewormer? Like, why? Why can't skepticism over ivermectin be expressed in a normal way?
- kmlx 4y ago
  > Why can't skepticism over ivermectin be expressed in a normal way? because of the business model of TV channels. outrage sells.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Partly because of the lack of acknowledgment about what was already fairly certain about ivermectin, which was dismissed by a bunch of quacks (including the then POTUS), who were absolutely not interested in any kind of "normal" scientific discussion.

Melatonic 4y ago

Who was de-platformed?

jasonlotito 4y ago

> many highly credentialed doctors and researchers were getting de-platformed for anything that remotely questioned the government's position on anything related to COVID Blame the administration at the time. Judging by comments here, it seems like the current government is a bit more open about things.

PostOnce 4y ago

gilded-lilly 4y ago
No, that’s not how this works. You don’t restrict scientific debate or prevent people from speaking. We’re better than that.
- PostOnce 4y ago
  There's a difference between doing science, and going on a press tour to push a viewpoint, though. I don't think actual science was ever being suppressed. If covid was killing 40% of people instead of 1% of people, would we still want to spend 3 years figuring out, on spreadsheets, whether it was really merited based on long-term scientific studies? And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait?
  - warmwaffles 4y ago
    > And if we decided that we should do some things for public health in the very short term, should we humor every crackpot who wants us to wait? That's a very short sighted view. Expanding the power of government is not always the answer.
    - PostOnce 4y ago
      We have the concept of a "state of emergency" for a reason, to temporarily give the government additional power to deal with emergencies. We don't want a completely powerless government, we invented government and endowed it with certain powers for a good reason. That's why states of emergency, etc, are temporary and time limited because we are aware of the tradeoffs and downsides of additional govt power vs catastrophic immediate necessity. If I lived next to an active forest fire, I wouldn't want the govt to commission a 36 month study to determine whether the fire was spread along the ground, or via airborne flaming leaves and embers. I would want them to put it out, even if that meant exercising temporary emergency powers like closing a road or shutting off a power line.

faeriechangling 4y ago

Define “many”. I saw a handful of high profile cases but how widespread was this sort of censorship in quantitative terms?

vkou 4y ago

> There have to be checks and balances. Correct, but those checks and balances don't come from reaching your hand into the fringe theory hat, grabbing whichever one is most convenient, and proudly demanding that policy should give it equal weight to consensus science.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

The worst thing is, that you could point out the wrong stuff, and both the platform and some very loud users would attack you even for pointing out the conflicting positions from the same source. From "hug a chinese" to "masks don't help" one day, and "mandatory masks" the next. I'm not that old or fat to be in any risk groups, so I got vaccinated to protect my (old) parents... and back then it was "get vaccinated and you won't get it, not spread it" (plus herd immunity), and not long after: "yes, you can get it, you can spread it, but chances of death are marginally lower" Then one discusson on /r/conspiracy about something unrelated, and bam, banned from most of the from page subreddits.

Arainach 4y ago
>From "hug a chinese" to "masks don't help" one day, and "mandatory masks" the next. The fact that people keep citing this ridiculous claim is evidence of why this "contradiction" was necessary. People are too selfish and panicky to respond rationally to "although masks are useful, we need current masks for healthcare workers, so please don't go buy any". That message is 4 times as long as the attention span of the average American. As such, it got consolidated into the much more brief (but not strictly accurate) "you don't need to wear masks" until such time as the supply chain could cope. This was a rational and intentional decision, not a contradiction.
- ahmed3883 4y ago
  You can't lie to people and then expect them to trust you, just because the lie was supposedly in their interest.
- treis 4y ago
  >That message is 4 times as long as the attention span of the average American. As such, it got consolidated into the much more brief (but not strictly accurate) "you don't need to wear masks" until such time as the supply chain could cope. Well I'm glad they're lying to my face for good reason
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  You really don't see an issue with "science" (=people representing groups of scientists on tv) lying to people? "for the greater good"? But we should still ban people who say otherwise? The first "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists telling you to wear a mask, no matter what fauci says) or the second "otherwise" (nutjob conspiracy theorists saying that masks are useless)? Which ones should we ban then? I mean... doing what a youtubeing prepper nutjob said and did, has proven to be safer for you, than following what Fauci (and other local equivalents) say... or you'd atleast have masks, disinfectant and a basement full of toiletpaper and MREs at home, while those listening to Fauci wouldn't. How can we "trust the science", when "the science" has clearly lied to us? What else is "science" lying about right now?

throwawaylinux 4y ago

Also, governments are just about the last organization on earth who should be trusted to be the sole arbiters and deciders of what The Science™ is, and who may and may not question it and in what manner. Truth (and therefore science) is the most powerful tools we have to hold corrupt tyrants and authoritarians who would rule us to account. It's not ta all disturbing or surprising to me to see the ruling government/corporate power structure censor and bully and attack anybody questioning their authority. This is what these people do, it's their nature. What was disturbing to me was how many self-proclaimed people of science, brave resisters of government and corporate abuse, and fighters for rights and freedom immediately turned into government apologists and bullies.

Smoosh 4y ago

Science is not conducted on social media.

O__________O 4y ago

Even now, very little to no science based decision are being made and reporting of test data has all but stopped; would not even be surprised to learn that the reporting of other data, for example deaths, is intentionally being “shaped” to fit the desired narrative.

jimcalvel888 4y ago