Popsci: Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments

[redfish]

Its not just trolling... they were also fighting misinformation.  Neowin moderators don't have to bother with folks making known how ignorant they are.  On a website like PopSci they decided that this misinformation in the comments was significantly degrading the quality of their original article.  Its easy to moderate trolling.  Its a very labor intensive effort to fact check everyone.

 

In other words: people are too stupid to be skeptical of misinformation and fact check for themselves. PopSci has to do it for everyone. And since they couldn't, the comment section has to be removed.

[Andre S. Veteran]

I agree with everything the article stated. Today's media is too oriented towards what uninformed random person xyz thinks rather than experts, leading to self-reinforcing myths. A site like this should not serve as a platform to give a voice to those without merit. If they really have something important to say they can always write their own blog.

[chrisj1968]

I have never been to Popular Science but if the spammers are anything like on our local television station's web page they spam everyday, sometimes 4 times during the day. They get rid of them and they just come back using another Yahoo mail account and new password. To delete the spammers comments they have to be 'flagged' 4 times and that is for just one posting out of dozens they do. They used to do the local newspaper until they required a Facebook logon.

or do it by IP maybe? naw one can spoof IP addresses like Tor

[bigmehdi]

In other words: people are too stupid to be skeptical of misinformation and fact check for themselves.

 

yeeees. Or not enough knowledgeable.

 

Remember this ?

 

[redfish]

yeeees. Or not enough knowledgeable.

 

Remember this ?

 

 

So what you're saying is if PopSci writes an article on the harmful effects of smoking, and there are some comments underneath from cranks disputing it, that the readers will not give PopSci more of the benefit of the doubt and not be more skeptical of the commenters?

 

I think that goes against human nature. Scientists are overly paranoid about this, I think.

 

Obviously, back when tobacco companies were advertising and claiming something to be scientific, scientists had a responsibility to get out the scientific findings on this. But that's all they had to do. People are distrustful of advertising and only tend to believe claims when there's no reason to believe the contrary.

[bigmehdi]

So what you're saying is if PopSci writes an article on the harmful effects of smoking, and there are some comments underneath from cranks disputing it, that the readers will not give PopSci more of the benefit of the doubt and not be more skeptical of the commenters?

 

I didn't think of this point of view. I  see lot of pseudo-scientific BS  in facebook . But if there's only one positive thing that people should do, is at least think a minimum , and not accept blindly all information from "experts" , especially  the ones related to public health.

 

I've been searching on the popsci website, and this article at least seems "pro gmo":

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/controversy-behind-elles-conspiracy-laden-gmo-story

With the conclusion :

"Elle seems to have passed right by it into conspiracy theory territory."

Sorry,  but today the word conspiracy is used a bit too easily to discredit anyone.

And first comment :

"Guys Wake Up,

GMOs can definitely cause harmful side-effects.."

etc etc...

[redfish]

 

I've been searching on the popsci website, and this article at least seems "pro gmo":

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/controversy-behind-elles-conspiracy-laden-gmo-story

With the conclusion :

"Elle seems to have passed right by it into conspiracy theory territory."

Sorry,  but today the word conspiracy is used a bit too easily to discredit anyone.

And first comment :

"Guys Wake Up,

GMOs can definitely cause harmful side-effects.."

etc etc...

 

Like with most debates, this has complexity. Anti-GMO activists are often pretty ideological in that they categorically damn all genetically modified food as dangerous. But that isn't to say problems can never arise from GMO and that we shouldn't apply scrutiny to the process of approving GMO foods.

 

Science advocates are often overly defensive and in a knee-jerk way take the opposite side of what science critics say, and this helps contribute to dumbing down the public debate over these issues.