Arguments
Interview with John Cook about misinformation and artificial intelligence
Posted on 6 December 2024 by John Cook, BaerbelW
In March, John Cook met with Adam Ford from Science, Technology & the Future to talk about his work researching misinformation and how to counter it. The interview - published on October 10 - explored the complex and evolving landscape of climate misinformation, covering a range of topics including the different types of misinformation, the role of social media and AI in spreading and combating it, the psychological barriers that prevent people from accepting climate science, and the importance of communicating effectively about climate change. Key takeaways include:
- The nature of climate misinformation: Misinformation takes many forms, including outright denial of climate science, attacks on climate scientists and solutions, and promotion of conspiracy theories. It is often emotionally driven and tailored to specific audiences.
- The role of social media and AI: Social media has amplified the spread of misinformation, and AI can be used to both generate and combat it. The development of sophisticated, personalized misinformation is a concerning and challenging trend.
- Psychological barriers to accepting climate science: These barriers include psychological distance and political ideology. Overcoming these barriers requires effective communication that address the underlying concerns and motivations of different audiences.
- The importance of human oversight: While AI is a powerful tool, human judgment is still crucial for accurately identifying and countering misinformation. Hybrid approaches that combine AI with human expertise are likely to be the most effective.
- The need for hope and efficacy: Communicating about climate change shouldn't just focus on the negative impacts. A message of hope and efficacy is needed to inspire action and avoid paralyzing people with fear.
The interview highlights the crucial role of ongoing research, education, and collaboration in addressing climate misinformation. It also emphasizes the importance of individual action, encouraging people to engage in conversations, connect with others, and use their unique skills and passions to contribute to the fight against climate change.
Calls to suppress "misinformation" are in reality calls for censorship.
As evidenced during the Covid pandemic, almost all of what the experts and government authorities labeled "misinformation" turned out to be correct while much of the official authoritive pronouncements turned out to be false or highly misleading. (with the exception of Ivermectin and hydroclorox - All those postive claims did turn out to be false).
Typically whenever someone is screaming about misinformation, they are the ones guilty of the charge.
David-acct @1 :
Human history, human psychology, demonstrate that the world is not black-and-white. Nuances exist. Doctrinaire slogans ~ such as "Four legs good, two legs bad" (or even "censorship bad, toxic free speech good") ~ are not a healthy way for society to exist. Major problems result. Better, if common sense is used.
[... Insert cliched quote by Voltaire ...]
Getting slightly off-topic here, David ~ but could you add a list of egregious covid-related official authoritative pronouncements you were thinking of as produced great harm (and were unreasonable, given the scant knowledge of the virus's properties at the early stages of the pandemic) ??
Eclectic since you requested an example, virtually every pro masking study had serious flaws and methodology errors
eclectic - same issues with vax efficiency, virtually no reduction in infection rates and transmission rates, though did have some benefit in the reduction of severity and death for those who were at high risk.
David-acct @3 ; @4 :-
No , David , you need to do a lot better than that.
e.g. Vaccines. Fortunately, the scientists had been working on developing the novel concept of mRNA-type vaccines over about a 5-year period before covid's surprise arrival. To his great credit, President Trump quickly poured government money into an acceleration of R&D of a mRNA covid vaccine. [Yes, at times he acts on the advice of experts! But for the future, one might worry about the influence of proposed Head Health Honcho RFKjr. ;-) ]
The result ~ covid vaccines that were (like all vaccines) less than perfect but still highly effective at the individual and societal level. Saving money and giving a large reduction in expected covid deaths in the elderly, and a very large reduction in non-fatal disabilities such as myocarditis and Long-Covid.
# Personal anecdote : Previously I have had 5 or 6 covid vaccinations (one does lose count, eh ). And about 14 months ago, I came down with covid ~ so slight, that I wan't sure I was ill (a headache so slight I wasn't sure the headache was actually in existence, and a temperature so slight that I couldn't be sure my neck felt any warmer than normal ). But the nasal swab home-test kit showed a positive for covid. And I have been well since.
David , the covid viruses are very contagious ~ not quite as badly as measles, where you are at risk from someone walking down the other side of the street [minor exaggeration! ].
Sure, wearing a filtered-air spacesuit helmet might give you 100% protection. ~ but if wearing paper-type facemasks reduces your risk of covid infection by around 50% (as common sense would suggest for aerosol-type infections) then it would be foolish to avoid masking up until some super-precise scientific testing had been completed. For at least in the early pandemic, and/or in crowded spaces, and/or in hospital care settings, etcetera ~ until such time as vaccinations & herd immunity had improved the situation (i.e. as today).
Rejecting vaccines and appropriate maskings . . . would be as foolish as rejecting a bullet-proof vest because the vest "ain't 100%" .
In the risky situation ~ how is a bullet-proof vest a "misinformation"?
David-acct says: "Eclectic since you requested an example, virtually every pro masking study had serious flaws and methodology errors"
You provide no evidence for your claim. Maybe think about what masks do. Masks reduce droplets getting through, and much of the virus is in the droplets (with covid some is airborne as well). This reduces the viral load on the lungs and is thus going to reduce the severity of the illness. Its not rocket science. Masks work. Loccations with high mask use were shown to have lower mortality rates. For example:
www.covidstates.org/blog/did-mask-mandates-reduce-covid-deaths
David-acct says : "eclectic - same issues with vax efficiency, virtually no reduction in infection rates and transmission rates, though did have some benefit in the reduction of severity and death for those who were at high risk.
Most vaccines have little or no effect on infection and transmission rates. The purpose is to reduce the severity of the illness. And your implied claim that vaccines only reduce severity of illness in high risk people is completely unsubstantiated and defies commonsense and simple logic. Medications generally reduce severity in people regardless of their age group or underlying general state of health. I see no reason why vaccines would be different. Remember plenty of unvaccinated healthy or young people died of covid or got very sick! The point is vaccines help everyone, but of course they are particularly helpful for older or at risk people.
I will explain why America had such a high covid mortality and illness rate Many millions of people (tending to be on the right of politics) didn't wear masks, or socially distance, or self isolate, or get vaccinated. So they died. What a surprise. In New Zealand we mostly did the opposite and had a much lower mortality rate.
I realise Americans have this freedom thing where they utterly refuse to suffer any restrictions even temporarily. Its crazy and its got like an obsession. But you can't see it.
Nigelj @6 :-
A degree of correction, please ~ many vaccines can achieve a huge reduction in transmission rates and/or in individuals' severity of disease.
Depends on the disease type . . . ranging from the super-transmissible such as measles, to the low-transmissible such as leprosy [no vaccine yet, unfortunately]. You are right that, for some diseases, the individual's severity of infection can be smaller if the initial infecting dose is small (see the history of small-dose "variolation" that was used in the centuries before the highly-effective modern smallpox vaccination was identified ).
So for covid, using a mask may not necessarily prevent all transmission, but it may result in a smaller infecting dose and may result in a milder severity of disease for that individual . . . and that's something that might not show in the testing of masking, since the results tend to be measured in "got infected" versus "didn't get infected" categories.
But that's not showing in David-acct's comments ~ I am not sure whether he is taking an Ultra-libertarian-and-damned-to-everyone-else attitude, or whether he's simply got his science wrong also.
David-acct @1
I offer this response that is more ‘on-topic’.
I have read the post and watched the video. Your opening sentence does not appear to be on-topic.
The only mention of efforts to suppress information that I came across is near the end of the video:
So, the evidence appears to indicate that you are exhibiting the behaviour you complain about in your concluding sentence @1. Your comment @1 appears to be a misinformation effort trying to discredit, distract from, or suppress efforts that would help people be more aware and better understand how they can be less harmful and more helpful to Others.
David-acct @3, in addition to the replies of other people:
It is important to distinguish among the efficacy of a mask worn properly by a single person, self-reports of people claiming they wear masks, the type of mask, the properness of its fit, the properness of its wearing, the amount of time and circumstance in which it is worn, and policies that encourage or require mask wearing.
An N-95 (or KN-95) mask worn properly, repeatedly has been proven by solid, physical, experiments to reduce both emission of viruses and other infectious agents past the mask, and inhalation past the mask.
Throwing in all the other variables I listed, getting good evidence becomes more difficult. Nonetheless, there is solid, utterly reliable evidence of the efficacy of mask wearing. Of course the efficacy decreases with decreasing mask quality, time of wearing, and properness of wearing. And of course policies that encourage or mandate wearing are not adhered to 100% but that does *not* mean those policies are 100% useless.
Here is a 10 minute video from Debunk the Funk with evidence of all the above. See the comments of this video for references so you can read the studies yourself.
It is important to distinguish different definitions of "infection":
Unfortunately that distinction is assumed rather than repeatedly stated explicitly by many people, including many otherwise excellent science communicators such as Dr. Wilson of Debunk the Funk. But that distinction is crucial for understanding questions of whether masks and vaccines prevent infection.
An excellent resource created by Dr. Wilson and others is a free onlline database that does not even require creating an account. It contains solid references to counter common COVID myths. Just type into your browser's URL bar, covidresearch.net. For an overview and example of how to use it, watch the 6-minute video by Dr. Wilson on Debunk the Funk.
COVID Vaccines Do Reduce Transmission, per empirical evidence summarized by Dr. Wilson in Debunk the Funk. References so you can read the original documents he cites are in the comments of that video.
Empirical evidence that mask-wearing policy is effective in reducing transmission of COVID, is Dr. Susan Oliver. Specifically this video, Mask debating is great, but some are NOT doing it right!, also explains some of the challenges in judging how well masks prevent transmisson, and explains that properly meeting those challenges reveals that masking and masking policies indeed are effective.
An accompanying comment listing the research cited in the video, so you can read those papers yourself.
Dr. Oliver has many short videos addressing many false claims about COVID vaccines.
Each video has an accompanying comment listing the research cited in the video, so you can read those papers yourself.
Eclectic
Saying vaccines dont reduce transmission was my bad. Thanks for the correction and information. My comment was a bit rushed. Should have proof read it.
David-acct starts off his commentary with the one-liner, "Calls to suppress "misinformation" are in reality calls for censorship."
I agree with what OPOF says at comment 8. I also watched the entire video. The video primarily uses the same word that appears in the text summary in the blog post: "counter". What does that mean? From Wiktionary: (to select the relevant definitions):
So, using "suppress" is a misdirection. It argues against a position that was not made in the text or video. As a counter-argument to David-acct's statement, I will say:
The cry of censorship is sometimes framed as a "Free Speach!" cry. This usually amounts to a cry of "you aren't allowed to speak freely if you express disagreement, because I am supposed to be able to speak freely without opposition".
[See how easy it is to use David-acct's tactics in the opposite direction?]
Much of the rest of the video discusses how to recognize and counter various forms of misinformation. One of the points of discussion was how social media allows people to spread misinformation in short quips that appear convincing and appeal to emotion. Countering those bits of misinformation often requires lots of time, effort, and space as facts are presented.
Guess what? David-acct is doing exactly that. Short, seemingly-convincing statements that discredit "virtually every pro masking study", and "vax efficiency". One-liners with no supporting references in an attempt to discredit the science. Exactly the kind of tactics that the video warns us about. And people have had to provide lengthy rebuttals, with links to more complete information, in an attempt to counter David-acct's misinformation.
Nigelji @6
Your link to the covid rates by state/mask mandate is a perfect example of "misinformation" and how easy it is to get fooled by misinformation. While the data used is correct, it is also highly misleading.
The study used total population to compute covid deaths per 100k. We all know covid deaths were heavily skewed to the elderly, As such the correct metric is covid deaths by age group. Properly adjusted for deaths by age group, there was virtually no difference of per capita covid deaths between any state regardless of masking policies. (with the exception of the 5 outliner states SD, ND, which had high much higher rates and NH, OR, & HI which had much lower rates even after adjusting by age group).
Nigelji @6
Sorry I didnt provide better example of the methodology errors in the pro masking studies. I presumed everyone respondig would better understanding of the effect of cofounding variables. The number one factor in the speed of transmission of a respiratory virus is time and space. None of the pro masking studies demonstrated any effort to account for behavior changes that affected time and space, at least none of the 30-40 studies i evaluated. Of furhter note, in all the pro masking studies, the gap in infections rates all evaporated after 6-10 weeks and most of the time the unmasked population had lower infections rates after the 10 period.
The Kansas county mask v non mask county study was quite notable for the lower infection rates post study period.
That is my primary point - The calls to suppress "misinformation" is a call for censorship as evidenced government efforts during covid.
Everyone loses in those cases
David-acct:
I notice that you did not actually refer to any studies containing data (and analysis) that supports your assertions.
The study that nigelj linked to provides details on what they said. They declared:
I think that their brief analysis supports their conclusions. Yes, there is a difference across states with or without mask mandates. They also went on to say:
Thus, they recognize that there are other factors to consider, and that full analysis is difficult. But their data fully supports their conclusion that the assertion they were testing was false.
It is you that is now misrepresenting the data and analysis, pretending it made claims that it did not make. This is a classic case of misinformation - from you.
BOB @19
The study cited by Nigelji is absolutely misleading for the reason I gave.
Because covid deaths were highly skewed by age with approximately 80%+ of the deaths in the 65+ age group, using any metric other than death rates by age group is exceedingly misleading. The correct metric is death rates by age group. There is no reason you or anyone else should be fooled by such a deceptive study.
In response to your highlighted quote :
Further, there are certainly other, pre-existing, factors that influence COVID-related mortality numbers (like age of the population; density of housing, etc). Pulling apart that causal tangle is extremely difficult
That statement that pulling the data apart is extremely difficult is absolutely false.
Covid Deaths by age group and population by age group is readily available from a variety of sources. Thats what I did, there is no reason that they could not do that.
No, David-acct, you don't know how science works. That study admitted that their analysis did not indicate the success of masks, and honestly reported that other analysis was needed. That is how honest scientists report their work. They indicated that they were disproving the dishonest statement that there was no difference between states with and without mask mandates.
You are being misleading in claiming that it was misleading. It was a very short note, intended to only look at one claim (successfully). It is your desire to attack it by insinuating that it failed to do something it clearly said it wasn't doing that is dishonest.
And I notice that you are still not pointing to any studies that complete the further analysis you claim is easy to do.
I intend to only enter the realm of claim making regarding COVID Science to interject the following considerations:
On-Topic for the OP :-
"sophisticated, personalized misinformation" from A.I.'s is indeed a great threat to society and to individuals. Can A.I.'s also provide an excellent counter to the A.I.'s operated by nefarious organizations? I doubt it ~ because evil has many advantages over the beneficial.
.
Slightly less On-Topic :-
I agree with David-acct , that the (very) large number of confounding variables makes it exceeding difficult to assess the covid pandemic situation in an idealized scientific manner (by randomized controlled trials, etc ).
Yet that is the very reason one should best rely on following general principles and common sense. And should avoid getting on a political hobby-horse ~ such as Libertarianism ; or hatred of experts ; or parent-resentment issues ; etcetera.
Common sense and general principles point to the desirability of masking, in many circumstances. Regardless of the abstract question of mandatory/non-mandatory.
As OPOF has touched on in #22 , even the "background" death rate in the elderly has been confounded (as we all recall, in the height of the pandemic) by the over-crowding in hospitals plus the avoidance or neglect of the seeking of medical care outside the hospital system.
This paper found a statistically significant more Republicans died of COVID after vaccines were introduced than Democrats. They only looked at Florida and Ohio because they were the only states with county by county data. They controlled by age
They found 40% more Republicans than Democrats died of COVID after vaccines came out. Before vaccines only about 15% more Republicans died (not significant). It is known that more Democrats obtained vaccination. This study controlled for age as David-acct asks.
I noticed what I think was an error in the study. They say there was not a statistically significant difference in Florida but the large difference in Ohio led to their conclusion.
I live in Florida. When vaccines were first introduced there was a big effort to vaccinate everyone over 65. (I was 63 and ineligible). Over 90% of over 65's were vaccinated. Other high risk patients were eligible. As David-acct has noted, most of the deaths were over 65. The vaccination program in Florida would have dramatically lowered the death rate in over 65 Republicans. In addition, many Democrats in Ohio were probably not vaccinated, the statewide rate was low. The 40% increase measurement would have been a significant underestimate of the actual vaccinated/unvaccinated ratio of deaths.
Anecdotally, in my brother's hospital in California, after vaccines were available the ICU had 10 or more times as many unvaccinated patients as vaccinated ones. The vaccination rate in California was high so if vaccination didn't work there would have been 10 times as many vaccinated patients instead. Health officials know that this pattern was consistent across the country. (My brother's wife was involved with multi state analysis)
It might be a good paper to count the vaccinated/unvaccinated ratio in ICUs across the country.
Google this title to get the paper
Political party
affiliation linked to
excess COVID
deaths,
I'll add my bit of anecdotal evidence to Michael's. The ICU where I work was relatively spared during the initial wave of Covid, as was the neighboring state. We had plenty of time to prepare and it went OK (this is before the vaccine became available). A significant proportion of patients were not exactly fitting the high risk profile, especially regarding age. The sickest we saw in the early wave were below 65, obesity and diabetes seemed to be very strong risk factors.
Then the state had a massive vaccination campaign, high risk people and above 65 could be vaccinated for free (if I recall right) and the vaccine was available to everyone. We were considered high risk because of exposure. Case numbers decreased a little, things appeared under control.
Then the Delta wave hit and stuff got real. One day, the ICU was full of nothing but Covid patients, prone and on ventilators, except for 1, on BiPAP. Non-covid critical patients had to be bedded in a neighboring unit. Criteria for transfer to a higher level of care inside the hospital were raised everywhere. Extreme levels of respiratory failure were tolerated without invasive intervention, as intubated patients did not tend to fare well. However, the ones who declined to be intubated died even quicker. We exploited non-invasive ventilation means to the maximum extent possible but once the p/F ratio drops below 100, there are few options left. I personally recall only one of these very sick patients who was vaccinated, a transplant recipient (immunosuppressed) who had received only one dose. Incredibly, he survived. I was not there 7 days a week, so it is possible that some vaccinated people came through that I did not know about. If so, they were exceedingly rare exceptions. I heard some people talking about people getting very sick from the vaccine. I work throughout the hospital and in the ED as well, but I do not recall seeing any such case.
Some were so steeped in propaganda generated denial, they refused to acknowledge that it was a real disease, even as they were literally dying of it. Non vaccinated status was the single most reliable predictor of bad outcome. Obesity still seemed in my opinion (a non scientific assessment) to be the 2nd major risk factor for severe disease. I never caught it at work through the entire pandemic. It was only later that I was contaminated sitting next to a sick person in an airplane, after the Omicron strain hit.
[BL] Note to all. The OP is about misinformation - research into how to identify it, strategies to counteract it, etc.
Covid stories are only on-topic to the extent that they illustrate aspects of misinformation. Please make sure that you tie any such stories back to the themes of the OP.