I would like to believe that making the review reports public would increase trust in science. But I don't think it will.

When I talk to people who are anti-science, it's clear that they are just looking for reasons to reject what they don't like. Publishing peer review reports like this will provide them with a new tool for this.

Scientists always seem to make the false assumption that a stronger argument will beat a weaker argument. In public discourse that's not true.

(2/?)

@doctorambient I'm afraid I agree with your pessimistic take & you're so right that many people simply accept what they like & reject what they dislike. As for others who succumb to weak arguments, I think what happens is that folks are so busy/oppressed/stressed that they favor the *simplest* argument (that's usually false propaganda). To improve society people need time to think.

I know nothing about this thread composer, just passing along what I saw shared last week: https://splinter.hastily.cc/

@RMiddleton thanks for the link!

I definitely agree with your assessment. A lot of the people who accept weak arguments do so because they are, as you say, too overwhelmed with other stuff to do their own, well, analysis isn't quite the right word. But, yeah.

The real problem are the disingenuous actors in this "debate" who have time and resources to spend all day finding ways to attack good arguments with what amounts to cheap rhetorical tricks.

Unfortunately, those tricks work. smh

@doctorambient FYI: I tried putting a blog post with links into https://splinter.hastily.cc & I spent time tweaking the sentence breaks & stuff... linked it to my Mastodon account... ended up with a 10 post thread set to display the first post with 9 unlisted follow-ups;
pressed the Post to Mastodon button &
IT FAILED.

So... I'd say, No, there is not a reliable thread composer yet.