The invention of the internet has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you can instantly discover how many stars a Thai restaurant in Benidorm has earned. On the other, it has unleashed a torrent of unregulated and often misleading information — particularly on subjects like medicine and meteorology, where accuracy can genuinely matter. Now, a gallant group of educated rationalists has taken it upon themselves to counter some of this misinformation, as reported by Nature Briefing.: Science Influences go viral:
| To combat the swathes of scientific misinformation circulating on social media platforms such as TikTok, scientists and medical experts are taking strategies straight out of the influencer playbook. Some content creators try to ‘pre-bunk’ misinformation by reaching a broad audience with peer-reviewed evidence on topics such as climate change. Others, such as Doctor Mike, challenge it head-on by fact-checking specific claims, including those by US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The task can be difficult for individual creators, who can face personal backlash, but it’s important to meet audiences where they are, says creator Simon Clark. Research has shown that these efforts can help to shift the dial on issues such as vaccine hesitancy.Nature | 10 min read |
We’ve often thought that the world of the internet is a bit like those old Victorian towns in the early Industrial Revolution, where their were no regulations about anything. So anyone could belch out anything they liked from their chimneys. And could put almost anything in a tin and call it food. Gradually laws were passed regulating pollution. Other laws imposed strict standards on what could be produced and sold. That was for physical things, of course. Isn’t time we had the same safeguards on all things digital?
#internet #pollution #misinformation #rational #fact check
Learning, Science and Society 