The American Psychological Association (APA) is expanding efforts that it launched in 2021 to combat what it considers to be “misinformation” and is seeking additional government funding to aid in its quest.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the APA accepted a $2 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help it control the mainstream COVID-19 narratives. They were tasked with developing “a scientific consensus statement on the science of misinformation,” and a post on the APA’s website announcing the award claimed: “Psychologists can serve an important role in guiding the world out of the pandemic. We are the discipline with expertise to address vaccine decision-making, and susceptibility to misinformation.”
Not content to stop there, however, they are now pursuing additional federal funding by proclaiming psychologists as uniquely positioned professionals capable of researching misinformation and coming up with solutions. In a self-serving post on their website outlining eight recommendations for countering misinformation, the APA lists funding psychological research studies as one of its solutions, explaining that large-scale trials will help them understand which “interventions” work best at combatting specific types of misinformation.
In a new post on the American Psychological Association’s website, the group’s CEO, Arthur C. Evans, Jr. boasts that the CDC asked them to help fight misinformation and explains how a team of top psychologists spent much of last year poring over research on “misinformation” and drafting recommendations for mental health providers, social media platforms and policymakers.
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He begins with an alarmist introduction with carefully chosen wording designed to make “misinformation” sound like an urgent and far-reaching issue, writing: “The scourge of misinformation touches every aspect in the field of psychology. Clinicians work with patients who have been subsumed by harmful conspiracy theories.”
He also said that because this year is an election year, fighting misinformation will be one of psychology’s top concerns in 2024.
According to Dr. Evans, researchers found that “debunking” this information repeatedly and boosting trusted sources that share more accurate information is essential, which sounds like the perfect excuse to exercise even more censorship over what people are discussing online. In fact, Dr. Evans’ post reports that the APA is trying to disseminate this message.
“We are also asking social media companies to reduce the spread of misinformation and are pushing for new federal funding to find more ways to counter it,” he notes.
Is the CDC seeking scientific justification for censorship?
Of course, we have already seen Big Tech’s guidelines in action during the pandemic, working overtime to convey government narratives and censoring those who dare to provide helpful and proven information if it goes against those narratives.
In a recent hearing on social media censorship, House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) revealed that internal documents from Google, owner of YouTube, indicate that President Biden pressured the video sharing platform to censor Americans who were spreading what he considered “misinformation” related to the COVID-19 virus and vaccines – which, in practice, targeted vaccine skeptics and those who shared negative reactions they experienced after getting jabbed.
In a post on X, Rep. Jordan explained: We knew the Biden White House was pushing Facebook and Twitter to censor more. Now we know the White House was repeatedly pressuring Google to censor content on YouTube."
He explained how Biden’s Digital Strategy Director Rob Flaherty reached out to Google asking how they could better “crack down on vaccine misinformation” and find out how they can work with the social media platform to combat it.
He also cited the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Facebook’s removal of COVID-19 content after demands by Biden, writing: “Facebook removed content related to Covid-19 in response to pressure from the Biden administration, including posts claiming the virus was man-made, according to internal company communications viewed by The Wall Street Journal.”
Considering the way that people who tried to share their concerns about COVID-19 vaccines were often mocked online for not believing in “science” by those on the left, it makes perfect sense that the APA and the CDC are so eager to spend money trying to find scientific justification for further censorship.
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