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1. Form a hypothesis (i.e., our current best guess based on what we know, and what we think is going on).
2. Test the hypothesis (i.e., try it and see if it work :) )
3. Based on (2), go back and update our hypothesis
I think it's both reasonable and good to change one's mind over time because you've seen new data / you're in a new situation.
I'm guilty of this, many people do it, maybe even most people. It's easy to lapse into the subconscious mentality that your experience reflects universal experience.
— Attributed to Keynes, Churchill, and others with varying details but probably apocryphal.
What I reject is someone else's claiming the right to censor my comments or append a wrongthink warning to them.
It’s a slippery slope and some fortune-telling to assume that Facebook and Twitter will not let you post based off potential incorrect facts. If anything, a caution or warning label regarding facts should offer the reader extra information. As MikeTheGreat has aptly highlighted, science is a self correcting paradigm that seeks to prove itself wrong. Old facts, tried and tested overtime, may seldom update but new and not well tested facts may evolve in due time.
Also, the claim that fact checkers are wrong more than they are right is a non-sequiter. Because the prevailing truth at the time of fact checking is the most accurate based off the current body of evidence. And as stated in my point above, our understanding of the truth crystallizes over time.
What's true now was true a year ago, even if we didn't know it.
This idea of evolving truth is a mealy-mouthed way of saying, "We were wrong."
I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the lab theory was "preposterous", only that it was unsupported by evidence at the time.
I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the vaccine "stops" the virus spread, only that it dramatically reduces transmission. There was always concerns about variant escape from like, April 2020.
Addition: Clearly, there is a disconnect between what I experienced "fact checkers" saying, and you, or others, experienced. Using the phrasing "fact checkers said X" is extremely veridical in tone, and opens the door for lots of clashing with anyone (such as myself) with differing observations.
Also, when you say "fact checkers did X", are you speaking for _all_ fact checkers? Some? Which ones? It's an epistemological mine field.
Addition 2, before I get nit-picked over the "masks don't work". OP's statement is:
> In early 2020, the fact checkers told us that anything less than an N95 mask doesn't work. The fact checkers of today tell us that any face mask prevents the transmission of the virus...
So I interpret "work" here to mean "prevent transmission of the virus." I remember extremely distinctly at the time the recommended guidance, because my aunt asked about whether she should wear a mask. I told her, as was guidance at the time, late Feb 2020, that a typical surgical mask would not dramatically reduce her risk of contracting COVID, she would need a respirator (N95), and at this point in time, unless you were high risk, this was probably overkill. Cases were rare enough that your best bet at the time was handwashing and social distancing. Then, two weeks later, around Mar 14, I told her "yeah actually you should be wearing a mask around others, even cloth ones, lest you be an asymptomatic carrier." What changed in that timeframe? The number of cases in the USA started skyrocketing, and we discovered that COVID can be asymptomatic in a large percent of cases, and has a long incubation period. New information was acquired, the recommendations changed. That's how all rational, informed decision making should work.
I really don't think it's helpful to say "Fact checkers said X" without providing proof and context.
Unsurprisingly it turns out that social media - platforms designed to promote aggressive argument for "engagement" - are a very bad way to distribute public health information. Or reputable factual information about anything at all.
Reality-based audiences will try to select credible sources. But everyone else gets a diet of anger, fear, hearsay, misunderstandings, shock-value anecdotes, lies, and noise.
I think it's unwise to ignore how much of an influence this has had on what's happening now.
"I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the lab theory was "preposterous", only that it was unsupported by evidence at the time."
As I recall, officials and experts were saying that the lab-leak theory was unsupported by evidence, while people were boycotting Chinese restaurants and attacking vaguely Asian looking people because they held "China" responsible for the pandemic.
"I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the vaccine "stops" the virus spread, only that it dramatically reduces transmission. There was always concerns about variant escape from like, April 2020."
As I recall, experts have always been saying that the vaccines were very effective at preventing death and hospitalization, but did not eliminate the possibility of infection and if you were infected, it might still be possible to transmit the virus. And yes, the effectiveness of the vaccines against variants of the virus has always been a question.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru...
https://web.archive.org/web/20210326123341/https://www.cdc.g... Could someone provide a link to anyone saying anything else?
(I've previously posted articles about the history of the evolving mask issue.)
It's a little ironic. They probably introduced fact-checkers to avoid regulation, but in an ideal world I feel the most important regulation would be expressly to prevent big social media corporations from centrally controlling information like that.
I don't think 'wrong more often than they're right' is accurate, we just hear about when they're wrong and not when they're right. I also want to say that 'ineffective' is the wrong word for vaccine's relationship to new variants. The vaccine still dramatically reduces spread, and almost always prevents hospitalization and death.