Guest Post — Offensive or Inclusive Language in Scientific Communication?
Richard de Grijs comes to grips with his field’s use of potentially offensive language.
Richard de Grijs comes to grips with his field’s use of potentially offensive language.
Information manipulation is not new, yet everything is different. How do governments, preprints, algorithms, and our own responsibilities intersect? Where does peer review come in now?
The recent attempt by China to censor scholarship points to a growing set of challenges in information dissemination. Blaming the publisher obscures these issues.
As we’ve absorbed and adopted the information economy assumptions peddled by Silicon Valley, social isolation has increased, the definition of “fact” has become slippery, and the scientific record has become more superficial, less reliable, and more transitory. In fact, confirmation bias seems to have become our main operating principle. Maybe a change in economic incentives and greater skepticism across the board could help — all driven by more humans at the controls.
When two innocents are censored inappropriately, hilarity ensues.
Amazon demonstrates its ability to remotely remove content from the devices, creating an Orwellian stir with its customers.