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Comment by m-p-3 | Hacker News Reader

At some point, when someone is spewing disinformation that has been already proven false many times, what else can you do to improve the signal-to-noise ratio but to mute them?

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It’s really sad to see smart people argue against their own interests.

This is not good.

Read the papers and fine print on everything. Science should be inherently skeptical. If you haven’t read the papers and understood them, you have no business claiming this person is spewing disinformation or not.

Your opinion is not yours otherwise.

Example, the CDC points to an Arizona study about mask efficacy in public schools. The study did not address the large range of total days in school for each district/school. Some unmasked schools were in session almost 3x longer than the masked ones, so of course there was more spread. Also there was no specification if the spread occurred at home or in school.

I understand this is a horrible disease and we need to do our best to get through this, but there is some seriously janky/inept science going on.

What I read, some schools were actually closed and only had remote work. That is clear evidence of bad data and grounds for doing a new study.

Ya but if instead we just label you disinformation for bringing it up, then its much neater for us. We don't have to admit our ability to field studies is not up to the task of guiding a nation growing towards half a B. Enjoy the void looser.

Then explain why Pfizer is not blocked on Twitter. They also "spewed disinformation" to promote "vaccine hesitancy" against a rival product: https://www.cityam.com/pfizer-accused-of-funding-anti-astraz...

Pfizer didn't write those slides, a third-party did, on which Pfizer claim they had no input. One could argue they did, but there isn't tangible evidence to claim they did.

That's extremely naive. Why would you give a company, that has a terrible track record of doing absolutely horrific shit just for money, the benefit of the doubt?

This doctor did not spew misinformation, he was right scientifically. The press does spew misinformation on a weekly basis, also for COVID-19. Was the press deplatformed? No. There is a process to determine truth, that's called science. Abandoning the scientific process for political goals, and economical goals in the case of the press is harmful.

Here he was deplatformed for political reasons, like crying fire in a theatre. Vaccinations are important, and criticism has a huge effect on the percentages. And under 85% the policies are not working that much.

Science can almost never determine truth. Usually the best it can do is a high level of probability.

Major social media sites and fact checkers all shunned “lab-leak” as a fringe conspiracy theory simply because Trump professed to believe in it. Once he left office we acknowledged it as a real possibility. I don’t think these organizations or people have the knowledge to correctly assess what he’s saying. This I suspect the ban happened wholly because he’s a controversial fringe contrarian.

Since I think that, I’m much more ambivalent about the ban. The politics of such a situation will NEVER allow for such a voice to be on a major platform if the stakes are so high and they’re rather effectual in their influence.

No, the lab leak theory was fringe. It still sort of is. Everything pointed to animal origin, but since we haven't found it and it's less and less likely we'll ever find it (the evidence may no longer exist), other theories are back on the table.

Though lab leak has exactly the same amount of hard evidence going for it. None.

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