[HN Gopher] How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science
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       How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science
        
       Author : phreeza
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2021-09-11 18:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.tabletmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.tabletmag.com)
        
       | ivoras wrote:
       | Sigh. Some day I hope I can get this project funded:
       | https://github.com/WOTvision/wot1
       | 
       | "This is a repository containing an implementation of a
       | blockchain which supports an unique feature set: asserting trust
       | of information organised in JSON documents.
       | 
       | The goal is to have a global public notary service, for people
       | and corporations to issue signed statements which are globally
       | recognized and verifyable, which are identified by a QR code,
       | which the media and news channels can reproduce and which can be
       | verified by the consumers of information (i.e. ordinary people).
       | The vision is to combat fake news by using a thing blockchains
       | are very good at: distributing reliable data, and by providing a
       | low-tech user-centric interface to it, which everyone can use to
       | verify random junk they hear on the media."
        
         | mrkramer wrote:
         | For example you can already embed messages inside Bitcoin
         | transactions and then crawl and index them all from Bitcoin's
         | blockchain. Organizations can prove and verify their Bitcoin
         | addresses using PGP.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | But how can the public know which submission to the blockchain
         | is the ground truth?
        
         | yyyk wrote:
         | What is the value in this project?
         | 
         | If the purpose is to let X make statement Y and prove did X
         | said Y and only Y, there are at least five more prevalent
         | standards to do so ranging from other blockchains to web
         | sites/archiving, DNS records, various archives across the
         | world, etc. We can make the QR example work today with a URL.
         | 
         | All these mechanisms are much more likely to survive longer
         | than the suggested project, and are less subject to Proof-of-
         | work energy waste.
         | 
         | That leaves the voting mechanism, which isn't very useful
         | either - truth isn't subject to majority vote.
        
       | cblconfederate wrote:
       | Maybe scientific debate shouldn't be conducted in public.
       | Scientists quarelling inside a conference is bad enough, but when
       | they feel they can weaponize their hordes of followers, things
       | turn nuclear and nuance is lost. This might be the first
       | scientific crisis in which chemical substances were being judged
       | by their political affiliation (HCQ), and in which scientists
       | need to declare their politics before engaging, it was pathetic
        
         | jokethrowaway wrote:
         | Not a crisis, but climate change was similar
        
           | bobbytit wrote:
           | The climate religion destroyed the credibility of science.
        
             | ant6n wrote:
             | Those with money and power have always sought to undermine
             | scientists that uncover inconvenient truths. Example:
             | Gallileo.
        
               | bobbytit wrote:
               | Which is why every scientist with the courage to speak
               | out against the climate scam has been cancelled.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-12 23:01 UTC)