This is so wrong. Anyone with even a tiny understanding of cultural cognition & the psychology of belief knows that responding with accurate information is not an effective cure for misinformation

Censorship is not answer, but alarming that Twitter owner doesn’t seem to get this Don’t take my word for it, though. Listen to @cult_cognition, who has researched this more than anyone else

Essential reading: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2…

Last week an article from @propublica & @VanityFair used troves of Chinese-language documents to push claim that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab

Unfortunately, according to many Chinese language experts, they mistranslated/misinterpreted those documents

latimes.com/business/story… ProPublica is an admirable journalism org with a history of trustworthy work. Seems clear that this "train wreck" of an article, as @hiltzikm characterized it, should be retracted, or at the very least massively corrected.

But it's 2022 so who knows what anyone will do!

Here's a little story about how the internet makes it wonderfully easy to be skeptical and not get fooled by clout-chasers and virality recyclers who share things that aren't true…

Time for some practice in the fine art of baloney detection

https://twitter.com/Rushzilla/status/1557043086529806336

This grocery list is neat, but it's not from the 1920s. What gives it away? For starters, spaghetti & frozen foods weren't everyday items until post-WWII. But you don't need to be an anthropologist to figure out this is wrong. You just need Google.

A new analysis of the B.1.1.7 extra-contagious coronavirus flavor is hot off the presses and it is particularly concerning in light of TX Gov Abbot's decision to lift masking and other restrictions this week.

Paper: science.sciencemag.org/content/early/… B.1.1.7 (also known as "variant of concern" or VOC 202012/01) has mutations that help it infect better and spread faster. The data show it is rapidly outcompeting the other COVID strains and is the cause of most new infections in many places (and that list of places will grow)…

Looking more unlikely that Wuhan wet market was the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (though it was a site of early spread)
livescience.com/covid-19-did-n… Scientists tested the animals at the market and none were found to carry SARS-CoV-2. Likely the virus jumped from wild host into humans elsewhere and the market was an early “superspreader” event with people passing it to other people

Fires in the #AmazonRainforest are trending, and like most trending topics people are seeing the forest and not paying attention to the trees.

By which I mean here's a thread that I hope gives more detail and background about what's going on… A huge number of wildfires are burning in the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Roraima, and Rondonia. They’re burning down irreplaceable rainforest and erasing biodiversity. Fire data: queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/port…

Is this an emergency? Yes.

Is it new? Sadly, no…

Did you know you can recreate many Roman-style typefaces using nothing but intersecting circular arc segments and a few straight lines? This is the alphabet of architect Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554) who is credited with bringing ancient Roman architectural styles to France. The order of this can't help but make you feel good.

Destroying an irreplaceable natural treasure and replacing it with a border wall shows a truly skewed sense of national priorities. We should not value exclusion over preservation. I try not to let anger lead me, but this makes me furious. expressnews.com/news/local/art… A cynic might say "it's just butterflies"… but it butterflies are not "just" anything. They help make our food, and are food. This habitat hosts >200 winged species, including countless native and migrating birds. Places like this are the glue holding fragile ecosystems together

The fact that video clip ends with a plug for a Dr. Oz segment is the perfect underscore for its ridiculousness

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1091318044943540225

There's an old argument that "they" (different groups play the part of "they" depending on who's talking) keep changing the name for climate change/global warming because the old term isn't working or because the science changed. This is not true

After sharing this last week, I've discovered there's a bunch of conspiracy theories out there about the increase in peanut allergy. The most alarming target? Vaccines.

https://twitter.com/DrJoeHanson/status/1017816122555617280

What we know: Peanut allergies are on the rise.
What scientists don't know for certain: Why peanut allergies are on the rise

Clear danger combined with gap in scientific understanding creates perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to blossom, and boy are they blossoming…