Freedom of speech: clarification

A few days ago I suggested accountability for those that intentionally spread lies that cause harm to others. In comments marko makes several good points. Nonetheless, they do not apply to what I wanted to say. To avoid any misunderstanding let me clarify. Freedom of speech has nasty side-effects. In an attempt to protect us against them I offered two solutions:

First, limit what people can say. marko offers good arguments as to why this is a problematic approach. That is why I concluded this should not be done. So far, we agree.

Second, make people accountable for the consequences of their right to say whatever they want. Again, some convincing arguments appear to make this route untenable. That is, if you would make this about any influence (film, book, painting) causing others to interpret that as a call to arms.

This is not what I intended, nor said. Just to be sure, I am talking about the willful spread of misinformation, lies, and propaganda with the intention to advance ones ideology while explicitly rejecting contrary evidence. Not infrequently do we see explicit advise to do, or not do, certain things. This ,of course, should be allowed, but if people act on those lies, and this causes harm, the abuse of freedom of speech should result in accountability.

Unsurprisingly the anti-science brigade is mostly inspired by religion. To cite Holy books as origin for unsupported beliefs -refusing to vaccinate, rejecting global warming, opposing evolution, et cetera- is one thing. To go out and tell people not to use condoms because some imaginary friend tells you to is quite another. Aside from the fact that I have not found the exact part where it says "being gay is a sin," "vaccination is evil," "the earth is 6000 years old," "Darwin is wrong," "Galileo is wrong," .......... (you get my drift) once you start evangelising the gospel "science is bad, ideology is good" you are responsible. Especially when you are shown the error of that proposition on numerous occasions: i.e. condoms do protect against STD's, vaccines save lifes, the earth is not flat.

To illustrate my view on accountability: randomly shooting your M16 is allowed. However, if a neighbour gets shot, because you are standing in the middle of the street while doing that, you will be criminally charged. Like bullets, words are dangerous and therefore require responsibility in its user. There can be no misunderstanding, my suggestion applies only to promoting unsupported, and discredited, opinions which are detrimental to our health. If this is still ambiguous to you, look at the following:

1. Infectious disease promotion movement: vaccines are evil, and germ theory denial, resulting in re-emerging of preventable diseases,
2. Alt-med works and is harmless: incorrect, since it both delays adequate treatment with therapies that do not work, and has serious side-effects,
3. HIV-denialists: obstructing prevention and adequate treatment,
4. Smoking does not cause cancer: after introducing a smoking ban a sharp decline of cancer and coronary-disease, 
5. Abstinence only prevents pregnancy and STD's: incorrect, it actually causes the opposite, it increases the risk,
6. Global warming is a hoax: discredited propaganda claiming we do not need to invest in better energypolicy, resulting in increased dangers to our planet, 
7. Killing in defence of The Truth: murder is always a reliable statement when you are incapable of explaining why ideology trumps reason,  
8. Shouting fire in a cinema: irresponsible behaviour in general,
9. War on Drugs: stressing the evils of drugs while ignoring the sociological drama and the risks of alcohol and tobacco,
10. Muslims want to kill us: as argument why the War of Terror is merely self-defence, and no, they help us, (compare: McCarthyism)
11. There were WMD's: ignoring evidence to the contrary this caused hundreds of thousands to die, and millions became a refugee, 
12. Torture is the only way we can win: an age old, and utterly nonsensical, argument which is dissected here,

The above examples are just that: examples. The list goes on and on. In all these cases, time and again, the ideological claim has been proven wrong. To cite an article in the European Journal of Public Health:

All of these examples have one feature in common. There is an overwhelming consensus on the evidence among scientists yet there are also vocal commentators who reject this consensus, convincing many of the public, and often the media too, that the consensus is not based on ‘sound science’ or denying that there is a consensus by exhibiting individual dissenting voices as the ultimate authorities on the topic in question. Their goal is to convince that there are sufficient grounds to reject the case for taking action to tackle threats to health.

This is referred to as denialism. The article identifies five characteristics:

1. The identification of conspiracies. When the overwhelming body of scientific opinion believes that something is true, it is argued that this is not because those scientists have independently studied the evidence and reached the same conclusion. It is because they have engaged in a complex and secretive conspiracy.
2. Fake experts. These are individuals who purport to be experts in a particular area but whose views are entirely inconsistent with established knowledge.
3. Selectivity, drawing on isolated papers that challenge the dominant consensus or highlighting the flaws in the weakest papers among those that support it as a means of discrediting the entire field.
4. Creation of impossible expectations of what research can deliver. For example, those denying the reality of climate change point to the absence of accurate temperature records from before the invention of the thermometer. 
5. Use of misrepresentation and logical fallacies.

That is what I object to. Nobody should be allowed to invoke freedom of speech and transform it into the right to disseminate lies. It is in these situations I propose accountability for irresponsible behaviour. The active promotion of (medical) disinformation leads to increased morbidity and mortality, which is evident to every reasonable person willing, and able, to understand the difference between fact and fiction. Claiming to be presenting factual information when it clearly involves refuting established science is not comparable to writing books or making cinema.

No, I am not advocating a witchhunt. It would still be required to present evidence that harm -i.e. HIV infections, epidemics of infectious diseases, hatecrimes, et cetera- is linked to what was said by denialists. However, if such a causal effect can be proven why should the anti-science movement not be liable in the legal sense?

Concluding, I am against prohibiting specific views, but would make those that irresponsibly -as in: choosing ideology over reason- promote dangerous behaviour accountable for the resulting harm. Freedom of speech comes at a price!

Update: The right to lie gives us this.

Update II: Regarding alternative medicine it is possible to take a more legalistic approach, Brennen McKenzie just started a series on the topic:

When I write or talk about the scientific evidence against particular alternative medical approaches, I am frequently asked the question, “So, if it doesn’t work, why is it legal?” Believers in CAM ask this to show that there must be something to what they are promoting or, presumably, the government wouldn’t let them sell it. And skeptics raise the question often out of sheer incredulity that anyone would be allowed to make money selling a medical therapy that doesn’t work. It turns out that the answer to this question is a complex, multilayered story involving science, history, politics, religion, and culture.

And:

What I hope to do in this series of essays is look at some of the major themes involved in the regulation of medical practice, particularly as they relate to alternative medicine. I will begin by touching on some of the general philosophical and legal issues that have defined the debate among the politicians and lawyers responsible for shaping the legal environment in which medicine is practiced.

Update III: Yet another example of the freedom of misinformation.

Update IV: Using Bush's card-trick here is the denialism deck of cards.

Update V: The right to mislead claims yet another victim.

Freedom of speech

Most countries in the West guarantee freedom of speech, because everybody should be able to express their opinion, however flawed. If we then counter the misleading and incorrect statements with facts people will be able to recognise ideology for what it is. At least, that is what I was thinking in the past. That principle I have come to doubt.

The past decade we have seen the rise of the anti-science movement, the decline of quality in journalism, and use of sophisticated techniques by those Merchants of Doubt. This means that public discourse (about science) is dominated by ideology, and monetary, driven arguments.

But there is also scientific evidence supporting my doubts. Research by Brendan Nyhan et al. which shows that people are not correcting their ideology based views when confronted with contradictory evidence. Their study shows something called "backfire effect," which stands for the observation that

corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.

NPR aired a discussion with Brendan Nyhan. While commenting on a more recent study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology Ben Goldacre observes:

What do people do when confronted with scientific evidence that challenges their pre-existing view? Often they will try to ignore it, intimidate it, buy it off, sue it for libel or reason it away.

The classic paper on the last of those strategies is from Lord, Ross and Lepper in 1979: they took two groups of people, one in favour of the death penalty, the other against it, and then presented each with a piece of scientific evidence that supported their pre-existing view, and a piece that challenged it; murder rates went up or down, for example, after the abolition of capital punishment in a state.

The results were as you might imagine. Each group found extensive methodological holes in the evidence they disagreed with, but ignored the very same holes in the evidence that reinforced their views.

After discussing the study he concludes:

When presented with unwelcome scientific evidence, it seems, in a desperate attempt to retain some consistency in their world view, people would rather conclude that science in general is broken.

Jonathan M. Gitlin, for Ars Technica, reviews studies by John Bullock of Yale, and the above mentioned by political scientists, Brendan Nyhan of Duke and Jason Reifler of Georgia State. An explanation for refuting facts that contradicts ideology might be cognitive dissonance. This may hinder rational debate on so-called controversial topics.

It seems to suggest that this effect might lead to problems when it comes to efforts to educate people about controversial or politically charged topics; I'm thinking here of climate change or evolution skeptics, both groups that have been targeted by think tanks and interest groups with vested interests in challenging accepted facts. It also points to the rationale behind media outlets like Fox News or Air America, where ideologues can have facts that support their world view continually reinforced. Sadly, that's bad news for anyone who's interested in honest and open public debate.

Yet another study, by David Gal and Derek D. Rucker, When in Doubt, Shout!
Paradoxical Influences of Doubt on Proselytizing shows that:

people whose confidence in closely held beliefs was undermined engaged in more advocacy of their beliefs (as measured by both advocacy effort and intention to advocate) than did people whose confidence was not undermined.

Reviewing this article Tom Jacobs, for Miller-McCune, notes:

The notion that shaken beliefs leads to increased levels of advocacy can be traced back to Leon Festinger’s 1956 seminal book When Prophecy Fails. It examined a cult whose members believed in their leader all the more strongly and began actively advocating on his behalf even after his predictions of catastrophe failed to materialize.

Gal and Rucker set out to replicate Festinger’s findings and use more recent psychological research to determine precisely what drives this dynamic.

Their conclusion leads him to observe:

This helps explain why political rhetoric has ratcheted up during a time of rapid societal change. In a logic-driven world, the shattering of long-held assumptions such as “the U.S. will never be attacked on its home soil” or “the value of my house will never decrease” would lead to a thoughtful period of reflection and re-evaluation. In our world, it leads one to actively advocate one’s pre-existing beliefs all the more passionately.

So, in contrast with conventional wisdom, the Tea Partiers may not be true believers so much as they are people who have had their confidence in the system shaken. To overcome any distressing doubts, they have reaffirmed their convictions by loudly attempting to persuade others. As Gal and Rucker put it in the title of their paper: “When in Doubt, Shout!”

In short, as Tom Rees puts it:

Although it is natural to assume that a persistent and enthusiastic advocate of a belief is brimming with confidence, the advocacy might in fact signal that the individual is boiling over with doubt.

The same mechanisms appear to be present in the entire denialism-movement. Just look at the rhetoric used by the and-still-alternative-medicine-works-crowd, vaccines-are-dangerous-crowd, evolution-is-just-another-belief-crowd, HIV-does-not-cause-AIDS-crowd, earth-is-flat-crowd, global-warming-is-a-hoax-crowd, US-does-not-torture-crowd, without-abolishing-civil-liberties-the-terrorists-will-win-crowd, voter-fraud-threatens-democracy-in-the-US-crowd, et cetera. These studies show part of the psychology behind the vehement opposition to (scienctific) fact. This obsessive denial of science is why I call those that promote, and those that are susceptable to, the above the anti-science movement. Whatever the reason, if science is not compatable with ones personal beliefs the irrational discard science.

Recently, following years of denying the efficacy of vaccines, we have seen the return of many preventable infectious diseases. With horrible consequences.This is a result of the right people have to say whatever they want, however irresponsible. But, freedom of speech does not stand for the right to mislead and/or lie, i.e. perpetrate a scam. Today it is used to protect the salespitch of conmen and populists among us and not to promote reasonable public discourse.

More and more I am inclined to think that this willfull spread of misinformation, if not overt lies, should be corrected. In medicine prevention is becoming increasingly important. Why not apply that principle to public discourse? Two possibilities come to mind. One, we should disallow speech which is evidently at odds with science, i.e. the earth is flat, HIV does not cause AIDS, vaccinations are evil, et cetera. The second would be to hold the anti-science crowd accountable for the consequenses of their advocacy. We should prosecute the infectious-disease-promotion-movement for increased morbidity, if not mortality. Does the law not mention reckless endangerment? See the article by attorney Jann Bellamy for details:

Those who breach their duty to avoid the spread of communicable disease may be liable to those injured for damages.

In short, those advocating an absolute right to freedom of speech must acknowledge the consequence of that principle and allow accountability when this right damages other individuals.

Update: It appears I was not clear enough in outlining what qualifies as reckless, to accommodate here is a clarification.

Update II: Another detailing the difficulties in opposing the anti-science crowd is Amy Tuteur who reviewed an article on pseudoscience in relation to the internet and noted:

Minimizing cognitive dissonance requires selective exposure, seeking out information sources that confirm existing beliefs and avoiding sources that undermine those beliefs.

Her conclusion:

The authors and publishers of pseudoscience books and websites are quite upfront about their determination to minimize cognitive dissonance by restricting the free flow of information. Only information that supports a predetermined point of view is allowed. Anything else must be deleted. To the extent that any real scientific papers are discussed, they are limited only to those that can be easily refuted. The rest of the vast scientific literature is ignored.

Update III: Apparently this obstacle to rational discourse was also discussed by Watching The Deniers.