Assuming your position on any subject, especially novel viruses and novel vaccines, is 100% correct and immune to debate or criticism is irrational. When your position is "I'm right, they're wrong, they shouldn't be allowed to talk about it" you are the censor. If the facts support your position, why silence debate or criticism?
The scientific method requires hypothesis tested by experimentation. Have we fully proven via experimentation any facts about long term side effects from the Covid vaccine? Of course not, we have not had the time! As such, any true scientist would invite debate, discourse and discussion as we as a society attempt to balance the risk of Covid with the unknown risk of vaccinations. We must also analyze and discuss the vital topics of freedom over one's body, freedom of speech, and the intricacies of quarantine restrictions on our civilization.
That conversation is important and should not be casually censored off the internet under the guise of "protecting innocents from misinformation".
If vaccine safety can't be established by anything but time, than debate definitionally cannot inform us about the safety of vaccines. Vaccines can not only be unexpectedly dangerous in the long term, they can also theoretically be unexpectedly protective, and we can't know without waiting.
I've seen no evidence of /r/thenewnormal advancing scientific research in any way, and arguably they are having the effect of having amateurs direct research priorities due to phenomena like them promoting ivermectin leading to a surge in poisoning cases and thus scientific interest. The presence of "debate" does not nessecarily advance the scientific process, debate can be rhetorical sophistry that hardly achieves the same end as for instance peer review.
The best argument I can think of for allowing such communities is to put mainstream science in a position where they MUST respond to heterodox scientists or risk the public heeding their concerns and not getting vaccinated etc. etc. I don't think this is an incredibly convincing argument either, since it's a rather costly way to enforce sufficient scepticism, and it's disputable if it's nessecary.
> Assuming your position on any subject, especially novel viruses and novel vaccines, is 100% correct and immune to debate or criticism is irrational.
The "debate" and "criticism" is always in the form of uncited or poorly cited conspiracies, along with links to extremely unreputable sites. It some cases, the only evidence is a highly shared Facebook meme. The credentials of the "research" authors are frequently lies, too. For example, there's a big one going around from the "inventor of RNA vaccines." However, if you look into it, it's just one of thousands of people who worked on RNA vaccines at some point in its lifecycle. It's like claiming some new grad software engineer who works for Facebook is "the inventor of Facebook."
Mercola, Natural News, Fox, Breitbart, *.win, Zerohedge, Infowars: These sources aren't dismissed because "there's a bias against conservative values" or whatever; they're dismissed because they regularly churn out completely debunked garbage. The times they're right about something is, at best, a fluke.
The scientific method requires hypothesis tested by experimentation. Have we fully proven via experimentation any facts about long term side effects from the Covid vaccine? Of course not, we have not had the time! As such, any true scientist would invite debate, discourse and discussion as we as a society attempt to balance the risk of Covid with the unknown risk of vaccinations. We must also analyze and discuss the vital topics of freedom over one's body, freedom of speech, and the intricacies of quarantine restrictions on our civilization.
That conversation is important and should not be casually censored off the internet under the guise of "protecting innocents from misinformation".