We had this last year: “What if the scientists lie and the vaccine kills?” I'm just asking!” This didn't come from people who felt uninformed and insecure, but from those who wanted to declare themselves superior know-it-alls without arguments. And now again: “Who knows whether the massacres of the Ukrainian population actually took place! This is just propaganda! Did the Ukrainians themselves murder their own people? I'm just asking questions! ONE DOES NOT KNOW!"

This implies: “It could be this way, but it could also be different. So both theses are somehow equally valid!” That’s exactly what false balance is. Here, plausibility checks are deliberately mixed with evidence of truth - a standard trick used by fake news spreaders. Of course, we don't know 100% what happened around Kiev. And last year we didn't know 100% how tolerable the vaccination was. These are useless, banal statements: Of course, we never know anything 100%. Nor that the earth revolves around the sun.

Exact proofs only exist in mathematics. The question is therefore: Do I have a sufficiently networked, sustainable chain of evidence to consider something plausible? If so, then it is simply nonsensical to pose as a “courageous question asker” with the finger raised. It is, of course, necessary to question official narratives, look for gaps in commonly accepted claims, and expose popular fallacies. But that's not the point of such self-proclaimed questioners.

These types of questions are “childish, dangerous and morally depraved”

It's about self-dramatization: “Look, I'm smarter than the others! I proclaim my own version of the truth!” And in order to have no trouble with that, you formulate your own version in the weakest way imaginable: as a mere questioning of the mainstream. Yes, of course both sides always have their interests. Of course, not everything that came from the Ukrainian media was correct. How do you do it in a damn war? And if so, would that be an indication that Putin's propaganda is right after all? No!

This now disgusts me: the mere lateral thinking is confused with quality, the mere being against it with a position, the mere asking of questions with a refutation of the work of journalists or scientists, which was incomparably more complex. The problem is the unwillingness to see the bigger picture: Here, a strange detail - SO the official thesis is wrong. Here, an alternative thought- SO we have been lied to so far. This doesn't get you any closer to the truth. This is childish, dangerous and morally depraved.

This content was published by physicist, author “ Science is not gut feeling ”, science explainer Florian Aigner on Twitter.

That could also be of interest

Fake news - a term that perhaps not everyone was familiar with until the 2016 presidential election - has burned its way into the heart of society since the beginning of the corona pandemic. At that time, Donald Trump loudly described reputable media as lying press and spreaders of fake news, and trust in journalistic work increasingly fell. Fake news is now taking on a significant role, which has hardly any measurable consequences for the formation of society's opinion. Continue reading …


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )