My first tweets on Covid were three years ago today, trying to provide some reassurance to what was obviously the beginnings of a potential collective hysteria.
Glad to see your comments about infirmity not age. I got sick of seeing how older people were all shoved into the same category, the constant 'you'll die of it cos you're old'.
The Diamond Princess was one of the things that convinced me that public health was selling porky pies with respect to Covid. This was long before I encountered any so-called "dissidents".
"We didn't know! It was the fog of war! We were just trying to help in a very difficult situation, sure some mistakes were made, but we had to do something!"
That was a lie. Your insights you shared then, as well as the insights shared by many highly educated and knowledgeable skeptics serve as evidence that the so-called "experts" knowingly lied. And with malice calculated how to silence those of us telling the truth.
Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox
Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online
TL/DR: The Hoi polloi, ignorant rubes, don't understand science...prone to conspiracy theories...Tea Party radicals...antivaxxers...White Christian fundamentalists...climate deniers...insurrectionists...do their own science without knowing how to science...produce science worthy of publication in any prominent scientific journal...joined by accomplished scientists to deny the consensus science (what accomplished scientists, we don't see any)...dangerous individual thinkers practicing the scientific method proficiently...have to be shouted down and silenced because they're too effective at dissecting and contradicting a consensus of experts. "Shut up! Don't question! Do as your told by your betters! Vee have vays of dealing vith your kind!
"Second, users also believe that state and local governments are deliberately withholding data so that they can unilaterally make decisions about whether or not lockdowns are effective. During a Facebook livestream with a Congressional candidate who wanted to “use data for reopening,” for example, both the candidate and an anti-mask group administrator discussed the extent to which state executives were willing to obscure the underlying data that were used to justify lockdown procedures
...
More tangibly, however, these groups seek to identify bias by being critical about specific profit motives that come from releasing (or suppressing) specific kinds of information. Many of the users within these groups are skeptical about the potential benefits of a coronavirus vaccine, and as a point of comparison, they often reference how the tobacco industry has historically manipulated science to mislead consumers. These groups believe that pharmaceutical companies have similarly villainous profit motives, which leads the industry to inflate data about the pandemic in order to stoke demand for a vaccine.
...
Paradoxically, these groups also seek ways to validate their findings through the scientific establishment. Many users prominently display their scientific credentials (e.g., referring to their doctoral degrees or prominent publications in venues like Nature) which uniquely qualify them as insiders who are most well-equipped to criticize the scientific community.
Members who perform this kind of expertise often point to 2013 Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt’s assertion that lockdowns do nothing to save lives as another indicator of scientific legitimacy. Both Levitt and these anti-mask groups identify the dangerous convergence of science and politics as one of the main barriers to a more reasonable and successful pandemic response, and they construct their own data visualizations as a way to combat what they see as health misinformation.
...
Long-time followers of the group often give small tutorials to new users on how to read and interpret specific visualizations, and users often give each other constructive feedback on how to adjust their graphic to make it more legible or intuitive. Some questions and comments would not be out of place at all at a visualization research poster session: “This doesn’t make sense. What do the colors mean? How does this demonstrate any useful information?”
These communities use data analysis as a way to socialize and enculturate their users; they promulgate data literacy practices as a way of inculcating heterodox ideology. The transmission of data literacy, then, becomes a method of political radicalization.
...
As a subculture, anti-masking amplifies anti-establishment currents pervasive in U.S. political culture. Data literacy, for antimaskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which
historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia. Moreover, their simultaneous appropriation of scientific rhetoric and rejection of scientific authority also reflects longstanding strategies of Christian fundamentalists seeking to challenge the secularist threat of evolutionary biology.
...
Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution. As we have outlined in the case study, these groups mistrust the scientific establishment (“Science”) because they believe that the institution has been corrupted by profit motives and politics. The knowledge that the CDC and academics have created cannot be trusted because they need to be subject to increased doubt, and not accepted as consensus.
In the same way that climate change skeptics have appealed to Karl Popper’s theory of falsification to show why climate science needs to be subjected to continuous scrutiny in order to be valid, we have found that anti-mask groups point to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to show how their anomalous evidence—once dismissed by the scientific establishment—will pave the way to a new paradigm. For anti-maskers, valid science must be a process they can critically engage for themselves in an unmediated way. Increased doubt, not consensus, is the marker of scientific certitude.
Arguing that anti-maskers simply need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed and inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: users in these communities are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production that they recognize as markers of scientific expertise.
...
We use Dr. Fauci’s provocation to illustrate how understanding the way that anti-mask groups think about science is crucial to grappling with the contested state of expertise in American democracy. In a study of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana explains the intractable partisan rift in American politics by emphasizing the importance of a “deep story”: a subjective prism that people use in order to make sense of the world and guide the way they vote. For Tea Party activists, this deep story revolved around anger towards a federal system ruled by liberal elites who pander to the interests of ethnic and religious minorities, while curtailing the advantages that White, Christian traditionalists view as their American birthright. We argue that the anti-maskers’ deep story draws from similar wells of resentment, but adds a particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic, condescending elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking from the lay public.
...
While academic science is traditionally a system for producing knowledge within a laboratory, validating it through peer review, and sharing results within subsidiary communities, anti-maskers reject this hierarchical social model. They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist. This study forces us to see that coronavirus skeptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy; for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts.
...
Powerful research and media organizations paid for by the tobacco or fossil fuel industries have historically capitalized on the skeptical impulse that the “science simply isn’t settled,” prompting people to simply “think for themselves” to horrifying ends. The attempted coup on January 6, 2021 has similarly illustrated that well-calibrated, well-funded systems of coordinated disinformation can be particularly dangerous when they are designed to appeal to skeptical people.
While individual insurrectionists are no doubt to blame for their own acts of violence, the coup relied on a collective effort fanned by people questioning, interacting, and sharing these ideas with other people. These skeptical narratives are powerful because they resonate with these these people’s lived experience and—crucially—because they are posted by influential accounts across influential platforms.
...
As we have seen, people are not simply passive consumers of media: anti-mask users in particular were predisposed to digging through the scientific literature and highlighting the uncertainty in academic publications that media organizations elide. When these uncertainties did not surface within public-facing versions of these studies, people began to assume that there was a broader cover-up."
Glad to see your comments about infirmity not age. I got sick of seeing how older people were all shoved into the same category, the constant 'you'll die of it cos you're old'.
The Diamond Princess was one of the things that convinced me that public health was selling porky pies with respect to Covid. This was long before I encountered any so-called "dissidents".
"We didn't know! It was the fog of war! We were just trying to help in a very difficult situation, sure some mistakes were made, but we had to do something!"
That was a lie. Your insights you shared then, as well as the insights shared by many highly educated and knowledgeable skeptics serve as evidence that the so-called "experts" knowingly lied. And with malice calculated how to silence those of us telling the truth.
Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox
Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online
MIT, January 20, 2021
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07993.pdf
TL/DR: The Hoi polloi, ignorant rubes, don't understand science...prone to conspiracy theories...Tea Party radicals...antivaxxers...White Christian fundamentalists...climate deniers...insurrectionists...do their own science without knowing how to science...produce science worthy of publication in any prominent scientific journal...joined by accomplished scientists to deny the consensus science (what accomplished scientists, we don't see any)...dangerous individual thinkers practicing the scientific method proficiently...have to be shouted down and silenced because they're too effective at dissecting and contradicting a consensus of experts. "Shut up! Don't question! Do as your told by your betters! Vee have vays of dealing vith your kind!
"Second, users also believe that state and local governments are deliberately withholding data so that they can unilaterally make decisions about whether or not lockdowns are effective. During a Facebook livestream with a Congressional candidate who wanted to “use data for reopening,” for example, both the candidate and an anti-mask group administrator discussed the extent to which state executives were willing to obscure the underlying data that were used to justify lockdown procedures
...
More tangibly, however, these groups seek to identify bias by being critical about specific profit motives that come from releasing (or suppressing) specific kinds of information. Many of the users within these groups are skeptical about the potential benefits of a coronavirus vaccine, and as a point of comparison, they often reference how the tobacco industry has historically manipulated science to mislead consumers. These groups believe that pharmaceutical companies have similarly villainous profit motives, which leads the industry to inflate data about the pandemic in order to stoke demand for a vaccine.
...
Paradoxically, these groups also seek ways to validate their findings through the scientific establishment. Many users prominently display their scientific credentials (e.g., referring to their doctoral degrees or prominent publications in venues like Nature) which uniquely qualify them as insiders who are most well-equipped to criticize the scientific community.
Members who perform this kind of expertise often point to 2013 Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt’s assertion that lockdowns do nothing to save lives as another indicator of scientific legitimacy. Both Levitt and these anti-mask groups identify the dangerous convergence of science and politics as one of the main barriers to a more reasonable and successful pandemic response, and they construct their own data visualizations as a way to combat what they see as health misinformation.
...
Long-time followers of the group often give small tutorials to new users on how to read and interpret specific visualizations, and users often give each other constructive feedback on how to adjust their graphic to make it more legible or intuitive. Some questions and comments would not be out of place at all at a visualization research poster session: “This doesn’t make sense. What do the colors mean? How does this demonstrate any useful information?”
These communities use data analysis as a way to socialize and enculturate their users; they promulgate data literacy practices as a way of inculcating heterodox ideology. The transmission of data literacy, then, becomes a method of political radicalization.
...
As a subculture, anti-masking amplifies anti-establishment currents pervasive in U.S. political culture. Data literacy, for antimaskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which
historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia. Moreover, their simultaneous appropriation of scientific rhetoric and rejection of scientific authority also reflects longstanding strategies of Christian fundamentalists seeking to challenge the secularist threat of evolutionary biology.
...
Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution. As we have outlined in the case study, these groups mistrust the scientific establishment (“Science”) because they believe that the institution has been corrupted by profit motives and politics. The knowledge that the CDC and academics have created cannot be trusted because they need to be subject to increased doubt, and not accepted as consensus.
In the same way that climate change skeptics have appealed to Karl Popper’s theory of falsification to show why climate science needs to be subjected to continuous scrutiny in order to be valid, we have found that anti-mask groups point to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to show how their anomalous evidence—once dismissed by the scientific establishment—will pave the way to a new paradigm. For anti-maskers, valid science must be a process they can critically engage for themselves in an unmediated way. Increased doubt, not consensus, is the marker of scientific certitude.
Arguing that anti-maskers simply need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed and inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: users in these communities are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production that they recognize as markers of scientific expertise.
...
We use Dr. Fauci’s provocation to illustrate how understanding the way that anti-mask groups think about science is crucial to grappling with the contested state of expertise in American democracy. In a study of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana explains the intractable partisan rift in American politics by emphasizing the importance of a “deep story”: a subjective prism that people use in order to make sense of the world and guide the way they vote. For Tea Party activists, this deep story revolved around anger towards a federal system ruled by liberal elites who pander to the interests of ethnic and religious minorities, while curtailing the advantages that White, Christian traditionalists view as their American birthright. We argue that the anti-maskers’ deep story draws from similar wells of resentment, but adds a particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic, condescending elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking from the lay public.
...
While academic science is traditionally a system for producing knowledge within a laboratory, validating it through peer review, and sharing results within subsidiary communities, anti-maskers reject this hierarchical social model. They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist. This study forces us to see that coronavirus skeptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy; for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts.
...
Powerful research and media organizations paid for by the tobacco or fossil fuel industries have historically capitalized on the skeptical impulse that the “science simply isn’t settled,” prompting people to simply “think for themselves” to horrifying ends. The attempted coup on January 6, 2021 has similarly illustrated that well-calibrated, well-funded systems of coordinated disinformation can be particularly dangerous when they are designed to appeal to skeptical people.
While individual insurrectionists are no doubt to blame for their own acts of violence, the coup relied on a collective effort fanned by people questioning, interacting, and sharing these ideas with other people. These skeptical narratives are powerful because they resonate with these these people’s lived experience and—crucially—because they are posted by influential accounts across influential platforms.
...
As we have seen, people are not simply passive consumers of media: anti-mask users in particular were predisposed to digging through the scientific literature and highlighting the uncertainty in academic publications that media organizations elide. When these uncertainties did not surface within public-facing versions of these studies, people began to assume that there was a broader cover-up."
Yep. Because there was. And is.