When the Royal Society of Edinburgh announced they were hosting
an online event called
Conspiracies, Fake
News and False Scientific Information a tsunami and earthquake combined
could not have kept me away. As with the Media Society's similar event,
Crazy Conspiracy Theories, a Threat to
Democracy? Should the UK and US Media Respond?, see:
https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2020/12/crazy-conspiracies-theories-event.html,
I felt somebody on our side of the debate had a duty to attend, simply to
"show the flag" and not let it be dominated by nodding heads. Here's
another past event that is not quite so bad:
https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/04/mick-west-webinar.html.
Unfortunately this time Colin Woolford couldn't get there. The RSE is a
registered charity set up in 1783 as an academy of science and letters. I was
not surprised to find that one name appeared at this event that was also at the
Media Society one,
Marianna Spring.
Well, she is that ultimate real life O'Brien, the Specialist Disinformation and
Social Media Reporter for BBC News... Yuck! The chairman's name was James
Naughtie, who presents
Today on Radio
4. So that's two of the four panellists working for the British Brain-buggering
Corporation. The other two were Prof. Linda Bauld, a public health expert at
the
University of Edinburgh,
and Peter McColl, member of the RSE's "Post-Covid Futures Commission"...
LOL. Prof. Bauld lamented how there is so much fear of vaccines because too
many people believe "misinformation" and take the word of
"selective scientific" pundits and anecdotes; and they live in echo
chambers where they distrust science and their view becomes distorted. Peter
McColl compared today's world with that about a hundred and twenty years ago
when the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was published, see here for
details:
https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2020/02/marlon-solomon-live-in-oxford.html.
He says conspiracy theories emerge in society whenever there is lots of
inequality and anxiety. The solution is to build a more stable and equal
society.
Marianna Spring
brings up a recurring subject, the role of social media. She thinks social
media should have more power to control information, not less. They should do
the opposite of my own advice, signing Section 230, and in fact positively
declare themselves as publishers. The most extreme speaker was James Naughtie.
He talked about how conspiracy theorists are often grifters who say what they
know is not true, just to get money out of their followers. He calls QAnon
"extremism that spreads like wildfire!" I put in a question:
"But mainstream media now says C19 may
well have come from Wuhan Institute of Virology! This is a year after we were
"fact checked" for saying that." The panel did answer my
question, but they didn't address my point properly, that there is no discussion
about the factual validity of so-called conspiracy theories. Mzzzzzzz Spring
had to leave halfway through because she had to appear on Newsnight! Here's an
example of her worldly wisdom:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-54738471.
(Kate Shemirani is actually a heroic individual who has risked everything to
warn the public.) I'm glad I attended this event, just out of principle like I
said above, but it was all very tedious and unoriginal. It was almost indistinguishable
from the previous Media Society talk; full of rhetoric, moral blackmail and
smears, and absent of factual questioning. I had actually intended this review
to be longer and I made a lot of notes, but I don't think there's much point
expanding on what I've written here. If the recording becomes available I'll
post it here: (coming soon perhaps).
See here for
background:
https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2017/05/ditch-tin-foil-hat.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2014/02/rob-brotherton-and-psychology-of.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2017/07/are-conspiracy-theorists-losers.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2018/09/prof-karen-douglas-at-greenwich-sitp.html.
