The left is using bogus COVID-19 research to censor their opponents

How does one justify squelching free speech and censoring opponents? By justifying it by “science.”The authors of a new study published by the scientific journal Nature submit that “differential sharing of misinformation by people identifying with different political groups could lead to political asymmetries in enforcement, even by unbiased policies.”In plain English: Conservatives face more punishment by social media companies because they share more misinformation.How did they reach such a conclusion? By grading a number of news outlets and then knocking conservative users for sharing links to sites the researchers themselves deemed were “low quality.”The takeaway: Those aforementioned sanctions against right-wing speech are justified.There are some glaringly obvious issues with this construction.According to the study, outlets favored by conservatives — like The Post and Fox News — are of a lesser quality than The New York Times and CBS News, because they are less prone to being tsk-tsked by biased fact-checkers who themselves often turn out to be wrong.It’s a rigged game built on circular logic, not objective measures.Liberals affirming other liberals’ reporting isn’t confirmation of that reporting’s validity, it’s proof that this study is tainted by confirmation bias.Contrary to the authors’ assumption, neither the right nor the left has a monopoly on good or bad sources.But let’s say you give the Times the nod over The Post, too (shame on you, by the way).How does the study account for the Gray Lady accusing Sen.Tom Cotton of repeating a “fringe theory of coronavirus origins” when he posited that COVID-19 might have escaped from the coronavirus research facility in Wuhan?Or for the widely panned, ahistorical 1619 Project?Or for the Trump assassination fantasy it published in its book review section?Or any number of other either mistakes or intentional obfuscations it has made in just the last few years?Its author...