[HN Gopher] We haven't killed 90% of all plankton
___________________________________________________________________
We haven't killed 90% of all plankton
Author : samizdis
Score : 193 points
Date : 2022-07-19 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| In practice...we have. The idea that our behaviour will somehow
| drastically improve is pretty optimistic to put it mildly.
|
| In practice, it is almost a statistical inevitability that we
| will continue to overpopulate at this point and in that way there
| is nothing hyperbolic about the statement that, more than likely,
| they are as good as dead.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A lot of this is about shifting ecosystems. For example, less ice
| in the Arctic could actually increase zooplankton abundance in
| that region, although warming waters also tend to result in
| smaller-sized zooplankton. Think soupy northern seas vs. clear
| tropical seas.
|
| https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/climate-drives-...
|
| > ""Loss of sea ice and sea ice algae will change the timing and
| the amount of production that goes into high-quality food.
| Everything might happen earlier. There might be a longer plankton
| season with more abundant plankton and some studies have
| suggested this may benefit the ecosystem," said Kimmel. "The
| region is warming and it remains to be seen how the ecosystem
| will ultimately respond.""
|
| Media unfortunately runs one-sided clickbait, apparently because
| they think this brings more views and engagement. In-depth
| analysis and nuance isn't very popular, particularly when there
| are several opposed parties with agendas involved.
| Bang2Bay wrote:
| The author of this paper finally states: " Dryden and his co-
| authors do identify atmospheric CO2 as the driver of ocean
| acidification, which they warn will result in the loss of 80-90
| percent of all marine life by 2045." Which essentially negates
| his own claim that the other article is rubbish. The current
| article is more rubbish than the original that author wants to
| critique.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Dryden is the same person who made the "90%" loss claim. The
| key part of that paragraph is this part:
|
| _he has appeared to blame the problem on microplastics_
|
| Because Dryden owns Dryden Aqua, a water treatment/filtration
| company. And its interesting that he makes bold claims like
| these, and places the blame on something he stands to benefit
| from, assigning lesser blame on what we know is likely the
| larger impact on plankton loss (global warming).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| A predicted 80-90% loss in 23 years is not the same as a 90%
| loss now.
| riffic wrote:
| on a geological time scale, it might as well be.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Honestly, at the rate that our species has sprung into action
| to combat climate change thus far, I'd say it may as well be.
| vehementi wrote:
| > Five hundred data points collected from 13 vessels sounds
| impressive, but David Johns, head of the Continuous Plankton
| Recorder Survey, describes it as "a literal drop in the ocean."
| Johns would know--the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey has
| been running since 1958 and has accumulated more than 265,000
| samples.
|
| That uh isn't how stats works. 500 data points is a significant
| amount if they were being taken in a proper (randomized) manner.
| Maybe Johns is being taken out of context (i.e. his point might
| be that the sampling methodology was poor) but this too sounds
| like BS.
| nomel wrote:
| The ocean is 41 million square miles. That's 82,000 square
| miles per sample, from only 13 ships, or over 3 million square
| miles per ship.
|
| The accuracy of their model would have to be _incredible_ ,
| assuming those boats weren't jet powered racing boats.
|
| It would be interesting to see the coordinates of each sample.
| I assume we'll see something unimpressive since, as the article
| points out, the data containing many times the samples does not
| agree, suggesting this did _not_ use the appropriate
| statistical methods /sampling.
| HillRat wrote:
| The problem is that the ocean is not amenable to random
| sampling in the same way that, say, Twitter accounts are;
| phytoplankton are going to be differentially-distributed
| depending on where in the euphotic zone you're sampling, which
| latitudes, distance to land, time of year, and so on, which is
| why longitudinal biodiversity studies are carried out in
| specific areas. It's vanishingly unlikely that 500 water
| samples of unknown provenance (and I'm curious why they weren't
| sampling using the standard method of towed plankton nets) can
| demonstrate a global extinction event of all plankton, though
| it could indicate a loss of biodiversity in certain areas. God
| knows we're working hard to empty out our oceans, but I'm not
| sure that this paper demonstrates what they claim.
| chomp wrote:
| > and I'm curious why they weren't sampling using the
| standard method of towed plankton nets
|
| Because the GOES Foundation use volunteer yachts to collect
| the data:
|
| https://www.goesfoundation.com/citizen-science-project/
|
| >Twice a day, (if possible) we want you to take a 0.5 litre
| of sea water, put it through a GOES filter (developed by
| Dr.Jesus Ramon Barriuso Diez), count plankton, microplastics
| (fibres and beads) and any other particles which are over 20
| microns.
|
| I believe they went with this method because it's easier for
| non-scientists to contribute to their study.
|
| They mention nets, but you're right in being suspicious in
| the method of collection. It does not seem like it uses best
| practices.
| corncob15 wrote:
| Not a marine biologist, but this seems like it would
| explain their entire findings. Yachts tend to hang out more
| around the tropics and less around murky waters in, say,
| the North Atlantic. Clear water, such as you'd find in the
| Bahamas, is clear precisely because of lower plankton
| populations[1]. By collecting data off of pleasure boats,
| they're corrupting the data right off the bat!
|
| 1: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-some-beaches-have-
| clear-...
| f7fg_u-_h wrote:
| Great points, and additionally pleasure yachts stay
| relatively near coasts most of the time and don't
| navigate the deep water.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I believe they went with this method because it 's
| easier for non-scientists to contribute to their study._
|
| Which should probably cast their study in an even more
| negative light. Even ignoring the fact that the samples
| were collected contrary to a standard method, we can't be
| sure the samples collected by random people were actually
| all done in a similar way as _each other_.
| hinkley wrote:
| Climate change could not only affect the viability of
| plankton, but also shift ocean and air currents. Sampling at
| the same GPS coordinates could give very different results
| from one year to the next.
|
| If the plankton counts suddenly shot up 2 orders of magnitude
| in a location, I expect that would cause a lot of questions
| to be asked that might result in more accurate results. But a
| decline or increase of 25% might just be assumed to be
| population fluctuations instead of a shift.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Here is another guy with a domain PhD, who had this to say
|
| >Also "13 vessels and more than 500 data points" for a finding
| this sweeping in its assertions is enough to make any microbial
| oceanographer fall off their lab bench laughing.
|
| https://twitter.com/wang_seaver/status/1548751068640686080
| mikece wrote:
| Is it just me or is there a growing appeal to science coupled
| with a decreasing literacy in science?
| la64710 wrote:
| I think the number of folks turning away from science or
| appreciating a scientific thought process or in simple terms
| logical thinking is increasing in this country. You cannot
| expect folks who look down on education or "educated folks" in
| general to appreciate the benefits of a scientific thought
| process. They might be in fact more prone to accepting
| disinformation and conspiracy theories that aligns with their
| worldview than listening to scientific facts that doesn't align
| with their world view and accepting those scientific facts.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I remember Nietzsche had an argument that due to the success of
| Science that new things would be structured as if they were
| scientific, for example, that if a new religion arose it would
| pretend to be a form of Science. But that of course there are
| many things that cannot be scientific and these things would
| have to pretend to be while actually not being. As such Science
| would be subverted by the followers of its own success.
|
| This memory is about 25-30 years old, so not sure how accurate
| it is.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Interesting, sounds like a possible influence on L. Ron
| Hubbard if nothing else.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Not surprised, during Nietzsche's time we had the rise of
| Spiritism, which presented itself as a "science" first and
| philosophical doctrine second.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Also see Marxism (not the economics part, but the "history"
| and the "scientific socialism" part) and Scientology.
| swayvil wrote:
| Even the Dalai Lama is on board with that sentiment.
|
| _If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then
| Buddhism will have to change. In my view._
|
| He is well aware which side of the bread the butter's on.
|
| That said, the scientific method is not without its
| gargantuan biases and filters. It looks through a pinhole.
| igorkraw wrote:
| I'd say it's more that there is an increasing desire for
| science and science literacy, but those are expensive public
| goods that our current system has limited incentive to provide.
| That leaves the window open to interest groups and marketers do
| bad science or push pseudoscience that simply imitates the form
| and makes people _feel_ informed and fact based again.
|
| So science literacy is slowly increasing, but the amount of
| bullshit masquerading as science to nudge you to buy more Camel
| cigarettes or vote whatever policy the charlatan wants to push
| is increasing a lot faster
| sliken wrote:
| Definitely seeing a trend in decreased literacy in science.
| Voters are more easily manipulated, and proposed legislation
| increasingly has a misleading title and not enough voters can
| understand the details.
|
| Things like the Florida governor banning state use of the term
| "Global Warming", as if that's going to fix the problems
| Florida faces. Or maybe the view that the USA government
| shouldn't back 30 year mortgages for places expected to be
| unusable in 30 years.
|
| I had a little taste of this when my city's schools decided to
| kill off a major academic program based on a "peer reviewed
| publication". Parents were shocked, layoffs were made, the
| decision was made after normal meeting hours when the video
| recording was off. People asked for more clarification. Turns
| out a parent wrote up an opinion piece that boiled down to, if
| their kid didn't get in, they wanted the program gone. They
| showed it to a friend (the peer) who liked it. They thought
| that counted a "peer reviewed publication" and thought it was
| justification for killing off AIM/Gate, despite the success of
| the program and minimal cost (the AIM/Gate classes had the same
| teacher/student ratios).
|
| Another sad case was a new development that set aside some land
| to make room for burrowing owls, after a year or two that land
| was sold to developers. The reason? They didn't think any owls
| actually lived there, it didn't occur to them that you'd only
| see the owls at night. I walked the perimeter every night with
| my dog and would often see the owls on fence posts.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| People are right to trust science more than opinion.
|
| However the media amplifies bad science to capitalize on
| narratives and make money.
|
| Good news media is supposed to put things through a critical
| lens and explain to people things are currently a theory or
| just a small subset of a bigger picture... but they media has
| become click bait and unreliable.
|
| They will take the tiniest shred of evidence and use that to
| make some wildly sensational claim.
| [deleted]
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| oneoff786 wrote:
| So are you claiming that the 90% claim is indicative of
| decreasing literacy or the rebuttal?
| xeromal wrote:
| I think moreso that people took the 90% headline to heart, me
| included, is a sign that we're less skeptical than we should
| be.
| wccrawford wrote:
| It's not just an "appeal", it's a "belief". Not based in fact
| or logic but in faith. They seem to think that if scientists
| said it, it must be real, and anyone that tries to say
| otherwise is just wrong.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Media propaganda promoting that view of "science" isn't
| helping much.
| haunter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
| bvirb wrote:
| In my experience I think it usually comes from a mistaken
| idea that all fields of science are equally predictive, which
| I think comes from a popular misconception that "science" =
| "physics".
|
| I think we colloquially get drawn into thinking that science-
| as-in-physics is the same thing as science-as-in-biology is
| the same thing as science-as-in-economics, especially when it
| comes to what they all mean by "fact" and "proven". Media
| then takes advantage of this general misunderstanding to make
| "weather facts" sound like they are just as concrete as
| "fundamental physics facts" because it gets more attention.
| Then we find ourselves arguing about climate science with the
| same level of self-assured veracity we might argue about
| billiard balls on an ideal surface in a vacuum.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I think this observation is mostly overblown. I'm sure some
| people "worship" science to an irrational degree, whatever
| that means in each case, but it seems like in most cases what
| we're seeing is actually this: If you see two opposing
| opinions, and one is ostensibly derived in whole or in part
| by science, and the other isn't, then, prior to further
| information or extenuating circumstances, it makes sense to
| defer to the latter when making decisions or forming
| opinions. That doesn't mean you are _sure it is correct_ , it
| means you are _sure it is more likely to be correct than the
| alternative_ , which is far more reasonable. It might _look_
| like people are picking the ostensibly-science-backed choice
| with unthinking faith, when the majority of them are simply
| making the more statistically likely choice given the
| information available. In most cases, it 's impossible to
| tell the difference, and this gives rise to a lot of
| political rhetoric that exploits that ambiguity.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > and one is ostensibly derived in whole or in part by
| science, and the other isn't
|
| So as long as the shit is wrapped up better we should eat
| it?
| adamrezich wrote:
| I had an argument with an old friend a bit ago over the
| efficacy and possible nth-order effects of publicly-funded
| "safe shoot-up sites" for drug addicts. my point was that
| lots of progressive liberal ideas about policy come from a
| place of feelings about what the "morally right" thing to
| is ("give homeless addicts a place to safely use drugs, to
| prevent spread of disease etc."), while not necessarily
| thinking through possible nth-order effects that could
| result from such policy decisions, specifically with
| regards to factors of human incentives and motivations ("if
| you provide a taxpayer-funded safe drug use facility, how
| will this affect inherently dangerous & self-destructive
| intravenous drug use in the long term? decrease it, keep it
| roughly the same, or increase it?"). as a means of arguing
| his position ("safe shoot-up facilities are good and
| effective"), he referred me to a nearly decade-old study
| that was done over the course of three years, and to him,
| that was slam dunk proof that his position was the better
| one. I pointed out the questionable research methods ("drug
| dealers in the area _didn 't_ report higher sales in the
| three years after opening the facility"), the length of the
| study (three years), and the time that has passed since the
| study (an additional seven years), and asked if maybe this
| was cause for at least further investigation, but to him,
| The Science Was Settled, someone did a research project and
| published the results in some journal, so That's That,
| Everything Is Good, Confirmed.
|
| I want to stress here that in this instance I may still be
| fully in the wrong and he may in fact be correct with
| regards to our assessments of the overall situation--my
| point is merely that my friend took the _mere existence_ of
| a research paper in a journal with findings that affirmed
| his beliefs as if it were Gospel, because it 's a Study in
| a Scientific Journal, you see. never mind that social
| sciences are far more fuzzy than hard sciences, never mind
| the methods used in the study, never mind following up and
| seeing if anything changed in seven years. no, a Study in a
| Journal asserted that his Beliefs were Correct, so that
| might as well be a Science stone tablet with Science
| written on it that some Scientists were directly told by
| Science God from Science Heaven to write.
|
| this friend is, of course, an atheist, basically an anti-
| theist really, and the degree of Faith he places in the
| Gospel of Science (even Social Science!!!) being comparable
| to that which adherents to conventional religion place upon
| their holy books remains completely lost on him.
|
| I don't think this is a particularly uncommon way of
| thinking these days.
| 300bps wrote:
| I think it's more political.
|
| If you agree with the political conclusion of a study then
| it's science. If you disagree then it's fake news.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| To the extent a study has a political conclusion, it's
| not science, but relatively few really do.
|
| (Some have conclusions that policy entrepreneurs find
| useful to support a political agenda, either because of
| what they actually say or because of what people can be
| deceived into understanding them to say, but that's a
| different thing than actually having a political
| conclusion.)
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Is Plankton dying political? You would not think so but
| it definitely is.
|
| Republicans would be quick to dismiss the article
| assuming it is another attack in economic success, global
| warming etc... Democrats would be quick to point to the
| article as support for reasons to support progressive
| policies.
|
| Literally everything is political today
| ksdale wrote:
| I disagree that it's overblown. For every study that's
| utterly failed to replicate over the past however many
| decades, people have been "sure it is more likely to be
| correct than the alternative" and that's literally not the
| case. The word "science" has been invoked in a way that
| makes people believe that they have more information about
| the world than they do. Updating towards a study that
| wasn't properly conducted is worse than the study not
| existing, because it removes uncertainty that you _should_
| still possess, but it is touted as "science" in popular
| media all the same.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| Especially in areas like psychology or sociology, where
| studies over the past few decades are more likely _not to
| be replicable_ than they are to be replicable. Compounded
| with the disgusting state of pop "scientific"
| "journalism", it's probably a better heuristic at this
| point _not_ to believe most scientific news to be
| correct.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Updating towards a study that wasn 't properly conducted
| is worse than the study not existing, because it removes
| uncertainty that you should still possess, but it is
| touted as "science" in popular media all the same._
|
| This is why I try to pollute as much as I possible can.
| "Science" keeps telling me that climate change is an
| important issue and that we need to curb pollution to
| fight it. As you just said, since it comes from a place
| that can't be trusted, the logical choice is to take the
| opposite stance.
| ksdale wrote:
| Definitely what I said
| Xeoncross wrote:
| We crave an authority that will give us knowledge and control
| of the unknown.
|
| Even bad information gives us a small sense of power and
| security.
| [deleted]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I highly doubt it and don't think you'd be able to quantify
| this claim. Poor science literacy is one thing, but the idea
| that producers or consumers of popular media were more
| scientifically literate in the past doesn't pass a basic sanity
| check. People were less formally educated, the resources to
| become informally educated were less accessible, the general
| push for statistical literacy and data-driven approaches to
| anything at all largely didn't begin until 10-15 years ago.
| Where would this greater scientific literacy of the past have
| come from?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Those concepts are too vague to draw conclusions from. If
| producers had higher bars for scientific/statistical
| literacy, and reasoned, unbiased reporting, then that's all
| you need for it to have been better in the past.
|
| And in this particular case, even a less well known
| publication's lies can go around the world via social media
| sharing before the truth gets its boots on.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| A lot of people forget that science is "a process", rather than
| "a priesthood". There are plenty of grifters, cult leaders, and
| crazed street preachers benefiting from this.
| yonixw wrote:
| Is there any centralized place for all peer reviewed articles?
|
| As a programmer (and not as an academic person), I have no idea
| how to check if an article was peer reviewed or had harsh
| response from academic sources.
|
| I wish it was like npmjs.com who provides me an audit tool for
| their Nodejs packages in the same npm CLI.
| igorkraw wrote:
| There's peerpub and retractionwatch, but that's about it I
| believe. Science is inherently decentralised
| samizdis wrote:
| > Is there any centralized place for all peer reviewed
| articles?
|
| There isn't one, as far as I know, but supposedly one can turn
| to bona fide publications for peer-reviewed studies/reports
| etc; there are specialist journals about almost any science
| subject, however mainstream or niche.
|
| However, the peer-review process is increasingly
| discredited/broken, according to articles such as this recent
| example [1] _Peer review is frustrating and flawed - here's how
| we can fix it_.
|
| It would also seem that many supposedly reputable journals
| often publish without due diligence, too. The site Retraction
| Watch [2] exists to draw attention to published papers
| subsequently having to be withdrawn. Reasons for retractions
| can be poor methodology, dubious authorship and lots more -
| which point to failings in the peer-review system.
|
| [1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/peer-review-
| frus...
|
| [2] https://retractionwatch.com/
| valarauko wrote:
| > how to check if an article was peer reviewed or had harsh
| response from academic sources.
|
| This is a different problem than the issue of a central
| repository for all peer reviewed articles. Some journals allow
| you to see the trail of the actual peer review (questions
| raised by reviewers, responses & changes made by authors, etc)
| but this is far from the norm. The standard practice is to only
| offer the final version of the article, and to not release the
| trail of peer review to the general public.
|
| pubpeer.com does allow people to raise concerns and discuss
| individual publications for technical issues/plagarism, and its
| typical for the authors to come on there and provide further
| information or clarifications. Pubpeer however is a third party
| site distinct from the peer review process that journals do
| before publication. It's also not uncommon to see papers pulled
| due to concerns raised on pubpeer.
| dekhn wrote:
| I don't use peer reviews as a proxy for paper quality. Many
| great papers had terrible peer reviews, and vice versa. Enough
| that it's not really a predictor of anything.
| jhbadger wrote:
| It's an imperfect measure to be sure (peer reviewers are
| humans), but it's the best criterion anyone has ever come up
| with so far. It certainly weeds out a lot of cranks (even if
| it on rare occasions mistakes a novel genius for a crank),
| and isn't that robust to deliberate fraud (peer reviewers
| generally look for errors in analysis or lack of needed
| controls rather than look for faked data).
| hprotagonist wrote:
| There isn't, at all, and there never will be.
|
| It's on you to go sniff the butt of the journal that publishes
| a research article and see if they're legit. You're also on the
| hook for seeing if there have been any retractions, letters of
| concern, articles in reply, and who if anyone cited the thing
| you're reading.
|
| Some journals offer tools specific to themselves to help you
| with some of this, and there are a few non-journal services
| that can help you get some of this information across journals
| (google scholar, pubmed, etc...) but they're scattershot and
| discipline specific.
| geysersam wrote:
| > There never will be.
|
| That's overly pessimistic. There's lots of effort making
| publicly funded research more accessible.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| The issue is with the "for all" statement.
| geysersam wrote:
| _Never_ is a strong word, considering science publishing
| in the current form is barely a century old.
| yonixw wrote:
| Why not, though? After all, I'm sure a large university like
| MIT has a lot to gain from a site like this that promotes
| them to the top of the list as someone who publishes genuine
| papers.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Although there are some journals that are "open access" and
| encourage mirroring their papers, most are not so and
| consider mirroring their articles to be piracy -- so until
| copyright law is reformed, there can never be a (legal)
| repository of the scientific literature, although projects
| like Sci-Hub exist just as things like Pirate Bay do.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| They will be, and are, merely one among many. What grants
| MIT the authority to be The One Source Of Truth? Why? Who
| compels it?
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| And that the authors don't have conflicts of interest. It's a
| decentralized unregulated reader-beware system. Even the good
| journals, say like Nature, are still just private companies
| that make up and then follow their own rules which they could
| change or ignore at will. Good science happens all the time,
| but, BS also gets published and, sadly, often gets more
| attention than the legit stuff because its more sensational.
| Its a tough problem with no easy solution.
| theduder99 wrote:
| maybe a business opportunity for someone reading this thread
| [deleted]
| leroman wrote:
| The other day I was arguing with anti-vaxer people I know on FB..
| Upon checking their FB profiles (as I like to do to try to
| understand these people better) I saw they were also denying that
| there is actually a heat wave in Europe and it's actually all a
| big scam to keep us all scared, apparently it's the next thing
| for the media after they have used up Covid for this role..
|
| This institutional disdain is all engulfing by this point, and
| unfortunately being used more and more by politicians and any
| party that is morally bankrupts enough and finds a way to exploit
| this.
|
| Is there anything we (as in people who believe in science and
| still have some institutional belief) should be doing to help
| science/media/institutions get their shit together?
| yreg wrote:
| I used to be optimistic that in the end the humanity would pull
| through and manage to keep global warming under +2degC.
|
| After covid I've lost a lot of that hope. We've seen the masses
| unwilling to undergo the incredibly minor inconvenience of
| wearing a mask and getting a jab to prevent deaths of their
| neighbours.
|
| How can we hope to together give up our comfort to the extent
| it will be needed to face the challenges that lay ahead?
| splittingTimes wrote:
| My take on this is that those people lack fundamental
| understanding of science and how it works [1]. Their math is of
| the level of a sixth grader. If you do not understand
| something, it is easier to mistrust it and they are easier
| manipulated.
|
| > Is there anything we (as in people who believe in science and
| still have some institutional belief) should be doing to help
| science/media/institutions get their shit together?
|
| Help in Education. There are levels to this. Start with your
| children. Encourage and foster their curiosity. Help them to
| become critical thinkers. Be involved in their educational
| institutions. Asks if the kids could have a field trip to the
| local museum of science / natural history or the planetarium or
| astronomy observatory. Offer yourself to be a reading/literacy
| mentor and pick interesting books. If you really got a nack for
| it, get involved in the institutions themselves: Become a
| science educator, be it a school teacher, in a community
| college, or elsewhere.
|
| This is the long game. Will take at least 18 years.
|
| Change politics. Again there are levels. Become interested at
| first. Then become more involved. Bring your expertise to the
| table. Etc. It is a very very difficult path where we will
| often fail to succeed, but I think we should try. In politics
| we would have access to the biggest levers to enact changes.
|
| A big problem is that science becomes politicized and corrupted
| to serve a certain agenda, see COVID response [2]. Or how big
| corporations can sponsor fake science (tabacco, oil, sugar
| industry) and use it to deter political decision.
|
| === [1] on a very basic level, like looking for patterns in
| empiric observations, of formulating a falsifiable theory, test
| it with experiments. That level.
|
| [2] in the beginning the response was science based, but then
| an agenda kicked in and the measurements did not change when
| the science/dynamics of the pandemic changed. (Vaccines do
| prevent hospitalization, but not infection. They do not lead to
| herd immunity. They became ever less effective with newer
| variants. The variants became less lethal. Still the government
| was hell bent on vaccine mandates, when it was clear that it
| would really just only protect you and not others. There was
| never a study on the effect on long COVID. Children's response
| is overwhelmingly mild, ect.
| csours wrote:
| People don't maintain different sections of their brains for
| "beliefs arrived at by dispassionate and factual study" and
| "beliefs that help me get through the day and give me power
| over my situation" and "weirdo beliefs that I got from the
| sewer of the internet".
|
| All of the conspiracy theory people feel a loss of control over
| their lives or disconnection with society. They feel like
| traditional media is trying to invalidate their personal
| experiences. Lots of people are willing and ready to exploit
| that feeling by wedging in a conspiracy theory. Then these
| exploiters will either sell them something, or try to get them
| to vote for a candidate, or something. There are also some
| genuine crazy people, but don't assume that as the default.
|
| So what can you do? I think you can only make a difference in a
| 1 on 1 conversation. You can't directly repudiate their weirdo
| beliefs. You have to acknowledge what they believe. You have to
| accept at the start of the conversation that you may not turn
| them around. If you really want to make a difference, have a
| tiny goal for each conversation - just connect with them. Let
| them feel like people from the mainstream world care about
| them.
|
| Look up "High Demand Groups" (aka Cults). The resources for
| them also apply to people who believe in conspiracy theories.
| dqpb wrote:
| Covid deniers prayer:
|
| - Covid isn't real
|
| - and if it is real, it's not that bad
|
| - and if it is that bad, it's not as bad as the vaccine
|
| - and if it is worse than the vaccine, it's fine because I
| already had it in 2019
|
| source: Real conversations I had with a family member.
| narrator wrote:
| The new method of arguing is not to actually look at the
| person's argument but to instead investigate their background
| to find some other belief they have. Once you find a
| cancellable belief, you can use that to cancel them and then
| you can safely ignore their argument. If anyone asks you about
| their argument, you can just point to the other thing they
| believe without actually addressing their argument.
|
| The reason for this new method of arguing is that arguing
| without fallacies is hard, and the other person may have a good
| argument, but then if you follow logic and don't use fallacies
| and somehow believe that argument everyone will cancel you and
| completely ignore everything you have to say because when they
| investigate your background they will find that you believe an
| argument that makes you cancellable.
|
| This is just repackaged Lysenkoism where you stop questioning
| someone's theory because the whole rest of your life will get
| cancelled if you do.
|
| "More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or
| imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the Soviet
| campaign to suppress scientific opponents. "[1]
|
| Then later on, Stalin, in "Marxism and the Problem of
| Linguistics" decided that he had made a mistake politicizing
| basic science and denounced people who attached ideological
| labels to science and language. That's because Beria was having
| trouble getting the nuclear bomb project finished because
| ideologues inside the party were trying to cancel scientists
| who believed in relativity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
| swayvil wrote:
| leroman wrote:
| It's unfortunate you see it this way..
|
| Actually, I recommend you do the same. This has helped me to-
|
| - find them more humain when I see these people in family
| gatherings and other life events
|
| - find that we have some other ideological intersection
| (vegan, promoting donation to help animals etc..)
|
| It's very easy to de-humanize someone on the internet, this
| has helped me to understand these are real people, and not
| "bots" who are paid to say things I find hard to believe
| anyone could believe in..
| roflyear wrote:
| Mental illness is everywhere.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Therapy doesn't scale and the drugs just turn people into
| zombies. The only solution is to prevent it in the first
| place. Too bad all it takes is one traumatic event to push
| so many people over the edge into world of nonsense.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| As different, presumably, to the gp, I commend you for being
| level headed and compassionate, even with people you disagree
| with, and especially around such big topics. That kind of
| universal kindness and empathy doesn't grow on trees, and
| takes sometimes hard work; I can tell by your tone you are
| like that and it gives me hope for our future. Thanks, truly.
|
| Im not sure what 'chortle' is?
| swayvil wrote:
| It's like guffaw except with extra phlegm.
| sporkland wrote:
| But we did kill 90% of Electrical Engineers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142711
| pvaldes wrote:
| What? they didn't really counted all the plankton in the ocean?
|
| Scientists are shocked
|
| Google: principles of ecology: "distribution in mosaic"
| MBCook wrote:
| At this point I believe almost 0% of "science" news I see. This
| headline so so insanely outrageous I knew it had to be wrong.
|
| Between pre-prints, overly enthusiastic press releases, and
| reporters who often don't have the slightest clue what they're
| talking about it's not worth it.
|
| I'm not surprised an ever increasing portion of the public
| doesn't believe in science. We're practically conditioning them
| _not_ to.
| [deleted]
| puffoflogic wrote:
| dunefox wrote:
| Xenophobic and bigoted? Where are you getting that from?
| Certainly not from the grandparent. Did you just want to use
| big words?
| [deleted]
| shitpostbot wrote:
| wsinks wrote:
| Serious question - how do you engage with new studies and find
| value? Or do you? I'm trying to rejigger what my info pipelines
| look like and I'm looking for ideas. I like hearing about new
| stuff, but you're right that I just can't trust a science
| headline.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Use the press article to get a general understanding. Ignore
| the part about how it will fix all the problems in the world.
| Take a look at Wikipedia.
|
| Read the abstract of the research article and look for the
| most important graphic / table. Does it support the abstract
| of the article? Does it even support the caption of the
| figure? Ctr+F for some keywords, like "control group",
| "exclusion criteria", "almost statistically significant". Try
| to find out if they are using some "interesting" method to
| filter the data.
|
| Use some back of the envelope statistic, like comparing the
| difference, variance and Sqrt(N). Count how many results are
| statistically significant and how many are reported. How many
| implicit results are not reported? Also, are there some
| results with an incredible small error?
|
| There are just too many predatory journals and bad journals
| with a peer review that is a joke. Unless it's a journal in
| your area, just ignore the journal and look at the data. And
| even some serious journals publish bad articles.
|
| I use a modified version of the crackpot index were the
| article starts with +5 points
| https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
|
| In god we trust, all others must bring data.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Read them.
|
| Abstract and conclusions. The middle if it seems interesting,
| followed by looking for related research to confirm the
| conclusions.
|
| Most people don't have the skills to do this, we need better
| science journalism.
| biomcgary wrote:
| We need better incentives for science journalism than
| clicks and ad dollars. The problem is obvious, but the
| solution is not.
|
| (We also have an incentive problem for science, but that is
| another problem.)
| swayvil wrote:
| Unless you made the observation personally, or personally
| know the fellow who made the observation, you should take
| such stories/studies with a grain of salt.
|
| It's the sane approach.
| not2b wrote:
| Ars Technica is pretty good, partly because so many of their
| writers are experts with advanced degrees.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Definitely worth the subscription.
| MBCook wrote:
| I agree. They're a site I trust much more than a random news
| site, and this isn't the first "No, _incredibly stupid
| science thing_ isn't true" piece they've had to write lately.
|
| Re-reading my comment it may be unclear what I meant. So to
| state it plainly it was the original claim I knew was bunk.
| clairity wrote:
| no, not only is that an irrational appeal to authority, but
| ars spent the last two years fearmongering over covid for
| clicks just like all the other news sites. this story is also
| fishing for clicks, just from a contrarian perspective
| (relative to their audience) to keep things fresh.
| capableweb wrote:
| What exactly counts as fearmongering for you? It seems like
| +6.37M people have died from COVID so far, most of them
| being in the US (which has more deaths from COVID than
| India, which has a larger population than the US).
|
| It makes sense for a lot of people in the US to be scared
| of COVID, it is a dangerous, infectious disease after all.
| clairity wrote:
| it makes no sense for "a lot of people" to be scared of
| covid. it makes sense for those at risk (the elderly and
| those with co-morbidities) to evaluate that risk and take
| concrete measures (principally vaccination), _then move
| on_. we did not need to be stuck in a fear cycle for over
| two years for what is a novel cold virus, not the black
| death.
| overtonwhy wrote:
| You need to research long covid:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/more-
| than-1-in-5-cov...
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| This is a sensationalized study that only looked at COVID
| cases that were serious enough to end up on someone's
| electronic medical record:
|
| >The authors mined electronic health records
| identif[ying] 353,164 patients diagnosed with COVID-19
| between March 2020 and November 2021. They then matched
| each COVID-19 patient in a ratio of one to five with
| 1,640,776 control patients. All of the survivors and
| controls were monitored for at least a month and up to a
| year. Overall, 38.2 percent of COVID-19 survivors
| developed a post-COVID condition, compared with 16
| percent of uninfected controls.
|
| (Also note that the "post-COVID conditions" include
| things as minor as a persistent cough.)
|
| The real headline should be "More than 1-in-5 COVID cases
| serious enough to be noted in medical records may result
| in long-term symptoms, greatly ranging in severity."
|
| Upwards of 60% of the US had been infected with COVID as
| of April 2022 [0]. If serious long-COVID symptoms indeed
| occurred in upwards of 20% of COVID cases, that would
| mean >12% of Americans are currently suffering from
| debilitating long-term illness, which would be obvious on
| a societal level. We simply do not see this.
|
| [0] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220426/almost-60-pe
| rcent-i...
| namecheapTA wrote:
| So do you. Basically made up.
| clairity wrote:
| i don't, especially not on _arstechnica_ of all places.
|
| there is active research on the topic but no _conclusive_
| evidence that it 's any more than a form of negative
| hawthorne effect and/or hypochondriasis.
| rajup wrote:
| I agree with you, but this comment of yours does not
| follow from the other comment you made up thread.
| dangerwill wrote:
| The Indian government has been obviously undercounting
| the death toll by nearly an order of magnitude since the
| Delta wave
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm5154
| not2b wrote:
| "fishing for clicks" from a "contrarian perspective"
| usually means "misinform the public for profit". Giving the
| best available reporting on what's currently known about a
| disease that has killed millions isn't "fearmongering",
| even if as we learn more some reporting needs to be
| revised.
|
| Equating the two is just nihilism or solipsism, as if
| there's no reality, just people saying things.
| clairity wrote:
| news outlets literally put out millions of stories about
| covid over the past couple years. do you really believe
| that that was all factual, objective reporting--that
| millions of "facts" were being rationally delivered--or
| were news outlets taking advantage of an opportunity to
| keep people glued to their screens (and speakers)?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You complain about a fallacy and then use this argument?
| Ars is just one news outlet and didn't put out all those
| millions of stories, so they don't have to answer for
| them. If you object to Ars, object to Ars.
| clairity wrote:
| ars is part of a $2.5B media empire (advance
| publications). read any of their covid coverage, and it's
| pretty baldly fearmongering for clicks. they're not in
| this business for commonwealth, objective truth-seeking.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| "read any of their covid coverage" - whose - advanced
| publications as a body, or Ars? Because yet again, what
| someone else writes isn't Ars's problem.
|
| > they're not in this business for commonwealth,
| objective truth-seeking.
|
| This is an attempted attack on motives, and again, not on
| any real substance.
| clairity wrote:
| and somehow
|
| > "Ars Technica is pretty good, partly because so many of
| their writers are experts with advanced degrees."
|
| passes the test for "real substance"?
|
| read both, and any other favored news service. read a
| small sample of their coverage and their self-serving
| motives jump right out of the page and slaps you silly
| like a rubber chicken. it's that obvious. and it is their
| problem, by association, since you're trying to make a
| (unsubstantiated) claim on reputation.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| GP made an argument regarding Ars being staffed by
| experts. You've said nothing at all specific to Ars and
| instead tried to imply a bunch of guilt by association,
| so absolutely the original post had considerably more
| substance than, if I can paraphrase, "lots of the media
| lies therefore Ars does too" and "they are a business".
| clairity wrote:
| there is no argument there. just an unsupported
| assertion. just like your comment.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| It's not really irrational. Journalism is plagued with
| issues where journalists misconstrue a topic because they
| don't have the requisite background knowledge to adequately
| cover a topic. This becomes immediately obvious when you
| read an article on a topic you're knowledgeable about (see
| Gell-Mann amnesia effect). Expecting a site with more
| subject matter experts to have less of these types of
| errors seems perfectly rational.
| clairity wrote:
| no, that's literally falling for the appeal to authority
| fallacy. just because a journalist has some experience in
| a field tells you nothing _a priori_ about how they
| evaluate other information in the field. you have to
| evaluate their ability to evaluate that information to
| get any insight into how trustworthy they can be.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| You're conveniently ignoring that their writers are often
| writing within their domains of experience.
| clairity wrote:
| no, i'm not. i'm saying that it doesn't matter a single
| iota. in the few domains where i can plausibly claim more
| than cursory knowledge, there are plenty of people who i
| give zero credence to, who otherwise claim "expertise".
|
| and a science writer is often writing about science far
| afield of their narrow education/research. the author _of
| this very article_ is the "automotive editor" at ars,
| not a marine biologist, or anything close to it.
|
| "expert" is a normative (aka political) nominative, not a
| descriptive one.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _plenty of people who i give zero credence to, who
| otherwise claim "expertise"._
|
| At the risk of committing the sin of No True Scotsman,
| perhaps these people don't really have the expertise they
| claim.
|
| I _would_ expect a journalist who has actual, real
| expertise in a particular field to be able to sort out
| the junk from the newsworthy, at least most of the time.
| If not, then I don 't think their expertise really
| exists. Sure, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but I
| would expect people with real expertise to be at least
| mostly reliable.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| > the author of this very article is the "automotive
| editor" at ars, not a marine biologist, or anything close
| to it.
|
| The author has a PhD in Pharmacology. Biology is an
| integral part of Pharmacology.
| clairity wrote:
| not marine biology.
| kelnos wrote:
| Perhaps, but this is _marine_ biology, which I expect is
| a bit different.
|
| Not to mention that if you click through the author's
| article history, the most recent three pages of articles
| he's written (over 100 articles) are exclusively about
| cars, not science. (Ok, one exception, looks like he
| wrote an article about Disney's Obi-Wan series.)
|
| While I wouldn't say he has _no_ domain knowledge at all,
| I don 't think it's fair to say he has "expertise in
| marine biology". And he doesn't even write about stuff
| related to his credentialed field, at least not recently.
| mempko wrote:
| Ok, but over a million people in the US died from covid and
| even more with permanent damage.
| goatlover wrote:
| That's less than 1% of the population. If you're not in
| the high risk category or living with someone at high
| risk, and you got vaccinated, then there isn't reason to
| be overly concerned. Take precautions as you feel the
| need, but otherwise, life goes on. This isn't the bubonic
| plague or smallpox.
| namecheapTA wrote:
| Over a million people died with covid, not from covid. If
| after 2 years you haven't got this distinction, do you
| think possibly you're just severely confused on the topic
| and shouldn't be discussing it publicly for fear of
| spreading misinformation?
| kelnos wrote:
| How is the distinction meaningful? Would these people who
| "died with COVID, not from COVID" certainly still died if
| COVID hadn't been a thing?
| clairity wrote:
| 3.5M people died last year in the US. as usual, heart
| disease and cancer were the overwhelming leaders. covid
| claimed ~460K, but that's "deaths involving covid", not
| "from covid". there is no evidence of "permanent damage"
| from covid. a novel contagion of any kind will exhibit
| its highest mortality rates at the beginning of its
| epidemic incursion, and eventually reach steady state.
| from all indications, the steady state of covid will
| follow its coronavirus predecessors and settle at
| negligible death rates. heart disease and cancer will
| continue to kill millions into the foreseeable future.
|
| that's not to dismiss the threat of covid, but to merely
| put it in perspective. people at risk (elderly, or with
| co-morbidities) should get vaccinated and perhaps take
| other precautions. but none of that fearmongering did any
| good, and in fact, did a lot of bad, by sowing division
| rather than fostering unity.
| robbiep wrote:
| It would be reasonable to say, today, that the dominant
| varieties of SARS-CoV-2 are basically similar to an
| average to not great flu season, particularly for the
| vaccinated, where there is still a mortality benefit. In
| fact, I was at a talk 2 weeks ago where Sir Jonathan Van-
| Tam said exactly this.
|
| However. This is a long way from where things started.
|
| *> that's not to dismiss the threat of covid'
|
| Actually, I think what you're doing is worse. As a doctor
| I'm happy to treat current covid as something we need to
| live with and get on with, but you're actually dismissing
| the prior threat of COVID as well. Dismissing all the
| people who did die. Dismissing the 140,000 children who
| were orphaned in the US alone. Dismissing the real
| contribution of COVID to actual deaths - your distinction
| of 'deaths from covid to deaths with covid' is
| meaningless when excess mortality clearly shows that
| without the impact of covid the US population would be 1m
| higher than it is today.
|
| The fact that you choose to see the COVID information as
| having sowed division speaks more to the bizarre
| information landscape you have in the US. Many other
| countries found the last couple of years intensely
| frustrating but managed to forge a sense of national
| spirit in fighting it, and as a result have significantly
| lower excess deaths, significantly less orphaned
| children, and significantly lower societal scars to
| bounce back from.
| clairity wrote:
| so where are the heartwrenching anecdotes about heart
| disease or cancer deaths? otherwise you're just
| projecting a recency and availability bias. but none of
| that matters for how we, and especially the press, should
| have handled the topic.
|
| no country has "significantly lower"-ed anything. at
| most, we have slightly different diffusion curves, but
| mortality and morbidity rates are going to be pretty
| similar regardless of how we were "fighting it". every
| single person on earth will get covid at some point. at
| best, we've delayed that point a little bit for some
| people, not to mention some shifting of mortality. note
| that liver disease and chirrosis deaths rose last year -
| why aren't we making video montages and pouring one out
| for them, or their orphaned children, again?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _that 's "deaths involving covid", not "from covid"._
|
| Unless they all would have died at that time regardless,
| in the absence of COVID, isn't this a distinction without
| relevance?
| clairity wrote:
| death is often not as simple as "you died of dysentery".
| your liver might fail, and your lungs are full of fluid,
| and your arteries are clogged. you smoke like a chimney
| and drink like a fish, while eating like a recently
| unhibernated bear. how do you decide which caused the
| death, especially without some very detailed monitoring
| of all of the body's major systems?
|
| "with covid" is the same. that's why co-morbidities are
| almost universally indicated in covid deaths. it's
| because the people dying of covid are pretty unhealthy
| already, and covid is not the primary cause of death, but
| a contributing one, often a minor contributor at that.
|
| the distinction is also important because it has multi-
| faceted follow-on effects. in terms of treatment, a
| doctor could otherwise have focused more on treating a
| co-morbidity than covid. a researcher might focus more on
| other ailments than covid. the public might have been
| less fearful and tribal. public health guidance might
| have been different. it has lots of relevance actually.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| In 2020 602,350 people died of cancer[1]. Seems odd to
| use it as an example of a bigger threat when it's
| entirely comparable, especially when we can argue the
| "with not of" distinction there - they may have died of
| systemic failure while also having cancer.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-
| cancer-de...
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _there is no evidence of "permanent damage" from covid._
|
| There is some evidence. But as you said, it's a novel
| disease and still being studied.
|
| https://www.bcm.edu/news/what-eegs-tell-us-about-
| covid-19-an...
|
| _Some of the EEG alterations found in COVID-19 patients
| may indicate damage to the brain that might not be able
| to be repaired after recovering from the disease._
| clairity wrote:
| note that EEGs are a very crude instrument relative the
| fantastic complexity of the brain. it's like putting a
| rock on the ground to try to understand geotectonics.
| it's not nothing, but it's not much at all. i wouldn't be
| surprised if in 100 years, it's viewed much like we now
| view leeching or lobotomies.
| coldpie wrote:
| You "just" need to find good science news outlets. Ars Technica
| is one of them. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast is
| another. I'm sure there are plenty more.
| ipspam wrote:
| nomel wrote:
| And, most importantly, never trust a press release from a
| university.
| williamcotton wrote:
| From "Nullius in verba" to "Believe in science"...
| williamcotton wrote:
| I'm positive that the person who downvoted has somehow
| misinterpreted my pithy statement so perhaps I should explain
| myself.
|
| "Nullius in verba" is the original motto of the Royal
| Society, arguably the birthplace of modern science. It
| roughly translates to "take no one's word" and encouraged an
| epistemological worldview based on empiricism. This was
| situated in a world where truth of all matters was primarily
| dictated by authority, even those of the natural
| philosophies.
|
| The truths of science were to be experienced in the
| laboratory just as the truths of a cake recipe were to be
| experienced in the kitchen.
|
| The person that I am responding to is lamenting the fact that
| there is a certain expectation that one must "believe in
| science". This is in direct contrast to "nullius in verba".
| dsr_ wrote:
| The usefulness of science as a means to discover things
| about the universe is a pretty solid belief.
|
| Believing in whatever is said by a random person claiming
| to be a scientist is less solid.
|
| Believing in what is reported in general news media as
| being the discovery of said random people is rather
| gelatinous.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Please do not conflate "science" with "science media".
|
| Honestly, since this is really just a shadow discussion of the
| same Reddit posts (https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/
| w2x10v/beware_of... and https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comm
| ents/w1ahrq/scots_tea...) we should all just come out front and
| say "A bunch of people overreacted to single non-science source
| of bad and un-peer-reviewed research". The fact it was debunked
| so quick is a credit to the science ecosystem. The fact that a
| bunch of dopes piled onto the original report without any due
| diligence is the problem. _That_ is a problem worth unpacking -
| how information is distributed and our poor general education
| in critical thinking and evaluation of source materials.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm not. I understand this is purely a media issue.
|
| I don't think most people do.
|
| And I don't care if it was debunked in a day or two. It's not
| 1980. It spread _very_ far in that time. And given how
| outrageous the claim was (and the knock on effects we should
| be seeing if it was true) no outlet should have ever
| published it in the first place without further review.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| But bad information or misinformation can't be debunked
| instantly, nor will they able to be. If we require that, we
| will have an unstable system. Therefor, we have to train
| people otherwise.
| MBCook wrote:
| news consumers should be the last line of defense. Not
| the first.
|
| If the police tell the media they shot someone in a
| robbery it gets reported. It's reasonable to assume
| that's not fake.
|
| If police say they shot 5,700 people during a robbery at
| a McDonalds this morning, no one would report that
| uncritically. They'd look for some kind of confirmation
| because the story is so far out there.
|
| That's what I expect of science reporting. At least the
| most basic cursory check. I'm not asking for the media to
| duplicate studies themselves. But blindly reporting what
| someone tells you uncritically is likely to lead to
| obvious mistakes like this.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Yes, but this isn't "science reporting". It's a single
| site, the Scottish Sunday Post, that reported on a single
| pre-print paper with a small data set from a single
| research group on a boat doing some sampling and analysis
| in the Caribbean.
|
| "Science reporting" is not analogous to "the police"
| since the police are a single entity. Let's leave aside,
| as we know from recent tragedies, that we know the police
| lie in the media frequently. But by the same standard,
| this is a problem of the general public confusing _random
| publications in a Scottish newspaper_ as science
| reporting. Let me know when this happens in Nature. I don
| 't think the science desks at the BBC or the NYTimes
| would have even published this, either. Those are the
| science media. Calling this science reporting is a
| category error.
| makomk wrote:
| Debunking also doesn't undo the original damage because
| most people will never see the debunking. For example, a
| while ago a paper about the oceans supposedly heating up
| much more than previously estimated hit a lot of news sites
| and HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 The
| article currently at that link is not what was there at the
| time, it's essentially a retraction that almost none of the
| HN readers who saw the original will have seen. That paper
| had an estimate of ocean warming that was much higher than
| that found using actual widespread physical measurements of
| ocean temperature, based on a weird indirect calculation
| from global CO2 and O2 levels in the atmosphere. It turns
| out they'd massively underestimated the error bars on their
| weird indirect estimate and it was just far too inaccurate
| to actually conclude that ocean warming was substantially
| higher than the direct measurements. (Which is not at all
| surprising really.) Now go and read the HN comments on that
| science at the time, they're quite something given the
| subsequent context...
| pwenzel wrote:
| Perhaps the article was meant to be published 20 years from
| now.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Well the headline did it's job, it scared the shit out of
| everyone that bought it. And even when they find out it was
| bullshit, there will still be a residual state of slightly
| heightened fear, just a little more on top of what we've been fed
| for decades.
| pygy_ wrote:
| The real figure, half a decade ago, was a loss of 50% over 70
| years which is already very scary when you know that it
| constitutes 50 to 70% of the photosynthesis capacity of our
| world, and thus the ability to remove CO2 from the environment.
|
| AFAIK, the trend hasn't changed.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _even when they find out it was bullshit, there will still be a
| residual state of slightly heightened fear_
|
| But also more skeptical of even legitimate science.
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| > We haven't killed 90% of all plankton
|
| But have killed the ability to tell propaganda from facts in 90%
| of people.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| No, but we're working on it...
|
| Seriously, if 90% of plankton had been killed off there would be
| some very noticeable effects. Something like 50% of our oxygen is
| generated by phytoplankton. (50% is probably the floor - I see
| some estimates going up to around 70%) And plankton of all types
| is at the bottom of the food chain - if 90% disappeared there
| would be mass starvation in our oceans.
| Balvarez wrote:
| Well I'm glad to see a refute a day later. Much better than
| nothing
| [deleted]
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Every day there's endless streams of bullshit flowing through
| every medium: AM radio, online video, internet & magazine
| articles, blogs, TV Interviews, politician's speeches, corporate
| PR, and so on. Some of the bullshit is entirely fabricated, and
| in others it's legitimate data or news merely irresponsibly
| misinterpreted by some Journo out for clicks (what happened
| here.)
|
| Out of all of that crap why is this singular instance suddenly
| all over the internet being lambasted? What's the agenda?
| joshstrange wrote:
| The pessimist in me says it's because people want to cling to
| anything that lets them say "See, I knew it wasn't a big deal,
| I/we don't need to change our behavior", especially when it
| comes to climate change. I've seen this first-hand from
| relatives who are very quick to talk about "see the science
| wasn't right in this 1 instance" while ignoring everything that
| doesn't fit their world view.
|
| That said, I'd argue the "news" agencies really should be the
| ones held to some account for printing whatever they are told
| (be it from scientists, the police, and everyone in between.
| Don't get me started on "printing" tweets as facts or wide-
| spread opinion). Also the "news" agencies love this kind of
| thing, they get to double dip all while acting holier than thou
| and taking no responsibility for the BS they put out.
| HillRat wrote:
| Also, the claims made are so sweepingly apocalyptic -- we're
| all going to be dead in a few decades! -- that they're going
| to trigger not only the usual climate-skeptic suspects, but
| also those who are genuinely concerned about climate change.
| The magnitude of the crisis we're stumbling into is hard to
| fathom, but these sorts of claims are arguably
| counterproductive in that they could just cause many people
| to give up out of the assumption that it's too late to save
| the global food web.
| xeromal wrote:
| I think it's because we all know the reprecutions of losing our
| plankton. That's a doomsday scenario and at 90% loss, that
| means our oceans should die off very quickly.
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