Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic 383
judgecorp writes "Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it's argued that Twitter's structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google's Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map." On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.
This just in (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving people a voice spreads panic. Film at 11.
People want to be heard. And they learned from the news that bad news get the most attention. So what do you do when you want the most attention? You spread bad news. You invent them where necessary, because everyone else does it too and you gotta outdo them.
We, in the free world, didn't learn the lesson that people with tightly controlled media learned a long time ago: Just because you may say the truth doesn't mean that you have to. We grew up with free press and the idea that you can tell it the way it is. The fallacy was to assume people would do just that.
Maybe this, along with other similar "problems", will teach us that, surprise, surprise, people lie to you when they think they gain an advantage out of it. Just don't believe everything you hear.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, Randall Munroe is simply this century's Nostradamus.
Re:This just in (Score:2, Insightful)
We, in the free world, didn't learn the lesson that people with tightly controlled media learned a long time ago [...] We grew up with free press and the idea that you can tell it the way it is.
How quaint. You have free press? Please let me know where your free world is, I'm moving today.
Seriously though, the press in "the free world" - which is for you, I'm assuming, roughly whatever rich country that didn't fall under Soviet influence at the end of WW2 - isn't free or impartial by a long shot, because most media outfits are owned by corporations. Whatever the press is biased towards whatever furthers their owners' agenda. The only free-ish sort of media is the internet, and traditional media do their best to belittle the quality of the information there, not entirely without reason incidentally, given the low S/N ratio on the net.
As to the outbreak of swine flu, it will be controlled in no time by our modern sanitary responses, but in the meantime, it's a godsend for corporations and banks, because while it lasts, people fear the flu instead of growing a hatred for the people responsible for the economic crisis.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That's silly: why would the solution to eradicating a disease be catching it when it's already out there?
I reached the same conclusion (that catching now would be better than later) but for different reasons. Assuming you are going to catch it at some point, if you caught it right now then you'd be one of a very small number of infected people, and you'd receive a lot of attention and a lot of care. If it spreads and pretty much everyone gets it, then good luck getting any sort of access to health care (if you actually need it - most people have gotten better without special care)
I think one of the biggest challenges we'll face in a pandemic is educating people to stay away from hospitals unless they are really really sick. Based on what i've seen in the past, everyone will be marching up to the hospital at the first sign of the sniffles... you're more likely to get beaten to death by an irate parent trying to get their child seen to than to actually get help :)
Uninformed opinion worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
News at 11
The rapid dissemination of information that twitter provides can be a good thing (or at least so I read on Bad Astronomer [discovermagazine.com], I still haven't been to twitter after the first time I went there to see what it was), but seriously, the same rules apply as with anything you read on the Internet.
If you're a twitter user and you feel the need to let people know about things, at least link them to a reputable information source. No, an obvious conspiracy site saying this is a terrorist attack is not an information source.
Twitter and vomit (Score:5, Insightful)
one of the victims saying how awful it was to vomit for hours on end.
Maybe just a strange coincidence, but Twitter itself seems to me like a place where people are vomiting continuously.
Twitting (Score:2, Insightful)
Spreading panic (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't just that (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet adds two thing on to of just giving voice to people who are uninformed:
1) Giving voice to the crazies. There are lots of crazy people in the world. Many of these crazy people like to predict doom at every turn. While there are some historical examples of the doomsday prophets that got a widespread voice, most were just ignored. Now the Internet lets them publish to a world wide audience, and to find other crazies like them to reinforce their views. It isn't just that they are uninformed, it is that they actually want the doomsday scenario to be true.
2) Anonymity. Part of the problem of calling out doom in the real world is that if you end up being completely and totally wrong, people may decide to ignore you, ridicule you, maybe even pop you in the mouth. You become the crazy guy that nobody will invite over and so on. Well not on the net, there's basically no consequences for your actions. In another forum I saw someone who has said that for sure, this is The Big One(tm). (S)he threw out a whole bunch of "This is what's gonna happen," statements, with no backing. However when (s)he's wrong, as is almost certainly the case, there'll be no repercussions. (S)he can pull the same shit during the next big thing.
So the next just creates this perfect storm for doomsday hysteria: The information is spread instantly, there's no credentials check so there's lots of uninformed people, the crazies can talk all they like, and nobody is held accountable. Thus it becomes real easy for "A man in Brazil is coughing," to be blown up in to "All of Brazil is infected and now has a zombie apocalypse," in a matter of hours.
My advice to everyone is same as always: Trust the experts, in this case the CDC and WHO. Wash your hand often (this is a good idea no matter what) and make sure you've got some soup and acetaminophen on hand since if you get sick, you aren't likely to die, but you probably won't feel like shopping and will likely want those two things.
Double Standards Much?! Fuck you kdawson (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously - Slashdot story - twitter being used to spread panic, then as a fucking follow-on, quoting 'newton's law' and advocating that people rush out and get the flu now (i.e. PANIC).
Seriously we all whinge about standards here but this is a joke.
Yes it may make statistical sense to get it early so you get full access to medical care - but advocating this position IS SPREADING PANIC - things are NOT that bad yet - we get 100% detection of moratality rate, but we do NOT know how widespread it is. If it turns out its 10,000 rather than 2000 infected than this is NO WORSE than a very bad normal flu.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the "professional" media? (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite the fact that I agree that the media in general is doing it's fair share of fearmongering..
I don't blame the cameramen in this case. The only thing they know are:
There is a new type of flu, a fair number of people *have* died from it. Full details of severity in general are not known yet. So yeah.. i'd be very carefull to if I had to talk to one of the suspected victims. Caution is a virtue.
Re:This just in (Score:5, Insightful)
[we]pick wire stories based on what people are interested in and what folks need to stay informed.
The first part of that sentence is certainly true, whilst I can't speak for your newspaper the second part doesn't necessarily follow. People tend to be interested in the latest celebrity gossip, so papers print celebrity gossip because it sells newspapers. I don't call that keeping people informed (note: I'm from the UK that's how it works here if the USA is different then I apologise).
Re:Autism (Score:1, Insightful)
Do we REALLY need XKCD fanboy-ism over here on slashdot? It's bad enough on digg...
Re:Autism (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a hard prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's not a hard prediction. I mean, whole threads of uninformed and stupid people spewing stupidities... on the internet? Who would have guessed? ;) In related news, bears do poop in the woods, the pope is indeed a catholic, and the ocean is indeed wet.
On the other hand, to be fair, the internet only made it easy to run into such conversations which otherwise would have happened at the pub or at a street corner, with equally uninformed people nodding through and offering their own stupid advice. Just think of all the cabbies who can't manage their own finances, but are ready to discourse at length about how the government should fix the economy. Or of all the people who can't be diplomatic enough to their neighbour, but apparently know exactly what the president should tell France or Russia. Etc.
And occasionally whole "theories" have been formed out of such stupid-preaching-to-the-stupid situations.
E.g., historically "animal magnetism" was born out of weaker correlations than the "lick an autistic kid" in the comic. And some people still buy magnets and crystals as cures... although they were known to be scams at least as early as 1841 when Charles Mackay published his "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
E.g., homeopathy was born out of the observation that, basically, small doses of quinine cure malaria, but high doses of quinine cause the same kind of shivers as malaria. In the meantime we know why both happen, and it has nothing to do with "like cures like". But some people _still_ insist on believing in a cure that's intellectually on par with "lick an autistic kid" and born out of a correlation that was every bit as stupid and superficial. (In fact, just watch, I'm going to rub my crystal ball and predict that someone will promptly post a reply as to how wrong I am, and how homeopathy works and is proven and cures everything from hypochondria to cancer;)
Re:Spreading panic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sensationalism (Score:5, Insightful)
nuff said
Re:A better idea (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Could that be because the navy was there to provide medical facilities and treatment to the people on American Samoa?
Harmful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Far from being harmful to the panic, I would say that twitter is helping the panic considerably.
Re:Difficult (Score:5, Insightful)
People who use Twitter, or astroturf about it, are called twits.
Re:This just in (Score:4, Insightful)
You needn't lie to cause a panic. You needn't invent things to turn a harmless information into a horrible (and potentially dangerous) hype.
Assume this comes over the ticker (I'm inventing numbers here, it's an example, ok?): "Ten cases of swine flu in Texas. After about 80 reports in Mexico last week with 2 fatal cases, the swine flu has now reached the USA. Also, two cases have been reported in Europe, namely in Spain and Scotland. Doctors consider the thread as "potentially serious", generally though they estimate to have enough serum at hand to avoid a pandemic".
Newspaper article: "Swine flu crosses pond! After sweeping through Mexico with almost 100 infected, some of them seriously sick or already dead and spreading through the south of the USA through the weekend, reports have been confirmed that the deadly Swine Flu has now crossed over to Europe. Cases have been reported in Spain and Scotland. According to experts, the disease and its spread can only be described as "serious", whether there is enough serum to keep a pandemic from sweeping through Europe and maybe even Asia is anything but certain"
Same information, ain't it? It's all in the delivery...
Re:Thank God - I'm safe, I'm a vegetarian (Score:1, Insightful)
lol - you wish!
(It's not caught from eating pork)
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:1, Insightful)
Kinda like an idiots distilled thing?
Twitter is for idiots.
Re:Sensationalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that is fair and balanced, isn't it? Here's what the federal government is saying, downplaying it. Here's what's actually happening and what the victims think about it.
If they cut the story off right after the official statement it'd be a lot like a cover-up, wouldn't it? You get the official federal propaganda piece and that's it. That's actually what you want?
Re:But there is a difference... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing as Slashdot isn't Australio-centric, could you explain what super is?
Googling for super isn't very informative, and there's very little context to make the search more relevant.
Re:Not a hard prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
Either way, some proper research from a reputable scientist that isn't setting out to disprove psychic abilities, just wants to see if anything is happenin, would be really nice.
Yes, it's strange that despite all the alleged uncited examples you give of people who are apparently "too good" at predictions, this is never shown to work in repeatable scientific test conditions.
Re:This just in (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, but you are free to start your own press, and say whatever you want.
Of course, you may want to incorporate for your protection. It seems that you feel the act of incorporation adds evilness and bias to your reporting. But bias is there prior to incorporation.
My opinion is that your "Score:5 Insightful" post is a load of crap, and that's the beauty of a free society. I can state my opinion, whether I am a corporation or not. And you can say yours. I can say it in print, on TV, or right here on the Internet.
Sure, the internet has a lower cost of entry, but high costs of other mediums of communication do not equate to less freedom. You are free to start your own radio station or newspaper! Go for it.
Sprint depiction of Twitter pretty much nailed it (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you seen the first of Sprint's current snarky commercials about its 3G network, in which it visually depicts the Twitter network as a mob of little blue birds all chirping "me!"...?
I'd say that pretty much nails the whole narcissistic utility of Twitter.
Re:Randi? (Score:5, Insightful)
Randi's as bad as the hoaxers. No objectivity at all. I'd like to see an objective study using MRI scanning at the time a "psychic" makes a prediction, see if there's anything odd happening.
I'd like to see a "psychic" make a correct prediction before I start giving a shit whether anything odd is happening in their brain, unless it's to try to distinguish whether it's the "lie" center of the brain that's firing, or the "self delusion" center. Trying to figure out the cause before you've confirmed there is an effect is the definition of wild goose chase.
How you get that a mere lack of objectivity and a predisposition to disbelieve in psychic phenomenon, makes Randi as bad as people lying in order to scam innocent but gullible people out of their money is beyond me.
You do realize that many of the greatest experiments in history were performed by people who were not anything close to objective? Michelson and Morely were not objective in the slightest, they were absolutely convinced that the Luminiferous Ether existed and their experiment would prove it, and they re-ran it all over the world and with every modification they could think of to explain why they continued to get null results. They continued even after much of the scientific community had started to take their result to mean that the Ether wasn't real. Eventually they had to admit defeat and accept reality, reluctant though they were to do so. Yet at no point did their lack of objectivity actually effect the reality that the Ether doesn't exist.
So let me know when there's a douser who can identify water 9/10 of the time consistently, and Randi still denies that there's anything to it even after the guy passes every test he throws at him, and then I'll agree that a lack of objectivity is in some way relevant. Unless it's your theory that his lack of belief somehow interferes with the sprits' communications or the quantum-prediction-power or whatever nonsense you think is powering these "powers". Which I'm sure the shysters themselves will say. "Ooh your skepticism is putting the spirits off. I can only talk to them in front of completely credulous gullible idiots."
We've already seen how plants exploit quantum effects for their benefit, and I've heard theories (just theories mark you) of how an evolved response in humans where they'd use a quantum effect to ascertain probability, or even influence probability. And that's just pre-cognisance, one of the harder telepathic skills to explain. Telepathy, empathy, all of them are scientifically possible.
LOL. Yeah, QM interpretations based on puns on the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, and ordinary chemistry that incorporates QM effects (which happens all the time), totally explain how pre-cognizance is possible. Psychic Invisible Pink Unicorns are scientifically possible, since we haven't proven that they aren't, we just have no reason to think they exist and all semi-plausible mechanisms by which they could exist show nothing, and none of the people who claim to be able to find them with ease can demonstrate this ability to anyone who doesn't already believe in them.
hence why some of them may exhibit the skill at home when they're not really caring, but might not work in a stressful environment when they *want* something to happen to get their grubby mitts on the $1 million.
Some? You mean all. You can use the same reason to explain why some people can't answer easy questions on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but at the end of the day some people win. But there's not one person with paranormal powers out there who is confident enough in their ability to make it work for a million bucks?
Fine. Then send them my way and I'll give them some practice. I'll give them $20 and a six pack if they can demonstrate their ability, and I promise not to record it so they won't be embarrassed in front of anyone but me when they fail. Oh wait, that lacked objectivity -- I meant if they fail. I hope that slip-up didn't nullify their powers!
Re:Randi? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is related to how voodoo dolls work through quantum entanglement. Basically, if you have something from the four basic voodoo groups - something from the Head, something from the Dead, something of the Body and something of the Thread - and combine them into a voodoo doll, their combined effect superimposes their combined quantum superposition over the targets, thus forcing the target to collapse its wave function in the same way as the doll.
Future advances in the field also show great promise: given any animate part of a quantum system, such as a beard that's still twitching, it should be possible to re-synthesize the entire quantum state of the system. This was originally suggested by an unknown user going by screen name "Largo", who apparently had some success there, but he seems to have been sucked into another dimension. I guess quantum research still has its dangers and will demand its victims, the same as early research into radioactivity.
But seriously: why do some people insist on perverting Quantum Mechanics into Quantum Mysticism and treating it like magic?
Re:Sensationalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they claim to be "fair and balanced" while those other networks don't. There was a study released that also found that people who got their news from Fox News were significantly misinformed about important issues (Iraq involvement in 9/11, WMDs, etc). They're pretty blatantly biased, and while that's hardly noteworthy for a news network, claiming to be "fair and balanced" sets off the bullshit sensor spectacularly.