6 ms·

> Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number

> Months ago he was insisting that the people who had contracted COVID-19 and who had antibodies in their system may not need the vaccine. Now, we have a number of studies coming out to support that. But months ago that was "anti-vax" (employing the slanderous use of the term). If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. If you present that opinion as a fact, then that's misinformation. I don't know what form his "insistence" had, but I've seen plenty of similar cases so far, and all of them have been from people pushing their own narratives, instead of informing people responsibly. If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax". > It's the stifling of legitimate public debate, the stifling of legitimate voices who find themselves in the minority. Being in a minority does not absolve one of responsibility. If you're publishing your opinion, or if you're discussing your research before it's been peer-reviewed, you have the responsibility to make that clear, and even to point out that it does not agree with the current scientific consensus (if any exists).

ravar 5y ago
never mind that many of the positions that are "scientific consensus" are not supported by the current peer reviewed research.
- CodeMage 5y ago
  That's honestly news to me. I thought that "scientific consensus" is supported by peer-reviewed research, by definition. Can you elaborate?
  - virtuallynathan 5y ago
    There’s quite a few medical practices which guidelines still recommend that do not show benefit in better or newer trials. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1104821 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1104821
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      This paper says we should abandon practices when they are shown to not work. I don't think anyone will disagree with that. But the original post made it seem like there were practices which were adopted willy nilly. But this paper just shows the self correcting nature of science.
      - virtuallynathan 5y ago
        They had to write a paper saying that because it doesn’t happen. We are still doing these procedures today. Do the interventional cardiologists want to stop stenting people? Not really. The orthopedic surgeons still want to mess with your meniscus, etc.
        newswasboring 5y ago
        I mean... This is the scientific framework. There was a mistake and the mechanism to fix it is to write more papers. I know it's not fixed yet, but that's the procedure. Do you believe this should never have happened? Then I guess we disagree on how powerful human intellect can be.
        virtuallynathan 5y ago
        I think its fine for this to occur, and we should expect it, but how long should it take to reverse a bad practice? Is a decade or more acceptable?
        newswasboring 5y ago
        Of course not. Nobody is endorsing for that. The problem is these are hard problems to solve and forming a consensus is a hard problem in addition to it. If we keep flip flopping on every new data point we will have more misses than hits.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    Not the parent, but this study seems to be the best RCT of mask effectiveness so far (N=350,000): https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... Cloth masks showed no statistically significant reduction in the spread of Covid-19. (surgical masks - different story) Yet I'm still surrounded by people - wearing predominantly cloth masks - that are full of outrage for the maskless. I've not heard any updates from the CDC on this issue.
    - deusexml 5y ago
      This is not true. The study found a reduction in COVID-19 symptoms for the cloth mask group. They also found a reduction in seroprevalence for the cloth mask group, but that reduction wasn't statistically significant. "Statistically insignificant" is not the same as "not true". It is very hard to sufficiently power a seroprevalence study.
      - stickfigure 5y ago
        This is a high-power study with N in the hundreds of thousands. "Statistically insignificant" is the same as "no reason to believe it is true".
    - wepple 5y ago
      This is really interesting, and I’d like to read the paper - do you have a link? EDIT: here: https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-masking-covid-19-cluster-randomized-trial-bangladesh https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-... That summary is really hard to draw conclusions from; “However, cloth masks did reduce the overall likelihood of experiencing symptoms of respiratory illness during the study period.” And “ A cloth mask is certainly better than nothing. But now might be a good time to consider upgrading to a surgical mask.” But also “ Although there were also fewer COVID-19 cases in villages with cloth masks as compared to control villages, the difference was not statistically significant.”
      - DenisM 5y ago
  - yawboakye 5y ago
    It's a sad sign of the times that "scientific consensus" doesn't sound crazy anymore. It was scientific consensus that the Catholic church based on to sentence Galileo. He was a lone dissenting voice. A bit of history for you. And this is besides the fact that true scientists have never sought consensus/peer-review. I'll stand by as you come up with non-modern, paper-churning, publish-or-perish examples of great scientists famous (or great) for work or theory that was accepted by means of consensus.
    - nemo 5y ago
      There's no Catholic Church prosecuting those who defy the official scientific position today. Galileo was not a lone dissenting voice - he was a proponent of Copernicanism, which he overstated the accuracy of his evidence for, feuding with the Church about whether he was overstating, and getting himself in terrible trouble with the Church. Once Kepler's models were confirmed with observations after Galileo with better telescopes the Church accepted. Later Enlightenment thinkers built a martyr myth around Galileo, and today the nature of his conflict with the Church is an ahistorical picture painted by later hagiographies of Galileo This is a story that does not apply to our times. There've been many regular scientific revolutions even in the last few decades, the Church hasn't persecuted scientists, and the modern scientific consensus has followed with the revolutions. Whether it's the matter of the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, the revolutions in molecular biology, revolutions in astronomy, or other areas where advances are regular, those outliers actually advancing science have only briefly been ahead of consensus in the real world, but most outliers are cranks, and only those with an expert training in a discipline are likely to be able to identify real advances over crank science. The Galileo model of believing outliers virtually always leaves you in the wrong unless you are a domain-specific expert on the topic. Look at using MRNA as a medical treatment as another example of a recent revolution, one that's now available in a safe, effective vaccine form.
      - ravar 5y ago
        Call it the church of Google(Faang?) if you will. They have real power over peoples lives and livelihoods. The church of Faang has a nice ring to it.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  A few examples would be nice to understand what you are saying.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
virtuallynathan 5y ago
I’m not really sure what kind of problems you expect peer review to solve? https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1441040475826184194?s=21 https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1441040475826184194?s=21 There’s plenty of bad/fraudulent/wrong stuff that gets through peer review, perhaps even a majority.
- warvariuc 5y ago
  I guess, if your statement wasn't researched and peer reviewed, it'll be considered misinformation...
- Guvante 5y ago
  This is a really bad take of a complex situation. Peer reviewing is hard. Reproducibility is hard. Neither of these things being hard invalidates the value of peer review compared to gut ideas from random people.
  - virtuallynathan 5y ago
    Sure, in an ideal world we’d have some kind of review, but what we have now seems largely ineffective.
    - Guvante 5y ago
      Except you are missing a huge huge part of what you linked: > We conclude that the reviewing process for the 2014 conference was good for identifying poor papers When it comes to peer review that is the actual goal. Have a filter that prevents bad things from getting published. In an ideal world we would have a process that allows good papers to be published as well. However I think we can all agree that is a secondary concern. Especially since pre-publish announcements are common anyway, so it isn't like no one is looking at papers that aren't published.
  - pitspotter2 5y ago
    Good point about the reproducibility crisis. We seem to have forgotten about that. There is a better alternative to listening to random people I think which is to follow the work of individual scientists whom we trust because we have been following their work over a long period of time and because they exhibit Jacob Bronowski's 'habit of truth'. Unfortunately, I don't know any immunologists or epidemiologists! I'm guessing that censorship on balance makes it harder rather than easier to find them.
kodah 5y ago
> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. By that standard, this entire website and most of the software industry is misinformation. In fact, most political speech is misinformation. > If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax". GP is saying that the conversation is, and should be recognized as, more nuanced than that. There sure is an undercurrent of people making narratives but that's not a new problem. The left and right have weaponized narratives to the detriment of this country ad infinitum. If you're arguing we should only have evidence based discussion and that anecdotes and opinions don't matter, then you have new problems. The new problems will alienate and harm anyone that your current telemetry (and understanding) doesn't reflect. To me, that's an age-old problem where some value technocracy while others value bureaucracy; my personal opinion being that both are valuable but they need a distribution model in government that optimizes for problem solving. > If you're publishing your opinion, or if you're discussing your research before it's been peer-reviewed, you have the responsibility to make that clear, and even to point out that it does not agree with the current scientific consensus (if any exists). I agree, but it seems GP was indicating this doctor was doing just that and was still silenced.
- rootlocus 5y ago
  > By that standard, this entire website and most of the software industry is misinformation. In fact, most political speech is misinformation. No, by that standard, this entire website is offering its oppinion. Which in fact it is.
- BrianB 5y ago
  > In fact, most political speech is misinformation. Now there's an understatement.
  - spectramax 5y ago
    Ask liberals or conservatives and they will quickly point out their it's not their side that's misinforming. The fact is that they are all misinfoming. Just yesterday in the congressional testimoney, Gen Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen McKenzie - all said they informed the president for keeping 2,500 troops in May. President Biden couple of weeks ago denied that he had any recommendation from the generals or anyone in the government. So which one is true?
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
The same exact argument could be said about the platforms. What evidence do they have that that there is no chance of complications for certain individuals? They need to be held to the same standard they are holding their end users. In the last year social media platforms have suppressed facts and discourse pre-emptively and only months later do we find out that there was truth in the censored content. They can't be the final arbitraters of truth.
trentnix 5y ago
> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. Not necessarily. What is the bar to be defined as "scientific research"? What is the bar for "peer review"? Considering the massive amount of evidence that a large amount of "peer review" doesn't review much and that a measurable amount of "scientific research" is inadequate and sometimes outright fraudulent, any pursuit of truth shouldn't be built exclusively on such a weak foundation. But to your point, good research should hold more weight (and does!). > If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax". And yet concerns about the long-term safety of these vaccines are, by definition, untested. The long term efficacy of these vaccines are certainly in doubt. Both are reasonable concerns worth debating and exploring. But will get classified as "anti-vax" and will become subject to censorship "for our own good". I am vaccinated. I believe these vaccines represent an astounding accomplishment. I believe people should have access to all information in order to make the best decisions for themselves. I also have some skepticism regarding the messages and messaging that comes from the CDC and NIH. I also distrust the role they've played in any discussion regarding the origins of Covid. Why we (in America at least) can watch abject government incompetence in the DoD, FBI, CIA, ICE, IRS, and on and on but pretend the CDC and the NIH, the ultimate gatekeepers of the Covid and vaccine narratives, are immune to such failings is beyond me.
- LudvigVanHassen 5y ago
  All of this is correct. Many on the left seem forcibly unable to view the nuance described here. Freedom of choice is an American value that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world to the degree that it does here. Freedom to decide what you do with your body trumps public health. Half of Americans believe this, and the other half doesn't. Finding the compromise between those two viewpoints is exceptionally challenging. Each group has the temptation to view the other as being "willfully evil," whether for being selfish or for imposing tyranny. I hope the solution is that our high vaccination rate of 70+% of adults and the prevalence of the spread of Delta (which creates natural immunity) will combine to reach herd immunity and we can get out of this craven, horrible timeline we find ourselves in.
oceanplexian 5y ago
In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis claimed that hand washing was a way to improve hygiene and communicable disease. If Google had existed in 1847, his claims would have been censored since they went strongly against the scientific consensus. History is littered with examples like this. Most of us with a STEM education spent years learning about example after example of a great scientist or whistleblower that was scorned by the medical or scientific community, and it turned out that countless lives could have been saved if people had kept a more open mind. I am greatly disappointed in anyone who claims to be educated but thinks that censorship is acceptable in a free society.
- CodeMage 5y ago
  > In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis claimed that hand washing was a way to improve hygiene and communicable disease. If Google had existed in 1847, his claims would have been censored since they went strongly against the scientific consensus. Was there an established practice of peer-reviewed research back in 1847? My understanding is that the scientific community evolved that system because it helps reduce the potential for errors and makes it easier to trust the research. > Most of us with a STEM education spent years learning about example after example of a great scientist or whistleblower that was scorned by the medical or scientific community, and it turned out that countless lives could have been saved if people had kept a more open mind. "Open mind" and "communicating responsibly" are not mutually exclusive. > I am greatly disappointed in anyone who claims to be educated but thinks that censorship is acceptable in a free society. I am just as disappointed in anyone who thinks that requiring responsible communication is the same as censorship.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > back in 1847 Semmelweis was basically lynched (and ruined) by his peers. As usual. > responsible communication Yes but the contextual issue here is that of censorship. Or if you proposed a method to filter general publication through criteria involving responsibility, that would require more details.
- nradov 5y ago
  Or to take a more recent example, should the media have censored Drs. Marshall and Warren in 1982 when they claimed that the scientific consensus about the cause of stomach ulcers was completely wrong? Everyone thought that ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food, but it turned out to be bacterial infections. We always need to be humble and recognize that some things we believe to be correct will later turn out to be false. https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/nobel-prize-for-h-pylori-discovery/ https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/n... (To be clear I think the current scientific consensus that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective is correct.)
sokoloff 5y ago
There wasn’t scientific consensus that recovery from COVID did not leave antibodies in your system so as to make vaccine unnecessary. It was undecided.
belorn 5y ago
When the different vaccines came out we did not have peer-reviewed studies to show that they were effective, only the smaller studies done by the drug companies that developed them. In much we were accepting the opinions about the effectiveness as facts, as well as the side effects which were yet to be discovered. We saw the same thing about the effectiveness of cloth mask and anti-bacterial cleaning had on spreading of covid. It took well past the first year before we started to see when, how, where and whom benefited from different strategies, and the meta studies is yet fully clear on the answers to those. Looking what we don't know as far as today in terms of vaccinations, the biggest unknown variables seems to be about duration. With most nations having gone through two rounds of vaccinations, it seems now that a third one is now needed. One study cited recently was conducted on patients that is undergoing transplantation, with half of the patients missing antibodies while having taken two vaccination already this year. As a result there is a lot of talking about treating covid vaccination as something that will be added to the existing seasonal flue vaccinations that vulnerable groups take, but which the general population do not because of the short window of protection. Time will tell and it won't be anti-vax people that do the research or conduct the discussion.
- ptaipale 5y ago
  We usually don't call drug company vaccine studies "peer reviewed" because they are reviewed by health authorities (regulatory agencies), not "peers". That's actually a higher bar.
iskander 5y ago
>If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, That's not how science has worked, especially in this pandemic. Most of what we know about SARS-CoV-2 came to us through biorxiv preprints and posts on forums like virological.org; the added value of peer review has typically been minimal (but often adding 3-12 months of delay in disseminating information). Even the role of peer review as a gate keeper has been wanting, lots of garbage studies about Covid-19 with glaring confounders keep getting published in peer reviewed journals. You could probably find a few hundred trials with systematic age differences between treatment groups that have been published in respectable venues. Some of these studies even contribute significantly to misinformation about the efficacy of sham treatments like hydroxycholoroquine and ivermectin. There is unfortunately no short-cut to the development of individual scientific literacy, no trusted tier of experts which can safeguard us from misunderstanding and falsehood. We're all more or less on our own.
stale2002 5y ago
> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. If you present that opinion as a fact, then that's misinformation. Unironically, I would consider your opinion here, to be dangerous mis-information. Yes really. We do not have to throw out the entire body of past medical work, for every single "new" question that comes up. So there are absolutely some, scientifically supported, conclusions, that we can come to, about diseases, using this past body of medical work. If we listened to you it would result in people refusing to do basic things, like wash our hands and socially distance, because we haven't yet completed a full study, for a specific new disease that is going around.
didibus 5y ago
Bingo! And for people who might contest the "peer review" dimension, it's not so much about having peer reviewed things, it is about clearly disclosing the basis from which you're putting forward a statement you claim to be true. That said, I'm not doubting that the YouTube mechanisms for suppression of irresponsibly disbursed information and misinformation has a high false positive rate especially when addressing similar topics. And hopefully YouTube can address that over time.

ravar 5y ago

never mind that many of the positions that are "scientific consensus" are not supported by the current peer reviewed research.

CodeMage 5y ago
That's honestly news to me. I thought that "scientific consensus" is supported by peer-reviewed research, by definition. Can you elaborate?
- virtuallynathan 5y ago
  There’s quite a few medical practices which guidelines still recommend that do not show benefit in better or newer trials. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1104821 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1104821
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    This paper says we should abandon practices when they are shown to not work. I don't think anyone will disagree with that. But the original post made it seem like there were practices which were adopted willy nilly. But this paper just shows the self correcting nature of science.
    - virtuallynathan 5y ago
      They had to write a paper saying that because it doesn’t happen. We are still doing these procedures today. Do the interventional cardiologists want to stop stenting people? Not really. The orthopedic surgeons still want to mess with your meniscus, etc.
      - newswasboring 5y ago
        I mean... This is the scientific framework. There was a mistake and the mechanism to fix it is to write more papers. I know it's not fixed yet, but that's the procedure. Do you believe this should never have happened? Then I guess we disagree on how powerful human intellect can be.
        virtuallynathan 5y ago
        I think its fine for this to occur, and we should expect it, but how long should it take to reverse a bad practice? Is a decade or more acceptable?
        newswasboring 5y ago
        Of course not. Nobody is endorsing for that. The problem is these are hard problems to solve and forming a consensus is a hard problem in addition to it. If we keep flip flopping on every new data point we will have more misses than hits.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Not the parent, but this study seems to be the best RCT of mask effectiveness so far (N=350,000): https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... Cloth masks showed no statistically significant reduction in the spread of Covid-19. (surgical masks - different story) Yet I'm still surrounded by people - wearing predominantly cloth masks - that are full of outrage for the maskless. I've not heard any updates from the CDC on this issue.
  - deusexml 5y ago
    This is not true. The study found a reduction in COVID-19 symptoms for the cloth mask group. They also found a reduction in seroprevalence for the cloth mask group, but that reduction wasn't statistically significant. "Statistically insignificant" is not the same as "not true". It is very hard to sufficiently power a seroprevalence study.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      This is a high-power study with N in the hundreds of thousands. "Statistically insignificant" is the same as "no reason to believe it is true".
  - wepple 5y ago
    This is really interesting, and I’d like to read the paper - do you have a link? EDIT: here: https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-masking-covid-19-cluster-randomized-trial-bangladesh https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/impact-community-... That summary is really hard to draw conclusions from; “However, cloth masks did reduce the overall likelihood of experiencing symptoms of respiratory illness during the study period.” And “ A cloth mask is certainly better than nothing. But now might be a good time to consider upgrading to a surgical mask.” But also “ Although there were also fewer COVID-19 cases in villages with cloth masks as compared to control villages, the difference was not statistically significant.”
    - DenisM 5y ago
- yawboakye 5y ago
  It's a sad sign of the times that "scientific consensus" doesn't sound crazy anymore. It was scientific consensus that the Catholic church based on to sentence Galileo. He was a lone dissenting voice. A bit of history for you. And this is besides the fact that true scientists have never sought consensus/peer-review. I'll stand by as you come up with non-modern, paper-churning, publish-or-perish examples of great scientists famous (or great) for work or theory that was accepted by means of consensus.
  - nemo 5y ago
    There's no Catholic Church prosecuting those who defy the official scientific position today. Galileo was not a lone dissenting voice - he was a proponent of Copernicanism, which he overstated the accuracy of his evidence for, feuding with the Church about whether he was overstating, and getting himself in terrible trouble with the Church. Once Kepler's models were confirmed with observations after Galileo with better telescopes the Church accepted. Later Enlightenment thinkers built a martyr myth around Galileo, and today the nature of his conflict with the Church is an ahistorical picture painted by later hagiographies of Galileo This is a story that does not apply to our times. There've been many regular scientific revolutions even in the last few decades, the Church hasn't persecuted scientists, and the modern scientific consensus has followed with the revolutions. Whether it's the matter of the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, the revolutions in molecular biology, revolutions in astronomy, or other areas where advances are regular, those outliers actually advancing science have only briefly been ahead of consensus in the real world, but most outliers are cranks, and only those with an expert training in a discipline are likely to be able to identify real advances over crank science. The Galileo model of believing outliers virtually always leaves you in the wrong unless you are a domain-specific expert on the topic. Look at using MRNA as a medical treatment as another example of a recent revolution, one that's now available in a safe, effective vaccine form.
    - ravar 5y ago
      Call it the church of Google(Faang?) if you will. They have real power over peoples lives and livelihoods. The church of Faang has a nice ring to it.
newswasboring 5y ago
A few examples would be nice to understand what you are saying.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

virtuallynathan 5y ago

I’m not really sure what kind of problems you expect peer review to solve? https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1441040475826184194?s=21 https://twitter.com/page_eco/status/1441040475826184194?s=21 There’s plenty of bad/fraudulent/wrong stuff that gets through peer review, perhaps even a majority.

warvariuc 5y ago
I guess, if your statement wasn't researched and peer reviewed, it'll be considered misinformation...
Guvante 5y ago
This is a really bad take of a complex situation. Peer reviewing is hard. Reproducibility is hard. Neither of these things being hard invalidates the value of peer review compared to gut ideas from random people.
- virtuallynathan 5y ago
  Sure, in an ideal world we’d have some kind of review, but what we have now seems largely ineffective.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    Except you are missing a huge huge part of what you linked: > We conclude that the reviewing process for the 2014 conference was good for identifying poor papers When it comes to peer review that is the actual goal. Have a filter that prevents bad things from getting published. In an ideal world we would have a process that allows good papers to be published as well. However I think we can all agree that is a secondary concern. Especially since pre-publish announcements are common anyway, so it isn't like no one is looking at papers that aren't published.
- pitspotter2 5y ago
  Good point about the reproducibility crisis. We seem to have forgotten about that. There is a better alternative to listening to random people I think which is to follow the work of individual scientists whom we trust because we have been following their work over a long period of time and because they exhibit Jacob Bronowski's 'habit of truth'. Unfortunately, I don't know any immunologists or epidemiologists! I'm guessing that censorship on balance makes it harder rather than easier to find them.

kodah 5y ago

> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. By that standard, this entire website and most of the software industry is misinformation. In fact, most political speech is misinformation. > If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax". GP is saying that the conversation is, and should be recognized as, more nuanced than that. There sure is an undercurrent of people making narratives but that's not a new problem. The left and right have weaponized narratives to the detriment of this country ad infinitum. If you're arguing we should only have evidence based discussion and that anecdotes and opinions don't matter, then you have new problems. The new problems will alienate and harm anyone that your current telemetry (and understanding) doesn't reflect. To me, that's an age-old problem where some value technocracy while others value bureaucracy; my personal opinion being that both are valuable but they need a distribution model in government that optimizes for problem solving. > If you're publishing your opinion, or if you're discussing your research before it's been peer-reviewed, you have the responsibility to make that clear, and even to point out that it does not agree with the current scientific consensus (if any exists). I agree, but it seems GP was indicating this doctor was doing just that and was still silenced.

rootlocus 5y ago
> By that standard, this entire website and most of the software industry is misinformation. In fact, most political speech is misinformation. No, by that standard, this entire website is offering its oppinion. Which in fact it is.
BrianB 5y ago
> In fact, most political speech is misinformation. Now there's an understatement.
- spectramax 5y ago
  Ask liberals or conservatives and they will quickly point out their it's not their side that's misinforming. The fact is that they are all misinfoming. Just yesterday in the congressional testimoney, Gen Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen McKenzie - all said they informed the president for keeping 2,500 troops in May. President Biden couple of weeks ago denied that he had any recommendation from the generals or anyone in the government. So which one is true?

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

The same exact argument could be said about the platforms. What evidence do they have that that there is no chance of complications for certain individuals? They need to be held to the same standard they are holding their end users. In the last year social media platforms have suppressed facts and discourse pre-emptively and only months later do we find out that there was truth in the censored content. They can't be the final arbitraters of truth.

trentnix 5y ago

> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. Not necessarily. What is the bar to be defined as "scientific research"? What is the bar for "peer review"? Considering the massive amount of evidence that a large amount of "peer review" doesn't review much and that a measurable amount of "scientific research" is inadequate and sometimes outright fraudulent, any pursuit of truth shouldn't be built exclusively on such a weak foundation. But to your point, good research should hold more weight (and does!). > If you're pushing a narrative that implies that you shouldn't get vaccinated, then yes, that's "anti-vax". And yet concerns about the long-term safety of these vaccines are, by definition, untested. The long term efficacy of these vaccines are certainly in doubt. Both are reasonable concerns worth debating and exploring. But will get classified as "anti-vax" and will become subject to censorship "for our own good". I am vaccinated. I believe these vaccines represent an astounding accomplishment. I believe people should have access to all information in order to make the best decisions for themselves. I also have some skepticism regarding the messages and messaging that comes from the CDC and NIH. I also distrust the role they've played in any discussion regarding the origins of Covid. Why we (in America at least) can watch abject government incompetence in the DoD, FBI, CIA, ICE, IRS, and on and on but pretend the CDC and the NIH, the ultimate gatekeepers of the Covid and vaccine narratives, are immune to such failings is beyond me.

LudvigVanHassen 5y ago
All of this is correct. Many on the left seem forcibly unable to view the nuance described here. Freedom of choice is an American value that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world to the degree that it does here. Freedom to decide what you do with your body trumps public health. Half of Americans believe this, and the other half doesn't. Finding the compromise between those two viewpoints is exceptionally challenging. Each group has the temptation to view the other as being "willfully evil," whether for being selfish or for imposing tyranny. I hope the solution is that our high vaccination rate of 70+% of adults and the prevalence of the spread of Delta (which creates natural immunity) will combine to reach herd immunity and we can get out of this craven, horrible timeline we find ourselves in.

oceanplexian 5y ago

In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis claimed that hand washing was a way to improve hygiene and communicable disease. If Google had existed in 1847, his claims would have been censored since they went strongly against the scientific consensus. History is littered with examples like this. Most of us with a STEM education spent years learning about example after example of a great scientist or whistleblower that was scorned by the medical or scientific community, and it turned out that countless lives could have been saved if people had kept a more open mind. I am greatly disappointed in anyone who claims to be educated but thinks that censorship is acceptable in a free society.

CodeMage 5y ago
> In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis claimed that hand washing was a way to improve hygiene and communicable disease. If Google had existed in 1847, his claims would have been censored since they went strongly against the scientific consensus. Was there an established practice of peer-reviewed research back in 1847? My understanding is that the scientific community evolved that system because it helps reduce the potential for errors and makes it easier to trust the research. > Most of us with a STEM education spent years learning about example after example of a great scientist or whistleblower that was scorned by the medical or scientific community, and it turned out that countless lives could have been saved if people had kept a more open mind. "Open mind" and "communicating responsibly" are not mutually exclusive. > I am greatly disappointed in anyone who claims to be educated but thinks that censorship is acceptable in a free society. I am just as disappointed in anyone who thinks that requiring responsible communication is the same as censorship.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > back in 1847 Semmelweis was basically lynched (and ruined) by his peers. As usual. > responsible communication Yes but the contextual issue here is that of censorship. Or if you proposed a method to filter general publication through criteria involving responsibility, that would require more details.
nradov 5y ago
Or to take a more recent example, should the media have censored Drs. Marshall and Warren in 1982 when they claimed that the scientific consensus about the cause of stomach ulcers was completely wrong? Everyone thought that ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food, but it turned out to be bacterial infections. We always need to be humble and recognize that some things we believe to be correct will later turn out to be false. https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/nobel-prize-for-h-pylori-discovery/ https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/n... (To be clear I think the current scientific consensus that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective is correct.)

sokoloff 5y ago

There wasn’t scientific consensus that recovery from COVID did not leave antibodies in your system so as to make vaccine unnecessary. It was undecided.

belorn 5y ago

When the different vaccines came out we did not have peer-reviewed studies to show that they were effective, only the smaller studies done by the drug companies that developed them. In much we were accepting the opinions about the effectiveness as facts, as well as the side effects which were yet to be discovered. We saw the same thing about the effectiveness of cloth mask and anti-bacterial cleaning had on spreading of covid. It took well past the first year before we started to see when, how, where and whom benefited from different strategies, and the meta studies is yet fully clear on the answers to those. Looking what we don't know as far as today in terms of vaccinations, the biggest unknown variables seems to be about duration. With most nations having gone through two rounds of vaccinations, it seems now that a third one is now needed. One study cited recently was conducted on patients that is undergoing transplantation, with half of the patients missing antibodies while having taken two vaccination already this year. As a result there is a lot of talking about treating covid vaccination as something that will be added to the existing seasonal flue vaccinations that vulnerable groups take, but which the general population do not because of the short window of protection. Time will tell and it won't be anti-vax people that do the research or conduct the discussion.

ptaipale 5y ago
We usually don't call drug company vaccine studies "peer reviewed" because they are reviewed by health authorities (regulatory agencies), not "peers". That's actually a higher bar.

iskander 5y ago

>If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, That's not how science has worked, especially in this pandemic. Most of what we know about SARS-CoV-2 came to us through biorxiv preprints and posts on forums like virological.org; the added value of peer review has typically been minimal (but often adding 3-12 months of delay in disseminating information). Even the role of peer review as a gate keeper has been wanting, lots of garbage studies about Covid-19 with glaring confounders keep getting published in peer reviewed journals. You could probably find a few hundred trials with systematic age differences between treatment groups that have been published in respectable venues. Some of these studies even contribute significantly to misinformation about the efficacy of sham treatments like hydroxycholoroquine and ivermectin. There is unfortunately no short-cut to the development of individual scientific literacy, no trusted tier of experts which can safeguard us from misunderstanding and falsehood. We're all more or less on our own.

stale2002 5y ago

> If you're claiming something that hasn't been demonstrated through peer-reviewed scientific research, then you're offering your opinion. If you present that opinion as a fact, then that's misinformation. Unironically, I would consider your opinion here, to be dangerous mis-information. Yes really. We do not have to throw out the entire body of past medical work, for every single "new" question that comes up. So there are absolutely some, scientifically supported, conclusions, that we can come to, about diseases, using this past body of medical work. If we listened to you it would result in people refusing to do basic things, like wash our hands and socially distance, because we haven't yet completed a full study, for a specific new disease that is going around.

didibus 5y ago

Bingo! And for people who might contest the "peer review" dimension, it's not so much about having peer reviewed things, it is about clearly disclosing the basis from which you're putting forward a statement you claim to be true. That said, I'm not doubting that the YouTube mechanisms for suppression of irresponsibly disbursed information and misinformation has a high false positive rate especially when addressing similar topics. And hopefully YouTube can address that over time.