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I’m pulling a few quotes and posting a link to a new paper (Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics) published in the Open Access journal, Minerva (11/1/22). It documents the practice of intellectual suppression over the course of the Covid19 pandemic response, in numerous situations. Censorship retards knowledge develeopment. Thanks to the authors for doing this profoundly necessary work. Here’s the link.
Authors: Yaffa Shir-Raz,Ety Elisha, Brian Martin, Natti Ronel & Josh Guetzkow
“Critics have argued that the scientific and policy discourse surrounding COVID-19 has not been carried out on a level playing field due to censorship and suppression of views contrary to those supported by medical and government authorities (Cáceres 2022; Cadegiani 2022; Liester, 2022; Mucchielli 2020). Some governments and tech corporations, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn, have taken measures to censor contrary viewpoints, arguing that views challenging government policies are dangerous misinformation, and therefore censorship is justified to protect public health (Martin 2021).”
“While complaints regarding scientific censorship and suppression preceded the pandemic (Elisha et al. 2021, 2022; Martin 2015), a new feature of the COVID era is the prominent role played by information technology companies such as Facebook and Google (Martin 2021). One prominent example was the down ranking of the Great Barrington Declaration’s website by Google (Myers 2020). The Declaration, spearheaded by three epidemiologists at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities, was released in October 2020 (Kulldorff et al. 2020) and signed by many notable scientists and doctors, including the Nobel Prize laureate Michael Levitt. It argued against universal lockdowns in favor of focusing on protecting vulnerable groups. However, to reduce exposure, Google altered its search algorithm (Myers 2020). In February 2021, Facebook deleted a page set up by a group of scientists involved with the declaration (Rankovic 2021). In April 2021, YouTube removed a recording of an official public hearing on the pandemic that featured Florida governor Ron DeSantis and the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. One of them, Prof. Kulldorff, who is one of the most cited epidemiologists and infectious disease experts in the world, was himself censored by Twitter in March 2021 (Sarkissian 2021). Though his tweet saying that not everyone needs the COVID-19 vaccine was not taken down, he was warned, and users have been prevented from liking or retweeting the post (Tucker 2021).”
“This heavy censorship was done with the encouragement of governments (Bose 2021; O’Neill 2021), which cooperated with tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. For example, on March 7, 2022, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on tech companies to report “health misinformation” to the federal government and to step up their efforts to remove it (Pavlich 2022). Subsequently, e-mails released from legal proceedings have documented the ways in which government officials directly coordinated with tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor doctors, scientists and journalists (Lungariello and Chamberlain 2022; Ramaswamy and Rubenfeld 2022). In December 2021, an e-mail from the fall of 2020 was released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. It revealed a behind-the-scenes effort by Francis Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to his colleague, Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID, to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration and disparage its authors. In the email, Collins told Fauci that “this proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists … seems to be getting a lot of attention,” adding that “there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet—is it underway?” (Wall Street Journal 2021).”
“COVID-19 censorship is, in part, an exclusion of the views of dissident experts as well as citizens who question the standard position. This type of censorship has been a feature of many other controversial areas in science and medicine, such as AIDS, environmental studies, fluoridation, and vaccination (Delborne 2016; Elisha et al. 2021, 2022; Kuehn 2004; Martin 1991, 1999; Vernon 2017). In fact, censorship has a long history, and its purpose is to suppress free speech, publications and other forms of expression of unwanted ideas and positions that may be perceived as a threat to powerful bodies such as governments and corporations.”
“Considering the extent of censorship reported during the COVID-19 era, and in particular the number of accomplished doctors and scientists censored and silenced, as well as the extensive involvement of tech companies, on the one hand, and governments, on the other, it is worthwhile investigating this phenomenon. The present study is designed to explore the subjective perceptions of well-credentialed, highly accomplished mainstream doctors and scientists who have experienced censorship and/or suppression after expressing non-orthodox positions regarding the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they dealt with it. Through interviews, we examine censorship tactics used by the medical establishment and the media (both mainstream and social media), and the counter-tactics employed by their targets.”
A person had rather randomly left a comment here which made the claim, among other things, that homosexuality was a mental illness. In trying to add my own comment refuting that claim, and calling that view a steaming pile of bigotry, I accidentally removed both the comment and my response. So there it is. Ironic, no, as the piece above is all about censorship? Anyway if the person who made the comment/claim wants to re-post it, I'm happy to leave it here for all to judge for themselves, along with my response refuting it. Because open marketplace of ideas, ones I find repugnant and all.