I think the board should have a global topic ban on promoting unproven COVID-19 treatments as being posted in at least the thread linked above. There is a very real chance of causing harm by creating artificial demand for a treatment, or in complications arising from taking such medications. I know the counterargument will be that bad information can be fought with good information, but let’s be serious for a moment. The people promoting unproven treatments are not going to stop no matter what gets posted, and this is too serious of a real issue, with the potential for real-world impact to take lightly.
This is a really good idea. False information has no shortage of outlets, (Facebook & Twitter especially). The Straight Dope should hold itself to a higher standard in this case.
I completely agree with the OP, but I think the emphasis here should be on the word “promoting” unproven treatments. The operative statement, to quote the CDC, is “There are no drugs or other therapeutics [currently] approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19”. But there are at this moment 657 planned or ongoing studies listed at the NIH site clinicaltrials.gov and it should be permissible to discuss any of them on a scientifically responsible basis.
I think that’s a fair question, and not easily answered since it will get into shades of grey. Overall, collectively, we need to be careful about advocating or promoting versus discussing. Ultimately, it comes down to how it is presented. Linking to a study in a scholarly journal is sharing information (and hopefully eventually good news); whereas, linking to a YouTube video that says (effectively) “This works.” is fraught with potential peril. And then there’s everything in-between, which are the shades of grey. I’m mainly saying we need to exercise caution because of the potential for real-world impact.
Perhaps promotion of unproven treatments should be treated like religious witnessing is; move the thread to Great Debates and allow others to challenge the proposal.
I understand what you’re saying; however, there is a difference. If people debate tax policy, immigration policy, religion, etc. etc. etc., then there’s little chance of a large real-world impact in real-time. Most of us are simply not in the position to have a big effect on these things beyond with our voting voice. It is interesting, informative, useful, and fun to debate these things; however, with this particular topic people could be making real-world choices that have a real impact on this crisis in real-time.
The big difference between the Dope and other sites is that idiocy, harmful or otherwise, gets shot down here fast, generally with the backing of solid evidence.
If Dopers don’t get the opportunity to see how foolish and risky COVID-19 treatments (or other forms of “alternative medicine”) are, it increases the chances that they’ll fall for the blandishments of whoever is promoting them.
If posters here persist in hyping specific unproven products with links to sellers, I have no problem with shutting that down. But we’re prevented from fighting ignorance if forbidden to discuss the nature of that ignorance.
I will point out that not one single poster in that thread has supported or been convinced in any way by the OP. In fact, about 80% of the posts (almost all except those by the OP) are providing excellent counter evidence. I don’t see any evidence that anyone on this board is making a choice to use this treatment based on that thread; in fact, quite the opposite.
And the OP was specifically given a topic ban about an hour before this thread was started. Seems to me nothing else needs to be done unless someone else takes up the mantle.
The problems with a blanket ban, as I see it, is that 1) AFAIK no treatment has yet been clinically proven to be effective; and 2) the difficulty of defining exactly what “promoting” means. Technically this could include someone saying “this treatment appears promising” before it has passed clinical trials.
However, we can insist on links to authentic scientific and medical studies rather than Youtube videos, which is the course we have been taking so far.
