Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Banning everyone who disagrees with the current state of the science is also not how science works; and yet YouTube is going to attempt (and fail) to do just that.

YouTube is almost certainly going to be banning literal doctors with actual PHDs from expressing scientific opinions which later turn out to be substantiated.

The article says this ban includes material that "explicitly disputes health authorities’ guidance on self-isolation or social distancing.". There are some rather eminent doctors who do exactly that. Social distancing policy is a political, not a scientific, question of trade-offs.

View on HN

> YouTube is almost certainly going to be banning literal doctors with actual PHDs from expressing scientific opinions which later turn out to be substantiated.

To be fair, Youtube shouldn't be the platform where doctors express their scientific opinion or try to win over support.

agreed. how do we change it thou without dumpstering "free" video hosting?

Why not? It pretty accessible and a nicely done video does more for the education of the general public than some pdf on a server behind a Springer paywall.

Because no video EVER will reach the medical expertise needed to make any informed decision.

I just mean that they should have their work peer reviewed first.

How are they going to get the research done if they can't present the hypothesis and supporting observations? How will they get the results peer reviewed if they can't present them because they're not peer-reviewed yet?

Researchers typically present findings in journals (or conferences in computer science). These YouTube videos aren’t research, they’re some mix of unscrupulous money grab and deliberate misinformation from Republican-affiliated groups trying to mitigate the political damage of the administrations abdication of responsibility for stopping the pandemic.

Generally speaking by attempting to publish the result in a journal or conference proceedings. There’s a process in place where your unreleased manuscript is sent to other researchers in your field for review. After making corrections based on their feedback, you can be approved for publication, at which point the general public gets a chance to evaluate it.

Having done it, I don’t necessarily love the process and would love for the process to be more open and accessible, but it generally works ok.

That's kind of irrelevant to people posting videos on YouTube though.

I totally agree. Maybe YouTube isn't the best place for a researcher to have their work peer reviewed.

because a 'nicely done video' (in terms of popularity) can very seldomly convey the information needed to make a valid point. hek even scientific writers/writings strugle with packing the right type and ammount of information in their works without sacrificing readability/citations.

i am in no way against scientific material on yt but very much against a world in which a professionally edited and promoted youtube video is the minimal standard for scientific progress.

The media bandwidth of video is higher though?

Banning all practitioners of science who disagree with the current state of science is not how science works.

The jury is a little out on the utility of allowing unpedigreed randos to pontificate on the nature of the science with the same amount of volume and podium-authority as qualified, practicing scientists with years of experience. Academia certainly doesn't consider them the same; we don't allow any random undergraduate to walk up to the podium and kick the lecturing professor off the stage so that they can have 5 minutes to explain how etheric currents are actually what makes lightning work.

We aren't, practically speaking, seeing a lot of evidence that the public can tell the difference right now. This is a problem.

> YouTube is almost certainly going to be banning literal doctors with actual PHDs from expressing scientific opinions which later turn out to be substantiated.

How are they going to deal with situations where health authorities in different countries have different positions? Like right now, Germany recommends masks and Sweden doesn't. Are they going to censor anti-mask videos in Germany and pro-mask videos in Sweden?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com