Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
BBC Future – Why smart people believe coronavirus myths – “..It is a sad truth that any health crisis will spawn its own pandemic of misinformation. In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s we saw the spread of dangerous lies about Aids – from the belief that the HIV virus was created by a government laboratory …
Kottke.org: “A group of scientists who believe that WHO and the CDC are being too slow in acknowledging the role of aerosol transmission in spreading Covid-19 have written up a Google Doc of advice for the public: FAQs on Protecting Yourself from COVID-19 Aerosol Transmission. The goal of these FAQs is to provide information to …
Cheng, Cindy, Joan Barceló, Allison Hartnett, Robert Kubinec, and Luca Messerschmidt. 2020. COVID-19 Government Response Event Dataset (CoronaNet v1.0). Nature Human Behaviour (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0909-7. “The CoronaNet Research Project compiles a database on government responses to the corona virus. Our main focus is to collect as much information as we can about the various fine-grained actions …
Via LLRX – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish …
Washington Post article and simulation – “Find out what would happen if your neighborhood was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States [by entering your address]. At least 207,468 people have died of covid-19 in the United States. It can be difficult to comprehend the loss of all these lives in a …
Quartz: “There is growing consensus that one of the primary ways the novel coronavirus spreads is through the air. That makes it risky to put a lot of people in a poorly ventilated space. As schools, offices, and businesses reopen, facilities managers are looking at one particular metric to gauge whether there’s an elevated risk …
Vox – “Conservationists are worried that the mass production of a COVID-19 vaccine could devastate shark populations around the world, as a number of pharmaceutical companies are found to be using oil from the animals’ livers in the development of their vaccines. Squalene, a natural organic compound sourced primarily from shark liver oil, is most …
Pew Research Center – “As publics around the world look to scientists and the research and development process to bring new treatments and preventive strategies for the novel coronavirus, a new international survey finds scientists and their research are widely viewed in a positive light across global publics, and large majorities believe government investments in …
Washington Post – “The largest U.S. genetic study of the virus, conducted in Houston, shows one viral strain outdistancing all of its competitors, and many potentially important mutations. Scientists in Houston on Wednesday released a study of more than 5,000 genetic sequences of the coronavirus that reveals the virus’s continual accumulation of mutations, one of …
IEEE – Too many of the COVID-19 models have led policymakers astray. Here’s how tomorrow’s models will get it right – “If you wanted to “flatten the curve” in 2019, you might have been changing students’ grades or stamping down a rug ripple. Today, that phrase refers only to the vital task of reducing the …
CNet – “The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t hide the fact that the flu shot isn’t perfect (no vaccine is perfect), but the fact of the matter is that the flu shot does work and it remains the most effective prevention method for influenza virus. In this article, learn about where you …
Misinformation more likely to use non-specific authority references: Twitter analysis of two COVID-19 myths – “This research examines the content, timing, and spread of COVID-19 misinformation and subsequent debunking efforts for two COVID-19 myths. COVID-19 misinformation tweets included more non-specific authority references (e.g., “Taiwanese experts”, “a doctor friend”), while debunking tweets included more specific and …
