The point here is that youtube is not a harbinger of
scientific truth.
The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New
England Journal of Science and should not act like one
for just one topic - Coronavirus.
If anybody feels that their data or interpreation of the
data is incorrect, they should post their own video on
Youtube, refuting their claims.
But this interpretation is wrong.A scientific journal has a panel, which are qualified experts in the field or related fields, that read and pick up on statistical errors, and other errors, and decide whether or not to publish the paper. Youtube does not. Peer review as a whole, means that your work gets assessed by experts, and they decide before publication if your paper is of the right quality to enter the journal. 'Peer Review' =/= 'Allowing everyone to post and the truth will be found out or agreed upon in the end' 'Peer Review' == 'Having your work assessed by equally or more skilled people, who then decide if your work is good enough to publish' Youtube operates in a fundamentally different way to peer review, it allows anyone to post, then retroactively decides if that work meets guidelines. This means that not only is it not possible to immediately filter work that is submitted, it also does not go through proper assessment of it's validity by a panel of specialists and experts. Youtube could not operate with it's current business model using that method, and so is forced to choose another. Just because it's retroactive enforcement, doesn't mean that the terms of the service and guidelines are not in force, or should be considered censorship. Nobody is actually censoring these people, they are free to post their video literally anywhere else, but they broke the terms of the Youtube service. As many other people have pointed out, the work produced and hosted on Youtube does contain errors, these are statistical errors that would have been caught had they submitted this to an academic journal, however the video's makers explicitly decidedin to publish it on Youtube. There is very little reason to do that, other than to market this information to others. As this information is dubious at best, it is fundamentally and ethically irresponsible of them, as scientists, as medical workers who have taken an oath to do no harm, to publish this work on Youtube and to the public without going through the basic step that is peer review. The comments section does exist, but has no value, because you cannot count on the general public to be as informed in the subject matter as a peer review panel would be. |