Do you mean "Do their own research" like make up conspiracy theories out of thin air and parrot nonsense deep state rhetoric? Completely divorcing yourself from reality? You want more of that?
Thing is, to a large degree, we haven't had to before. If someone random person wants to believe the moon landing is hoax, it doesn't affect my life in the slightest. What's changed is that random person walking around with no mask and no vax. Now, a random person in a Target market a thousand miles away from me isn't literally a threat, but where that attitude is supported online and a random someone walks into my local Target, it causes me to need to care. Someone can chime in to question the underlying beliefs on the matter of Covid, but the point is this is an example of an issue where we care. There are extremist views like white supremacy or similar violent ideology that are a bit further outside the scope of discussion but are another example of why we care that enough everyones agree.
Isn't the fact that we (as in, society) don't agree that it does affect your life an indication that it's actually a borderline issue, though?
Everyone would agree that a person wandering around the street firing live rounds into targets is acting in a dangerous manner.
No-one would agree that a person drinking a cup of tea in their own house is acting in a dangerous manner.
But coronavirus isn't one of those things. It's genuinely a borderline issue, and not because of the science, but because it's almost exactly on the line in which some people consider it to be a disaster and others consider it to be a bit of a nothing burger.
As a result, you end up in a situation as described by rgrieselhuber below.
Some people think that we need to close (e.g.) schools to stop coronavirus. Other people think that we need to stop caring so much about coronavirus, so that we can go to (e.g.) school.
The question of whether there's misinformation is almost tangential to the point because there are huge numbers of people who do not doubt official statistics or modelling but also believe that data or those models are not severe enough to require us to 'stop the world' so to speak.
I guess my thoughts are that, if we can't even convince each other (and from what I can tell neither of us have really fallen for misinformation), what hope is there for the actual 'vaccines cause 5g' nutjobs?
There were people during every atrocity (e.g. genocide) who argued the atrocity didn't affect their lives. Did that make it a borderline issue? No, it did not.
Ok, in your threat model, a person who doesn't wear masks or take vaccines represents (even though the vaccine you took should keep you safe?) an existential threat to you, and therefore you should have the right to dictate their beliefs and actions. However, they may view your actions as an existential threat to them. How to resolve?
You have it backwards. Discussing controversial issues in the clear minimizes conspiracy theories (no, it doesn't completely eliminate them). The volume of conspiracy theories was driven up precisely because our epistemological institutions (e.g., media, academy, etc) abandoned the pursuits of objectivity and neutrality. To get back to a semi-rational state of affairs, we need to get the ideology out of our institutions (or at least diversify it).
Do you think there would be less moon landing deniers if the media talked about it earnestly? If legitimate scientific journals published "research"? Honest question.
No, because there's some margin of people who won't be convinced no matter what. If you've failed to persuade that 2% (or whatever the floor might be) then there's no need to discuss further--those 2% are inconsequential. But if you're at double-digit percentages you can be sure that you're not near the floor.
Moreover, it's not just about the media's coverage of COVID or the moon landing, but about their overall credibility during the prior decade. For example, the media has reliably and brazenly lied and mislead on racial justice protests from ~2014 through 2020, which almost certainly affects its credibility on other issues (e.g., covid). Of course, the same applies to the academy and other institutions.
Moon landing deniers won't read, nevermind believe, legitimate scientific journal investigations. What's needed is Buzzfeed-esque, at that level of writing, top ten reasons why moon landing hoaxers are wrong.
Right, because the media and academic environments following the moon landing were (for all their faults) much more committed to objectivity and neutrality than they have been in the last 10 years.
This is often people not understanding the technical details of the science so fall for the logical mistake of "person on YouTube explained it so simply it must be true"... Obviously this isn't helped when the people who are supposed to be trustworthy and unbiased in presenting the science to people are repeatedly caught lying that drives people to that simpler world view.
