I’m not sure what is going on, but it feels like everyone that I’ve followed or enjoyed watching now has huge leanings/kickbacks from companies they seem to be promoting on their platforms. Specifically space news recently has really shown the bias with everyone foaming at the mouth about how brilliant SpaceX is when they decide to pivot to the moon instead of mars or adding safety measures like water to a launchpad which has been done for decades.
I think my breaking point was a recent video of someone walking around, what seemed to be a campus, explaining the server/hosting logistics and technical aspects but then pivoted into how great it was when everything they were saying seemed to be a negative. Followed all the relevant links to the person and of course they work for google, so it’s some kinda “non-mainstream advertising” in the guise of actual knowledge.
I think the only two individuals I watch anymore are Anton and Fran. Hell, some of Neil Degrasse Tyson’s shit has been interesting me just because of my lack of content and I’m unfortunately someone who just can’t stand the guy (but I’ll admit I’ve seen some videos lately and he’s made good points while calling out bad actors in question).
None.
Would be an implausible absolute judgement showing my own bias and ignorance of my bias.
Cannot escape bias. Cannot eliminate it. Can only be aware and honest of it, at best.
Strongly agree. Everyone has a perspective, and even exclusively presenting objective facts will still be biased due to what is included and what is excluded.
As an example of someone who handles this well, I’d recommend Layne Norton. He’s a fitness/physiology/diet communicator. He has a PhD in it (which by itself doesnt prove much), but he is very careful in every video to only make supported claims, and he clearly states when he is only giving opinion.
For example, he will point that understanding a single mechanism doesnt tell you the whole story, so you need randomized, doubled blind, placebo controlled human trials (and preferably many), to really understand something.
That’s something that so many influencers in that field get wrong. They’ll talk about a single study that looked at the effects of a plant on a certain metabolic pathway in a petri dish, and use that to recommend people take it as a supplement. This ignores the obvious possibility that in vivo results wouldn’t match in vitro, and that the pathway they discovered isnt completely overshadowed by a different pathway with the opposite effect.
He has a few biases/conflicts of interest, which are explicitly mentioned in pretty much every video: he sells supplements, he invests in a protein bar company, and his PhD research was funded by the beef and dairy industries.