Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

Re:Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific m... by Cthulhu_ on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:13AM (#30146453)

I mean you raise a valid concern, it's a form of corruption, "muddying the waters", or CV padding that should be combated.

But doesn't low quality science impact the universities and papers that host these things? Wouldn't e.g. Elsevier want to keep charging money for high quality content? Are people and organizations not losing their reputations, jobs, and income over this?

I don't think switching over to laypersons' podcasts is a valid alternative to bad science.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific m... by mike_hearn on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:55AM (#30147024)

"But doesn't low quality science impact the universities and papers that host these things?"

Sadly, no, it doesn't.

"Are people and organizations not losing their reputations, jobs, and income over this?"

They are not. The system doesn't actually self correct in any visible way. The people who fund bad science either can't tell the difference between good and bad science, or don't care, or both.

"Wouldn't e.g. Elsevier want to keep charging money for high quality content?"

You mean the companies that happily publish gibberish written by spambots as "peer reviewed science"?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03035-y

"Hundreds of articles published in peer-reviewed journals are being retracted after scammers exploited the processes for publishing special issues to get poor-quality papers — sometimes consisting of complete gibberish — into established journals. In some cases, fraudsters posed as scientists and offered to guest-edit issues that they then filled with sham papers. Elsevier is withdrawing 165 articles currently in press and plans to retract 300 more that have been published as part of 6 special issues in one of its journals, and Springer Nature is retracting 62 articles published in a special issue of one journal."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific m... by icare_1er on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:32AM (#30146571)

If that's the only way to hear the full panel of scientists (as opposed to only those who are in bed with Big Pharma), then i'll gladly listen to whatever podcast they are on. And I don't need liberal-lefties to tell me who I should listen to and how i should make my opinions, thanks.

[ Parent | on HN ]