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I am a showdead advocate, but the 'actual conversation' seems completely reasonable to downvote. It links a review of the Moderna paper by Alex Berenson, a pop

I am a showdead advocate, but the 'actual conversation' seems completely reasonable to downvote. It links a review of the Moderna paper by Alex Berenson, a popular COVID denialist who has repeatedly made verifiably false claims about the effectiveness of vaccines. Commenters defending the article in the reply are insisting on non-sequitor points like "the COVID vaccine offered no protection" and that there was a "conspiracy" to release it to the public anyway. Prior to COVID, Berenson acquired notoriety for publishing a book-length polemic claiming marijuana use causes psychosis and violent mental illness, supported by a veritable museum of rhetorical fallacies. It received reviews like the following from Columbia, >"As scientists with a combined 70-plus years of drug education and research on psychoactive substances, we find Berenson's assertions to be misinformed and reckless." So anyone familiar with Berenson's reputation would rightfully be skeptical of axe-grinding claims about medicine that are cited only to him. On par to that reputation, Berenson includes essential factual mistakes in his review of the paper, such as referring to death certificates to state that RSV kills approximately 400x less American adults every year than the NFID reports. That kind of mistake is easy to make if you lack essential foundational knowledge about what you are analyzing, and have already settled on the point you want to make before you go looking for evidence. It would make sense Berneson can't conduct a good analysis of the paper, because he has no formal medical education and his entire "career" commenting on medicine has consisted of peddling conspiracy theories after concluding his work as a novelist. If you are insisting that post is "substantive," and that it wasn't reasonable for it to be flagged by this community per the community's guidelines, I'd be curious why. This is the current top post of the thread, so maybe you can reply to reintroduce what you feel is a substantive subject of discussion in a less inflammatory, conspiratorial way, and without staking it on an article by someone outside professional medicine containing rudimentary errors.

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- pc86 3y ago
  HN is better when information from known liars like Alex Berenson is flagged as such. It's one thing to have respected scientists and physicians use real research to bring up questions about something new. I see that around here often and it's never flagged. It's something else to try to spread the verifiably false ramblings of a partisan hack. Flagging seems like a completely appropriate response. It's pretty telling that you don't have any refutation of the GP's actual points, just typical "you're just trying to shut down debate" lies from people who don't want to debate, but want to spread misinformation and not get called out on it.
- detaro 3y ago
  > I posted above because the comments went from about 25 discussing the merits of the substack link that was posted to 2-3 that basically said "this is great I want it". ... just because the top-level comment is flagged the replies to it don't disappear. They were and are still there. (Indeed, people continued to discuss there after the top-level was flagged) Also, merit aside, the presentation & substack link aren't even about the vaccine that was approved. If someone posts links to a "presentation on the vaccine" (direct quote) and a blog post about it, it really should be about the vaccine the submission is about, should it not?
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  >Well what is a discussion "supposed" to be about? You certainly have a lot to say about it. I referred to the community guidelines in my comment.[0] One such guideline is to not reply to egregious comments, like conspiratorial ones promoting outrageous claims from known frauds. The 25 comments are still available for viewing for users who opt-in to view discussions that have been flagged as violating the community's guidelines. >Even if you think the other side is a blatant lie, better to have it get shot down than to have it look like any other views are just flagged That is not the guidance HN outlines for this community. A blatant lie restated from a known charlatan is not just "any other view," it is an egregious comment. If you are expecting a low-moderation open forum, HN is intentionally not that, even if most of the moderation is community-voted rather than from designated janitors. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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pc86 3y ago
HN is better when information from known liars like Alex Berenson is flagged as such. It's one thing to have respected scientists and physicians use real research to bring up questions about something new. I see that around here often and it's never flagged. It's something else to try to spread the verifiably false ramblings of a partisan hack. Flagging seems like a completely appropriate response. It's pretty telling that you don't have any refutation of the GP's actual points, just typical "you're just trying to shut down debate" lies from people who don't want to debate, but want to spread misinformation and not get called out on it.
detaro 3y ago
> I posted above because the comments went from about 25 discussing the merits of the substack link that was posted to 2-3 that basically said "this is great I want it". ... just because the top-level comment is flagged the replies to it don't disappear. They were and are still there. (Indeed, people continued to discuss there after the top-level was flagged) Also, merit aside, the presentation & substack link aren't even about the vaccine that was approved. If someone posts links to a "presentation on the vaccine" (direct quote) and a blog post about it, it really should be about the vaccine the submission is about, should it not?
mustacheemperor 3y ago
>Well what is a discussion "supposed" to be about? You certainly have a lot to say about it. I referred to the community guidelines in my comment.[0] One such guideline is to not reply to egregious comments, like conspiratorial ones promoting outrageous claims from known frauds. The 25 comments are still available for viewing for users who opt-in to view discussions that have been flagged as violating the community's guidelines. >Even if you think the other side is a blatant lie, better to have it get shot down than to have it look like any other views are just flagged That is not the guidance HN outlines for this community. A blatant lie restated from a known charlatan is not just "any other view," it is an egregious comment. If you are expecting a low-moderation open forum, HN is intentionally not that, even if most of the moderation is community-voted rather than from designated janitors. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html