Peter Hotez on the increase of anti-science aggression on social media

We can't launder poor arguments through complexity/uncertainty boxes like the USC grand rounds videos and say, "well, unless you understand this granular level, you can't disagree with this lateral and aggregate policy one." I wonder if on a basic level the people who argue like that aren't engaged in discovering truth, but actuated by merely avoiding criticism and seeking to align to something symbolic that protects them. This may be the crux of the disagreement.

If I have an ideological position, it is that I believe my opposing team is engaged in the neutralization of discourse because for them to prevail in their power struggles they only need for principled people to do nothing. This is perhaps the divide. There are people aligned to an ideal of truth that originates in religious cultural beliefs, and people aligned to a fear of criticism that originates in a more materialist ideology.

This scope shift from an "appeal to authority" to reframing it as a "deference to authority," in the counter argument doesn't counter my original point, which was that scientists may feel they are under seige because they have been exploited in appeals to authority, and feel blowback from some people who understood that ploy and rejected it. They are orthogonal concepts.

Sure, media defers to experts, they tell stories that include them, but the variations like "this is true because authority says so", "authority said: do this or become a hate figure," and "you are suffering because of these non-believers, just ask these authorities" were disingenuous rhetorical devices employed by media and policymakers with no objection from actual scientists.

Maybe these scientists would feel less threatened if they had less fear of criticism and more intellectual courage.

My own naivety is that I believed an education obligates one to have intellectual courage. When actual scientists align with people whose best arguments are to chant slogans like "denialists!", "source!", "pandemic of the unvaccinated!", "misinformation!", "hateful!" they are complicit. The scientists who went along to get along did so at the cost of betraying their fellow citizens who lost their jobs and livelihoods over matters of principle, and indeed some of their lives to the consequences of pandemic policy.

It's quite serious. A scientist or doctor mouthing talking points for attention on twitter is an expression of that betrayal, and worse, a contempt that is difficult to reconcile. I hope people are unnerved enough by it to reflect a bit more deeply.

This is an entirely different category, and SC not mirror science e.g in it's process following scientific processes/principles, despite the dependencies between the fields.

For post talks about what "policymakers and scientists really think" - it doesn't matter what scientists think (in this context), this is about policymakers and science-communicators (who may or may not also be scientists, or have such a background).

TLDR, scientific authority has been "weaponised", and the backlash is as much against the weapon as the wielder. Not a surprise the true wielders are scapegoating "scientists" as the instigators.

such as dubious methods, lack of replication or claims based on surveys or non-academic studies, inappropriate or overreaching conclusions e.g. specificities derived from generalizations, etc.

I think the clearest example is IAT (implicit bias testing), which has dubious foundations, but seems to have taken off as a "scientific" thing, at least in the corporate world. Sometimes accompanied by a motte-and-bailey where the results of the test, and the correct conclusions of the results, are left vague; or what a "bias" is left undefined so you can easily be lead to believe it equates to e.g. racism.

Regarding intent and threading needles, I spent the pandemic working in a public health system, after over a decade in health information privacy policy and systems, so I lack this comment's uncertainty about malice. Anyone who worked in health and thought or even said anti-vaxxers were hateful and better off dead was not providing honest service. In healthcare and in particular public health, I'd argue that's not a mere opinion, it's something much darker and more culpable. G-word level questions arise.

If we are dealing in truth, we are dealing in logic, and the last best empirical result is not exempt from that standard unless we actively dispense with it. Science is practiced, it is not litigated, or worse: advocated.

Here's a question - is it "correct" that health officials should lie if they believe it will lead to net positive outcome? Is this still good faith?

To what extend should net population outcomes compete with individual outcomes? e.g. downplaying risks of the vaccine, such that individuals with complications are essentially sacrificed in favor of the larger number of people without.

For me an example would be the early “masks don’t work” rhetoric, but then simultaneously also telling the public not to buy masks because healthcare workers need them.

The early recode article mocking Silicon Valley for avoiding contact early on and “panicking” because it was “just the flu” and concern was anti-China racism.

Later on the repeated stories pushed by MSM about the lab leak hypothesis being a “conspiracy theory” when it remains if not the most likely source, still a probable one.

Science is about testing a hypothesis, updating, and discussing tradeoffs honestly - often “believe in science” types are not about science at all, but about authority and political partisanship/cognitive bias.

The tragedy is this erodes trust. Then when something important is actually true like the vaccines are very effective and people should take them they lie about that too (zero risks, 100% effective, etc.) vs. being honest about it (very effective, but not 100%, risks are rare and better on net than contracting disease etc.)

The dishonesty makes it easy for more harmful conspiracy to arise because they’ve lost trust of the public (for good reason imo). Most people that think independently outside of consensus will do it poorly.

The calculator for evaluating truthiness in those people is missing functionality, or at least it's operating on a different set of rules.

To "those people" there are certain lines, which after being crossed, make it impossible to recover any ground.

Do you mean stop criticizing?

Also, what an absurd proposition.

Should we not criticize George W. Bush & the US Government for invading the wrong country in the aftermath of 9/11?

After all, it was an emergency!

At what point does the response change from "it was an emergency!" to... jesus christ you people are incompetent. And you're attempting to censor all the competent people....

Insert some meaningless comparison to firefighters/other heroic profession

Lets not pretend like "scientists" by virtue of their job title are moral paragons or even experts in their fields. Everyone on this website (or like 75%) is a "scientist" to some degree. If you are an educated adult with any sort of scientific background you are fully capable of adjudicating a research paper into the following catagories : utter garbage, a reasonable but unscientific paper, a solid paper, or a questionable but too outside my expertise to grok.

Im no chef but I can tell instant ramen from filet mignon.

The general public is not necessarily capable of this sort of discernment. Which is fine, but we ought not to let people get away with steamrolling people who are more educated and more reasonable by appealing to "science"

"Science" as it is used in popular parlance is a farce.

I, for example, suggested to a number of non-scientifically trained friends that the scientific consensus about vaccines was pretty strong, that the vaccine studies were well conducted and that they should trust this scientific view of vaccines. Essentially, "trust the science" as opposed to "trust people trying to make political hay by fear-mongering".

You are saying that I am a moron. In fact, I am not.

There is a huge overlap between '5f panic', anti-vax, panic, and all kinds of other panics. A lot of people who wind up things like the Qanon cult end up there because they had some sort of technological or political anxiety, networked with other people who had similar uncertainties, and were drawn into a radicalization funnel. There is plenty of financial and political capital to be made by fleecing such people.

Flat earth nonsense is another example of the same phenomenon. If you go down that rabbit hole you find a warren of religious fundamentalism, built on the idea that earth ain't flat, space is fake, the Bible explains the stars are tiny lights mounted on a firmament, NASA is a satanic conspiracy, and it's time to take up arms against the forces of evil.

All radical funnels follow the same sort of pattern, which is derived from sales and marketing: goofballs > grifters > true believers > organizers> extremists > martyrs/terrorists. Of course, you can make similar observations about partisan politics, geopolitics and so on; institutions function as funnels for the production of future elites who maintain the status quo through increasingly coercive means. Radicalization funnels differ mainly in terms of transparency, accountability, visibility, and speed of transition.

The "enlightened" should know better since they are.. enlightened. Yet, the "plebs" found out they have exactly the same vices and reprehensible atitudes, plus the usual dismissive attitudes towards everyone "beneath" them.

Many of the "not plebs" do exactly what you described and that's what "changed", the illusion of the benevolent white coat "egg head" was broken. And I think it's a good thing, just by principle. Highly educated people are just as nasty, flawed people as anyone else and if I make a statement, it should be judged by the statement's merits and not by who I am.

The practice of science is something it can be done by everyone, as long as they.. follow the scientific method. Not even scientists follow the scientific method all the time, because they are.. flawed, lazy, greedy, dishonest sometimes. Just like everyone else.

He had utter disrespect for the science of the times, and held his own hamstringed ideas above all. Yet he was able to express them. And eventually he would get to play his small part in the advancement of the knowledge of humanity. And this is precisely how science operates. In science one does not HAVE to do anything. Had Galileo instead been determined that e.g. Jupiter is the center of the universe, and spent an equally feverish amount of energy trying to demonstrate such, then we wouldn't know his name today - but his work and ideas would have been no less scientific - but merely wrong.

The subjective experience defines a plethora of factors which are hard to fit into a general theory. If you live in a high-crime neighbourhood, you'd better trust your anecdotal evidence instead of relying on nation-wide sociological evidence.

The financial incentives in pharmaceutical research are particularly corrupting due to their size.

Can't wait for the AI propaganda era. The other day on Twitter someone was calling out a protest photo in which a cop's globe had the characteristic six fingers of an AI-hallucinated photo.

We can now manufacture "proof" with photos and audio - and soon video - of anything we want! Isn't this great?

"The science" as presented popularly regarding the COVID vaccines was that the risks were low and it less risky for anyone of any age group to get vaccinated rather than risk COVID, that turned out to be false. For some age groups, especially young people its less risky to get COVID, especially omicron, than to get vaccinated. The messaging still hasn't really changed in this regard.

Either way no matter the risk of COVID, the lockdowns, and vaccine passes, and mask mandates were ridiculous and very unscientific.

The why is interesting, but can only be speculation: could be political seeing that everything is so polarized nowadays: when the "lab leak" was first vented it was seen as a republican (Trumpian) notion that could lead to intensified clashes with China. But reading the correspondence brought to light by the Intercept and RightToKnow it seems that major fear from scientists was that lawmakers might shut down GoF research if a "lab leak" was found credible - something most of the big names in virology are heavily invested in, viewed as a necessary tool in future pandemic control.

I am still 99% immune against the Cov,

and I am 100% immune against vaccine side effects.

Who is the idiot now?

Causality is kind of "culturally sub-perceptual" (depending to some degree on one's geographical location and cultural/metaphysical training), I like thinking of it like the water in this classic parable:

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?"

Some critics of Hotez are antisemites. Therefore according to the principles of guilt by association, critics of scientism are generally antisemites. It follows that it is all hatespeech worthy of censorship.

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/04/baylor-professor-calls...

>Baylor Professor Calls for Prosecution of Criticism of Fauci and Other Scientists as Hate Crime

>Yet, what is healthy debate to some is criminal dissent to others. Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine is calling for federal hate-crime protections to be extended to cover criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists.

On the other hand, considering that the downvoters are unable to vocalize their angry reaction to me, I simply consider my argument/observation reinforced.

It certainly illustrates my wider point: When it comes to critics, most people opt to censor (yes, downvoting is a form of censoring) rather than engage, then wonder why the notion that there is something sinister going on is becoming more rather than less accepted.