{"id":1777672,"date":"2022-12-16T10:47:53","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T15:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1777672"},"modified":"2022-12-16T10:47:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T15:47:56","slug":"atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Atomic Bomb Lab Studying Ways To \u2018Combat\u2019 \u2018Misinformation\u2019 Including COVID Lab-Leak Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fatomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1777672&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The federal laboratory that designed the atomic bomb has set its sights on Americans, funding a study intended to help authorities learn how to \u201ccombat\u201d \u201cmisinformation\u201d \u2014 including the \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d that COVID came from a lab.<\/p>\n<p>Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is ostensibly focused on atomic energy, funded and dedicated eight staff to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC8048710\/\">study<\/a> \u201c\u2018Thought I\u2019d Share First\u2019 and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the COVID-19 Infodemic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis study examines four oft-repeated and long-lived conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19: 5G technology is somehow associated with the disease; Bill Gates or the Bill &#038; Melinda Gates Foundation created or patented the virus; the virus is human-made and was released from a laboratory; and a COVID-19 vaccine will be harmful,\u201d the study said. Elsewhere, it clarifies that the conspiracy theory includes the idea that the disease escaped from a lab whether \u201cintentionally or accidentally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ongoing COVID-19 pandemic clearly illustrates the need to identify health-related misinformation, especially with a lens toward improving communication strategies to combat it,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>The study was published in an academic journal in April 2021 and Los Alamos\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/discover.lanl.gov\/publications\/1663\/september-2022\/going-viral\">website<\/a> lauded it in September 2022 with a glowing article written for its in-house magazine. Los Alamos\u2019 article, which was written well after it was widely accepted that COVID may have leaked from a Chinese lab, simply omitted the fact that a large portion of the study was demonizing Americans who very well may have been right, and listed only the other three theories when describing what the study looked at.<\/p>\n<p>The study also said that coronavirus was just a trial run for the government\u2019s efforts in \u201ccounteracting\u201d misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Los Alamos team\u2019s work is not limited to COVID-19, nor even to public health,\u201d the study said. \u201cThe scientists are working to characterize misinformation in general, which is an important first step in counteracting its spread. Other online-information work the team members are doing includes identifying and tracking online hate speech.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The study relied on a database of purportedly conspiratorial tweets provided by NewsGuard, a group that is partnered with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aft.org\/press-release\/aft-partners-newsguard-combat-misinformation-online\">American Federation of Teachers<\/a> union and backed by the liberal Knight Foundation. NewsGuard later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsguardtech.com\/special-reports\/coronavirus-misinformation-tracking-center\/\">admitted<\/a> that it disseminated misinformation by asserting without proof that the lab leak was misinformation or a conspiracy theory 21 times, but the academic study has not been corrected.<\/p>\n<p>The study, in fact, seems less concerned with whether the theories being discussed by Americans are actually true than with positioning them as dangerous simply because they are not currently the sanctioned narrative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough some conspiracies, such as Watergate or the Tuskegee experiments, may eventually be proven to be true criminal acts, the vast majority of conspiracy theories are not true, and their spread can undermine public health efforts,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<p>It said those who shared vaccine-related articles were often \u201cknowledge-deficient,\u201d and that \u201cOne nationally representative study in the United States found that some myths (eg, that the virus was created or spread on purpose) were believed by over 30% of respondents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Los Alamos study acknowledges that it simply strung together \u201coff-the-shelf\u201d tools to feed tweets to computers \u2014 which could not even differentiate between tweets pushing \u201cmisinformation\u201d and those correcting it, and simply treated all of it as misinformation \u2014 and came to few, if any, meaningful insights as a result of its analysis. A typical observation is that those tweeting about coronavirus often frequently mention \u201cfauci,\u201d and that those who thought vaccines could have harmful effects wrote tweets that had more negative \u201csentiment\u201d than those who trusted them.<\/p>\n<p>The study says it was funded by the University of California\u2019s National Laboratory Fees Research Program and the U.S. Department of Energy through what the paper calls \u201cthe Los Alamos National Laboratory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Los Alamos did not return a request for comment on the study\u2019s relevance to its mission.<\/p>\n<p>The lab that played a role in developing the atomic bomb that killed thousands has become focused on continuing that work alongside progressive rhetoric. \u201cFrom the makeup of the workforce to the breadth of the research, Los Alamos National Laboratory embraces diversity to ensure national security,\u201d the lab (whose workforce is 1.5% black) <a href=\"https:\/\/discover.lanl.gov\/publications\/national-security-science\/2022-winter\/the-diversity-issue\">boasted<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/discover.lanl.gov\/publications\/national-security-science\/2022-winter\/diversity-equals-national-security\">\u201cDiversity equals national security,\u201d<\/a> it said. \u201cThe key to the Lab\u2019s scientific achievements, and thus to national security, is maintaining a diverse workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa) slammed the Energy Department for the study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) misuse of taxpayer dollars chasing after conspiracy theories on the internet is literally leaving Americans in the cold,\u201d Ernst told The Daily Wire. \u201cThe Biden administration\u2019s policies are contributing to a spike in home heating costs and putting Iowa and other parts of the Midwest at risk of power outages this winter. The president should flip the switch off on the silly science and redirect the attention and resources of DOE towards finding real energy solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The study is not the first example of the nation\u2019s most prestigious<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The federal laboratory that designed the atomic bomb has set its sights on Americans, funding a study intended to help authorities learn how to \u201ccombat\u201d \u201cmisinformation\u201d\u2013including the \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d that COVID came from a lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":1777675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[9650,7380,9649,4229,4127,6202,3906,8459,9652,9651,5095,6195],"class_list":["post-1777672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-combat","tag-misinformation","tag-atomic","tag-bomb","tag-covid","tag-daily","tag-including","tag-lab","tag-lab-leak","tag-studying","tag-theory","tag-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1777675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}