I (and others) have been going on about this for some time but Carl Bergstrom (an Evolutionary Biologist at Washington University, Seattle, USA) has effectively weighed in with a book Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/01/carl-bergstrom-people-are-using-data-to-bullshit). He also emphasises that 'the Science' is always littered with unknowns, especially in new, fast-moving areas (like attempting to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic). When someone says they are 'following the science', it is not unreasonable to ask 'which science'? Bergstrom ran a popular University course on the topic explored by his volume and was surprised (I'm not, given the current generation's tendency to get their 'news' only from dodgy digital sources) that many IT literate students did not apparently appreciate that some sources of information (e.g. The New England Journal of Medicine) were more reliable than Fox News. This is not to say, however, that 'reliable' sources don't sometimes get things wrong. Having said that, the world of 'influencers' who often appear more driven to get 'likes' than to pass on accurate information can be positively dangerous. It is interesting, given these issues, that WhatsApp is setting up a feature enabling users to to factcheck material that has 'gone viral' on their platform (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/04/whatsapp-launches-factcheck-feature-aimed-at-viral-messages). Two points: it's only available for material with lots of reads and using it will be optional (I suspect that many people will not bother to click the item). It would be excellent, however, if this feature was also applied to other Facebook-owned platforms. We need more science we can believe in (until it's updated)!
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