On all matters reality decides which is which. None of us have a psychic link to God (anyone who thinks he does, does not, and should be institutionalised), but there are many good heuristics for what is true, and we do not have to abandon the concept of truth.
Disclaimer: i'm far from an anti-vaxxer and i have a scientific background (though not in biology).
It's often hard to establish scientific consensus. When it's not hard, it can take a long time. Cases such as climate change are as easy as it gets: models are always a flawed approximation for reality, but denying climate change on a scientific basis is almost impossible nowadays because we have too much data and too many converging studies.
About a century ago, the "scientific" consensus in the western world was that there were different human races with very different characteristics, and phrenology was considered a science.
The question of who establishes the ground truth, and who checks the checkers still stands. Science advances by asking sometimes inconvenient, sometimes outright weird questions. And sometimes the answers provided are plain wrong (but not for obvious reasons or malice), which is why reproducibility is so important.
I don't think any entity should have the power to prevent people from questioning the status quo. Especially since censorship feeds into the mindset of the conspiracy theorists and their real truth that "THEY" don't want you to see.
There’s a difference between questioning the status quo and spreading obvious misinformation. Did the vaccine save lives? Yes. Did misinformation about the vaccine cost lives? Yes it did.
and you are the one to decide that this science we should ignore, and instead we declare as the truth the lies that these lying through their teeth bastards are telling. You do like the "gold standard of science", RFK Junior and Trump edition, don't you? The same censorship as you like.
Btw, how many top world infectious diseases scientists were among FB “fact checkers”?
direwolf20|1 month ago
jamwil|1 month ago
southerntofu|1 month ago
It's often hard to establish scientific consensus. When it's not hard, it can take a long time. Cases such as climate change are as easy as it gets: models are always a flawed approximation for reality, but denying climate change on a scientific basis is almost impossible nowadays because we have too much data and too many converging studies.
About a century ago, the "scientific" consensus in the western world was that there were different human races with very different characteristics, and phrenology was considered a science.
The question of who establishes the ground truth, and who checks the checkers still stands. Science advances by asking sometimes inconvenient, sometimes outright weird questions. And sometimes the answers provided are plain wrong (but not for obvious reasons or malice), which is why reproducibility is so important.
I don't think any entity should have the power to prevent people from questioning the status quo. Especially since censorship feeds into the mindset of the conspiracy theorists and their real truth that "THEY" don't want you to see.
jamwil|1 month ago
trhway|1 month ago
Btw, how many top world infectious diseases scientists were among FB “fact checkers”?
like_any_other|1 month ago
[1] The government decides which scientists specifically.