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Anti-vaccine protesters… why?

Joe Hutch said:
The AoS thread is instructive in this regard. Basically the theory is that a bunch of 'bad guys' (Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma) created Covid and/or are promoting vaccines with the twin aims of increasing their personal wealth and enslaving the populace. The only person able to take on these bad guys was Donald Trump, who was himself supported by mysterious 'good guys' who would somehow save the world.

If you delve into the links provided to 'prove' all this nonsense, there's a close connection to people advocating anti-semitism and Holocaust denial as part of the Big Conspiracy Theory. I got hoofed for pointing this out.
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That's interesting, but not surprising. I bet the UK antivaxers are all brexity too, I just know it.

I'm surprised how popular AOS seems to be, given that it's run by some very odd people with even odder views, and that's putting it politely. I joined AOS before realising all this, and I've never bothered posting.

Sorry, going off topic a bit, and I don't know the answer to Tony's question.
 
I look at the numbers.
Having a jab seems a no brainer to me.
Being allergic to pain and death helps.
The conspiracy theories don't look remotely logical to me Jim
 
Bob,

Bob McC said:
Both the universities my kids went to would fail any work referencing Wikipedia or any social media platform.
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Social media, where anyone can write anything, and Wikipedia are poles apart as sources of information and knowledge. Wrong, misleading and incomplete entries on Wikipedia are flagged and corrected over time. Statements must be thoroughly referenced with links to primary sources where they exist.

Wikipedia categorically does not replace peer-reviewed journals or academic books, but it's a good place to start and it's entirely accessible, unlike a lot of journals that require subscriptions or payment to download articles.

You won't see this level on detail and depth in some crazy uncle's Facebook post — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine

Joe
 
Only last week I was reading a football referee’s Wikipedia entry that said the reason he had been missing penalties was because he is blind…

Anyhow I stand by my claim two UK universities I know of reject Wikipedia being referenced at all.

I know of one that accepted a dissertation with Wikipedia references in. When I read the dissertation I realised that universities clearly vary in what they consider to be worthy of a 2:1…

It might be different on Canada.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I'm basing this largely on my experience of being in HE classes where no one seemed to even understand what constituted a primary source - never mind reliability, bias, currency etc.
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Bob McC said:
Sorry Joe
Don’t agree.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
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we would accept a Wiki citation, but we do urge caution in its use, to understand what constitutes a reliable and useful citation.
 
Joe P said:
Wikipedia categorically does not replace peer-reviewed journals or academic books, but it's a good place to start and it's entirely accessible, unlike a lot of journals that require subscriptions or payment to download articles.
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To be fair, that was the approach most tutors took - that Wikipedia is a great source for background reading but not an alternative to journals and books. Between JSTOR and open-access journals I rarely found journal access an issue though.
 
Tony L said:
So all directly linked back to Q-Anon conspiracy theory? It is one of the most fascinating movements of our age. Baffling how something so clearly bonkers can gain such traction. I guess one can draw parallels with religion. I’d love to know exactly who was behind it and whether it was politically instigated (e.g. Russian/Chinese disruption strategy) or whether it was just some smelly fat 48 year old troll surrounded by empty pizza boxes and coke bottles in his mum’s basement that kicked it all off for teh lulz.
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Did you watch the HBO documentary?

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/22/989241933/q-a-documentary-unravels-twisted-knots-of-qanon-movement

Odds are that Q is Ron Watkins.

CAB200-AA-63-E5-4-EBC-AF21-31-A49331-C8-B5.jpg


Now this pathetic little creep wants to run for Congress.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-t...se-elections-3c1c4cb13caaa168788418140d18bcd0
 
Bob,

I have yet to come across a university that has a blanket policy that Wikipedia can’t be used as a source of information in courses and assignments. It’s more likely that individual professors have made that decision for their courses or the students they advise.

This is not the same thing as taking Wikipedia content as inerrant. I have spotted mistakes too. I have also seen them corrected over time.

If you use Wikipedia the usual standards for evidence and reason still apply. It’s a separate issue but I feel a course in critical thinking ought to be part of every academic degree regardless of discipline. If anything, we need to be inoculating against bullshit.

Joe
 
Paul,

I come across that issue about half the time. The abstract is always available but the full paper isn’t. Usually I can get the paper using my institutional log in, but as a civilian it’s a lot harder.

Joe
 
Tony L said:
No. I don’t think I have access to it unless it has ended up on YouTube anywhere.
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It is available via Prime in some non-US geographies. While often gag-inducing, it is essential viewing IMO.
 
Things are very unequal for citizens of earth, and the feeling many are being shafted by the few, The Man, is well founded. We have been and are constantly misled by politicians, business leaders, the news etc. That's a fertile breeding ground for nuttery because people can point to an actual, relentless environment of misinformation, propaganda and now social media influence.

But when it comes to climate change and COVID-19, I see countries around the world, with very different political agendas, are taking similar scientific positions. This leads me to think the conspiracy theories about these particular topics are false.
 
paulfromcamden said:
A handful of very left-wing 'friends of friends' have been posting anti-vax / covid hoax stuff on social media for yonks. I tend to tune it out but from what I can gather it's concerns about civil liberties and a profound distrust of the government backed up with pseudo-science quackery.

I don't think they're necessarily bad people - they've just ended up in the wrong internet echo chamber.
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we had hours of it on one our mainly BAME FB group but fortunately FB sat on it and its stopped . got very wearing trying to argue all the time
 
Wikipedia is often good for an overview on a topic and for getting a sense of the search terms, key words, subject areas, and so on when you're new to an area. I often use the terms and subject areas noted on Wikipedia to dig deeper using academic sources such as arXiv, PubMed, Scopus, etc.

The problem with Wikipedia is not that it's categorically crap. The problem is that it's great in parts and crap in others. Your job is to separate the wheat from the chaff, or the crapes from the crappola.

Joe
 
Bob McC said:
Sorry Joe
Don’t agree.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
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Some time back there was a (peer reviewed) study that showed Wikipedia to be as accurate as most other 'encyclopedic' sources with less factual errors than Encyclopedia Brittanica.

As with anything - corroboration is a must when using any source - even 'Academics' tell porkies and falsify data (and 'peer review' isn't all its cracked up to be)
 
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