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Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

There are two separate issues here:

1. Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field. Sikora is also a fellow of The Princes Foundation For Integrated Health and a professional member of the generically-named College Of Medicine. Both of these organizations are lobbyists which promote alternative medicine.

2. Censorship: rather than allow conversation where real scientists can respond to Sikora's nonsense with facts, YouTube decided to push his followers into their own echo chambers where pieces like this which represents him as a martyr go unchallenged.

Sakora isn't a martyr: he's either an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar who doesn't care if his lies get people killed. But I don't think censorship is the answer to lies. Truth is the answer to lies.

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Truth is the answer to lies.

I wish this was true. I hope it was true. But I'm losing faith. People have a hard time believing truth if it goes against what they want to believe if the lies can be framed in any plausible way at all. This applies to everything from cults to businesses to abusive spouses to, of course, politics.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky and tired of playing the long game of truth. Part of the problem is the liars are sometimes highly motivated to continue with the lies, and it takes a greater army of equally motivated truth "warriors" to come behind them and put out the fires. It's just so damn easy to spread bullshit.

The other issue is that smart people are way outnumbered- and the others now have a helluva voice.

I think one of the dynamics that we need to look at is the formation of cults. Cults are dangerous literally because persuasion is asymmetrical. It's not a matter of "Oh this guy persuaded these people of this stuff, and you just need to set them straight", once someone is in a cult it's close to impossible to pull them out of it.

One key to the formation of cults, is the control of information: instead of group decisions being arrived upon by informed discussion, there are ideas which are allowed and others which are not. Maybe the ideas are good (like "brush your teeth") but the enforcement is totally irrational and over the top (like "Sister Emily didn't brush her teeth, so no one will speak to her for 3 days"). This is because these ideas are beyond question so anyone who disagrees with them must be evil.

Sound familiar?

Truth may not be the answer to lies (in any straightforward way), but bureaucratic committees deciding what's true is hella not the answer to lies. This is so obvious that the weird part is smart people acting otherwise. I'm surprised it has happened so easily. It seems that all that is needed are the right labels (words like 'science', 'public health', 'misinformation', and 'disinformation') to generate a high level of conformity. That this is a time of mass fear must be making a difference too.

> calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field.

Then why is Bill Gates the de facto lead on curing covid?

Because actually he doesn't cure anything: he has money and that's what he gives.

In a "determining what's true about Covid" sense, he isn't the leader on Covid. He pays experts to take that leadership.

It's my general impression that if Gates says something about Covid, he's just repeating what experts said.

Your own comment says "if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field."

Why doesn't that disqualify Bill Gates according to your own reasoning?

>It's my general impression that if Gates says something about Covid, he's just repeating what experts said.

And who determines if he is or isn't repeating experts? Also, who decides who is or isn't an expert? An advertising company? Sorry, but that is a scary path.

I disagree with your reasoning for the entire first half of your post regarding BillG, but I can absolutely agree with you on the last part.

The power to decide who is or isn't an expert, as well as the ability to restrict speech based on those decisions, is a pretty dangerous and scary path that I am vehemently opposed to taking.

> Your own comment says "if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field."

> Why doesn't that disqualify Bill Gates according to your own reasoning?

Because there's a big difference between presenting yourself as an expert and saying things that disagree with experts, and repeating what experts say.

If Bill Gates starts spouting off stuff without evidence that disagrees with what all the experts are saying, he'll absolutely be disqualified according to my reasoning.

> And who determines if he is or isn't repeating experts? Also, who decides who is or isn't an expert? An advertising company? Sorry, but that is a scary path.

Well, everyone has to determine that for themselves, based on what limited ability they have.

It seems like you think I'm one of the pro-censorship people here, but I assure you I'm not, please follow the comment chain up to where I started it and read my comment there. On the contrary, I believe Sikora's video should have been left on YouTube, and responded to by experts.

Bill Gates has spent decades on the front lines of various wars against infectious diseases. He may not have a university degree on the subject but he is as much an expert as anyone who does - not to mention, he mostly defers to the expertise of his many qualified colleagues when speaking publicly.

> Truth is the answer to lies.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots" - not sure who actually said this

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

I agree with the idea of truth being the answer to lies, and echo chambers being dangerous for society in the long term. But I disagree with the notion that no one has business speaking outside their field of expertise. Experts can be wrong or change their views over time and they should be open to being challenged by others. No one has a monopoly on data or logic or free thought. If the line of correctness between specialists and others is so clear, then surely it must be easy to counter others views.

No, complex topics that aren't simple and sometimes are counterintuitive are exactly the cases when deferral to experts is important because countering other views in lay explanations may not be possible.

Should I have deferred to expert opinions and waited until yesterday(!?) to start wearing a mask?

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/national-directive-on-w...

Two questions: did the Canadian government actively recommend against mask wearing? Do you live in Canada?

Note the difference between "we can't condone masks because there is limited evidence that they are helpful" and "we recommend against masks because they are harmful" and "the lockdown is a government consipracy to subjugate us".

I live in Canada and they actively recommended against cloth mask wearing for the general public on the grounds that it leads to a "false sense of security" and "increases touching of one's face" and that asymptomatic persons do not spread COVID-19. "Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial".

You can listen to Theresa Tam's (Canada's version of Dr. Fauci) exact words here: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/watch/tam-on-why-canadians-d...

I think any reasonable person who defers to authority would have listened to this and come to the conclusion that there is no reason to wear a mask if they're asymptomatic and had no connection to a sick individual. They could even reasonably conclude that it would be dangerous as they would be touching their face and virus particles would accumulate on the outside of the mask.

And they would have been wrong.

So here's what she said:

- Prioritizing supply to healthcare workers is of the utmost priority

- Current evidence supports wearing a mask if you're sick to prevent spreading droplets, also wearing a mask if you're in close contact with a symptomatic person

- Masks can provide a false sense of security.

Her final statement is "if people try to use these measures, they have to be really, really careful and wash their hands, absolutely. That's the key. So we're also worried about the potential negative impacts."

All of that is sound advice, and it is dangerous to think that a mask will protect you without any other precautions. But it isn't a statement that one should not wear a mask, fullstop. It's a statement that one should still follow other cautions. IOW, a mask isn't a magical solution.

"Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial", followed by a list of dangers posed by masks.

It was a statement that masks are a placebo for the general public and actually require one to take extra precautions so that they don't make things worse.

It couldn't have been more discouraging towards people on the fence about wearing a mask in late March.

> Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial

Since then, the understanding about asymptomatic carriers has changed. And in response, the government updated it's suggestion.

Good for them (not sarcastically). My point is that if the experts were wrong then, it’s certainly possible that some of what they are saying now is wrong too, and it should be acceptable to criticize them on YouTube and explore different possibilities and models.

There exist (clearly functional) processes to improve the scientific consensus. The government changed its recommendation. Do you think they were convinced by a YouTube videos or perhaps did some other process cause then to amend their recommendations?

If so, why not steer people toward that process, especially when the harm of wearing a mask is low, while the harm oh reopening the economy due to a lack of understanding the covid dangers is much greater?

Those Canadian experts haven't been telling you not to wear a mask, have they? I can't find evidence of that - I just find them saying they don't have scientific evidence (yet) that wearing masks prophetically is necessary. Which is a very different thing.

Have you seen different statements?

Hmmm, prophetically should have been prophylactically - hope that was obvious.

The National Post are not experts, and they aren't reporting what experts say accurately. And while there's a video in there where an actual expert speaks, you're not reporting what that expert said accurately.

Public health officials, while they usually are experts, have other concerns beyond simply saying the truth. The US and Canadian recommendations against medical masks for the general public were part of a strategy based on reserving medical masks. So yes, you should have followed the recommendations of health officials and not worn a medical mask, because healthcare workers needed them.

As far as I know, neither the US nor Canada has ever taken a stance against non-medical masks. They haven't taken a stance for medical masks either, but this was likely due to concerns that people would be confused about medical versus non-medical masks. Your own post is an example of this being a very legitimate concern: you have completely failed to differentiate between medical and non-medical masks.

If you look at what experts have been saying who aren't part of governments, the messaging has been fairly consistent: masks prevent illness at varying rates, and we need to prioritize healthcare workers when allocating the most effective masks.

So when you say, "Should I have deferred to expert opinions and waited until yesterday(!?) to start wearing a mask?" I have to say, no, it would have been impossible to do that, because deferring to expert opinions and waiting until yesterday to start wearing a mask are mutually exclusive actions.

> Public health officials, while they usually are experts, have other concerns beyond simply saying the truth.

So there's a narrative that may or may not have my best interest at heart but demands my compliance for some nebulous greater good?

No.

If sacrifice is required on the part of collective, you honour them by allowing them to engage with informed consent. If you don't, you have no credibility the next time some ambiguity arises where collective sacrifice is needed to avoid a tragedy of the commons.

> Experts can be wrong or change their views over time and they should be open to being challenged by others. No one has a monopoly on data or logic or free thought.

Experts discover they are wrong and change their views based on evidence, not based on what other experts or non-experts say.

Non-experts, like the majority of HN users, really can only go off the word of experts at some point, unless we decide to spend the time studying a field to become experts.

And to be clear, I'm not saying "experts" only meaning people who got a degree in a field. A degree is only the most obvious way to show expertise in a field. But it's quite possible to study a field for a long time without getting a degree. But it's not at all apparent that Sakora has done that--in fact, all evidence I see seems to be trying to gloss over his lack of expertise.

> Truth is the answer to lies.

I haven't actually seen evidence that this is effective in the modern social media era.

White people who have never been around black people are more likely to hold racist views. Straight people who have never been around out gay people are more likely to hold homophobic views. MLK understood that to change the image of black people as dangerous, he had to get black people shown behaving peaceably on TV. Harvey Milk understood that to change the image of homosexuals as foreign and strange, he had to show people that gays were their siblings, their children, their neighbors. What makes you think that social media has so fundamentally changed humanity?

Trump is president, the American Nazi party is growing, the most popular news network in America is Fox News, the anti-vax movement is growing; and the primary evidence that deplatforming works seems to be a study that shows that bigots left Reddit and declares victory, completely ignoring that Voat started at the same time. If you want evidence, where's yours?

>the primary evidence that deplatforming works seems to be a study that shows that bigots left Reddit and declares victory, completely ignoring that Voat started at the same time.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba...

Deplatforming leaves people with a smaller audience. Only a fraction of the audience follows a banned person to another platform. Voat is nothing compared to Reddit.

he has no business speaking outside his field

I agree with everything you wrote, except the above. He is a doctor, speaking on health issues, so he isn't speaking from outside the field of medicine. And I'd challenge that a specialist within the field of medicine can only offer valuable information or insight with their own speciality. Specialists on all fields are prone to group think, so people with related training from the outside should be welcomed to challenge the orthodoxy.

That's all fine and good if you're knowledgeable in the field enough to evaluate his claims. But I'm not, and most of HN is not, so how do we know the difference between an outsider with the vision to see what the orthodoxy can't, and a charlatan trying to profit off lies?

The the fact is, charlatans are far more common than visionary outsiders.

And in Sikora's case, there are a lot of red flags indicating he's a charlatan and not a visionary outsider. The virus is "getting tired"? Really?

Meta: This is a very low quality post. It is accusing Karol Sikora of being 'either 'an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar' without a shred of evidence of such behavior. Assassinate the character of the messenger with no proof, then add insult to injury and wholly fail to address the message. What was so objectionable about content of the interview in question?

did you watch the piece? what exactly was "insane" about it? and imo the issue here isnt what is "true" -- nobody knows the truth with corona; its novel. so what's important is having a guide to truth. and that guide is scientific thinking -- the scientific method. experts are dead wrong all the time. but they dont stay wrong.

He’s not qualified to speak about infectious disease.

Infectious disease is a distinct specialty in medicine.

Are you qualified to decide whether someone with medical expertise can discuss medicine, health and policy?

Yes because doctors are licensed by their specialty. Which is only achieved by years of direct subject matter training...coupled with continuous education.

The doctor in question is not licensed for infectious disease.

You should never trust a doctor speaking outside of his expertise.

However most of the celebrity doctors do that every single day which is an insult to the entire medical profession.

In the US at least that isn't how physician credentialing works. Doctors are licensed by state medical boards. In addition, some go on to earn certification from specialty medical boards but those certifications are not legal licenses.

In general we shouldn't blindly trust any single doctor about an important or risky topic, even within their own specialty. Always get a second or even third opinion if practical. (I agree that most celebrity doctors are little more than quacks.)

I didn't watch the piece, but I've read enough of what Sakora has written to conclude that Sakora is a consistent liar. Even if a liar tells the truth, he's not a valuable source of information because you don't know whether what he says is true or not.

> and imo the issue here isnt what is "true" -- nobody knows the truth with corona; its novel.

If nobody knows what's true with corona, then shouldn't claim to know what's true with corona, which is what Sakora is doing.

ive never heard the name sakora before. genuine question -- just curious how/why you've come across their writing, when it seems the claim is that they are some kind of quack?

When the Libyan government was trying to get the Lockerbie bomber out of jail, they paid Sikora off to say that the bomber was going to keel over in a few weeks from cancer. He admitted that the Libyans let him know what prognosis would be most helpful when they hired him. Lo and behold that's the prognosis that he came up with (which also ended up being completely wrong)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karol_Sikora is mentioned in another comment.

The Wikipedia article looks very unbalanced to me, but there is definitely some smoke there too.

> he's not a valuable source of information because you don't know whether what he says is true or not

How do I know what anyone says is true? Why should I trust what you're saying about Sikora?

I should be able to watch a video on youtube and decide for myself because censorship is inimical to free thought.

You should take a moment to consider that most of the examples throughout history of censorship were carried out by decidedly bad people. Truth can stand on its own!

I am definitely NOT pro-censorship, so I don't know why you're saying this to me. Please read a few comments up. The entire reason censorship is a topic on this subthread is that I brought it up as a problem.

For (2), allowing conversation as a general solution seems tough at scale, e.g., targeted misinformation campaigns on fb and twitter.

Allowing conversation isn't tough: FB and Twitter would literally have to do less than they do now.

Creating a culture where people are willing to have uncomfortable conversations instead of trying to silence anyone they disagree with is the hard part.

I agree but it isn’t a general solution. “Allowing conversation” is what Facebook did in 2016, letting people attend fake rallies created by fake Facebook groups disseminating fake facts.

Sakora is the latter, and the problem with this viewpoint is publishing the truth elsewhere doesn't stop people from absorbing the lies here. Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves. The information is dangerous, it should not be available.

> Somebody consuming this content is not likely to seek out alternative viewpoints to correct themselves.

Which is why it's important that we present the truth right next to it, so people don't have to look elsewhere.

> The information is dangerous, it should not be available.

Well, it is available, in places where the truth isn't available, so I don't really know what you think taking it off YouTube has achieved.

> Which is why it's important that we present the truth right next to it, so people don't have to look elsewhere.

This still assumes that people will be willing to watch it.

> Well, it is available, in places where the truth isn't available, so I don't really know what you think taking it off YouTube has achieved.

It has achieved a lower spread of misinformation. Now nobody browsing YouTube will happen upon this video by chance and start believing something that is false and dangerous. Of course, those who are already embedded in these communities will still be able to access the information elsewhere. It is not a perfect solution, I don't think there is a perfect solution, but it does reduce the impact.

> It has achieved a lower spread of misinformation.

Has it? I'm not really sure how you came to this conclusion.

If kicking Sakora off YouTube causes his followers to become angry and go share his personal site through a bunch of different channels, that could easily outpace the impact of a YouTube channel where refutations are included.

If someone censored your views, what would you do? Why do you think people who disagree with you won't do all the same things?

YouTube is one of the largest disseminators of information in the world. No amount of small replacements with an existing audience of gullible fools can make up for the loss of audience of hundreds of millions of not-yet-introduced-to-this-garbage victims.

None of his videos are on this page[1]. The idea that just being on YouTube gets you an audience of "hundreds of millions" is completely false. In fact, I have friends who make great content that is lucky to hit 1000 views.

Meanwhile, Fox News is the most popular news network in America.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-viewed_YouTube_vi...

> Has it? I'm not really sure how you came to this conclusion.

I explained in the comment you replied to. You seem to be deliberately ignoring that people who are not predisposed to the viewpoint could also be exposed. I do not believe that censoring on YouTube will prevent anyone who already believes this stuff from finding the content elsewhere, and I already admitted as such.

If two groups of people (those who actively seek the misinformation, and those who encounter it by chance) could access the misinformation, it stands to reason that preventing one of those groups from accessing the misinformation results in a lower overall spread of misinformation, even if the other group is unaffected.

What are your credentials to say that his statements aren't the truth?

People are quick to trust doctors but fail to understand that specialists are the important thought leaders.

The only opinions that matter are infectious disease and respiratory doctors.

They are people, and they can make mistakes or miss something, like everyone else.

A clear example is an Italian virologist that called the hypothesis of thrombosis in the alveoli that came out from autopsies and the suggestion of using heparin in treatment protocols "a colossal idiocy".

Then other data, including the recent Lancet paper and the Hamburg study came out.

The mere fact one is an expert does not make him or her always right. So weigh opinions more, but don't trust them blindly.

>Sakora isn't a martyr: he's either an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar who doesn't care if his lies get people killed. But I don't think censorship is the answer to lies. Truth is the answer to lies.

> Non-science: calling Karol Sikora a "professor of medicine" hides the fact that he's an oncologist; if he ever had any expertise it was in cancer, not epidemics, and he has no business speaking outside his field.

Can you provide us with an image of your degree and job experience to prove you have the expertise to tell us "he's either an insane person or an amoral profiteering liar who doesn't care if his lies get people killed."? Or at least admit you're being hypocritical.

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