ICWA Weekly News 8-8-23

UW Makes the Top 50 List of Global Censorship Cartel, Med Student Speaks About Fired Professor and Radio Show Links

Informed Choice Washington

Aug 08, 2023

By Gerald Braude (with Bob Runnells contributing to the Med Student article, which was corrected on 8-10-23)

In this newsletter:

Links to resources from August 4^th Episode of An Informed Life Radio with Dr. Reni Moon
UW in Top 50 of Global Censorship Cartel
Medical Student Upset about Termination of Dr. Moon

July 28 Episode of An Informed Life Radio – Links to Resources

The Criminalization of Free Speech

Guest: Dr. Renata Moon, M.D.: “Picture a world where your doctor can't speak out about safety concerns—even to a US Senator. Then look out your window; we are already there."

University of Washington & NPR ‘teaching’ how to handle Fake News and Misinformation even before the plandemic.

Upcoming Events:

Sept. 15-16 ChiroFEST, Vancouver, WA - Exhibiting
Oct. 21 The Great Northwest Awakening with Ryan Weaver, Vancouver, WA - Exhibiting; Never too Early to get Tickets
Nov. 3-5 Children's Health Defense 2023 Conference - Savannah, GA

UW Makes the Top Fifty in the Global Censorship Cartel

On May 10, 2023, Racket News published an in-depth article on the Censorship Industrial Complex that has been very busy in the last few years. On July 28, The Exposé, a UK-based news agency, published an overview of that story as a starter kit to call out the top fifty organizations that act as a Global Censorship Cartel.

The Censorship Industrial Complex (Racket News/MrMooreMedia.com). UW’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) is shown in the lower right group of Academic Initiatives.

The Exposé article explains the utility of the list:

“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex (“CIC”).” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organisation type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons.

Listed twenty-first in The Racket News article is the innocently-named Center for an Informed Public (CIP) at the University of Washington (UW).

For each organization in the Top 50 List, Racket News provides quick reference summaries of each organization with the following data:

Type
You may have read about them when
What we know about funding
What they do/What they are selling
Characteristic/worldview quotes
Gibberish verbiage
#TwitterFiles References / Graphics
Closely connected to
In Sum

We pulled out the portion on UW’s Center for an Informed Public, and added some of our own News & Views (N&V) observations:

21. Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington

Type: An academic “multidisciplinary research center” with the mission to “resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse.”
You may have read about them when: CIP co-founded the Virality Project, along with the Stanford Internet Observatory, NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics and Tandon School of Engineering, Graphika, DFRLabs, and the National Conference on Citizenship. The Virality Project “worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on Covid vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials’ stances, even when that commentary was true.” The Virality Project also described opposition to Vaccine Passports as anti-vaccine behavior, and would describe as disinformation “events” like a news story that "increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.” CIP also participated in The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) along with the Stanford Internet Observatory, Graphika, and DFRLabs. The EIP, a proponent of aggressive social media censorship, partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2020 and released a report on misinformation during the 2020 election.
What we know about funding: In 2019 The University of Washington was awarded $5 million in funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to establish the CIP. In June 2021, the CIP announced a “$1 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to support the multidisciplinary research center’s rapid-response research of election-related mis- and disinformation.” August 2021: The CIP announced a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation “to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation” in partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory. The CIP received $2.25 million from that grant. Other funders include Microsoft and the University of Washington’s iSchool, Technology & Social Change Group, and Population Health Initiative.
What they do/What they are selling: CIP has undertaken projects that research misinformation and projects that look into how fact-checking can be scaled and sustained online without compromising quality. CIP researchers have written about ways to combat misinformation online, and CIP holds workshops for high schoolers on how to spot misleading information, debunk data, and improve reasoning skills.

N&V: As for the high schoolers, the featured story on the CIP web page is about indoctrinating Washington High School students on MisinfoDay 2023!

High school students from across Washington participate in MisinfoDay 2023 workshops and activities

Approximately 700 Washington high school students, teachers, librarians and other educators participated in MisinfoDay 2023 educational workshops and activities across three in-person events in March at the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington State University in Pullman and Vancouver. The annual MisinfoDay program, co-presented through an ongoing statewide partnership between UW’s Center for an Informed Public and WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, included educational gaming activities, workshops and presentations designed to help students become better evaluators of information, improve data-reasoning and factchecking skills and understand how to navigate complicated information environments online.

Characteristic/worldview quotes: “We have assembled world-class researchers, labs, thought leaders, and practitioners to translate research about misinformation and disinformation into policy, technology design, curriculum development, and public engagement.” From Jevin West, Center co-founder: “I study the Science of Science and worry about the spread of misinformation. My laboratory consists of millions of scholarly papers and public posts about science.”
Gibberish verbiage: “Explore the depths of misinformation with fun and collaborative games.”

N&V: The CIP home page also features an “escape room” of Loki’s Loop games to “immerse people in an interactive escape room of manipulated media, social media bots, deepfakes, and other forms of deception to learn about misinformation.” Maybe you can spot the irony in their promotional video, which shows students in facemasks as they play and discuss “misinformation” games.

Twitter Files Reference: The Virality Project and the EIP - projects the CIP helped form and lead - were involved in flagging content and recommending social media platforms take action against “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.”
Closely connected to: Virality Project, Election Integrity Partnership, Stanford Internet Observatory, Graphika, NYU CSMaP and Tandon School of Engineering, the National Conference on Citizenship, DFRLabs, Aspen Institute, Information Futures Lab/First Draft.
In sum: Through public and private financing, the CIP used its academic status to help with some of the largest censorship efforts targeting speech relating to the 2020 election and Covid-19.

N&V: The Racket News article did not mention the many UW courses for teaching skills to combat fake news and misinformation as in the course INFO 198/BIOL 106B: “Our world is saturated in bullshit,” begins the syllabus. “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World,” designed and taught by Carl Bergstrom, professor in Biology and Jevin West, assistant professor in the Information School. The course’s objective? To help students “learn to detect and defuse it.”

The web site further states that the course has gone viral, with new courses being explicitly modeled on “Calling Bullshit” at over seventy universities and high schools around the nation. In under two years, the course’s Twitter account has garnered over 8,000 followers, and the course website has been viewed 1.5 million times.

Many other UW study tracks offer coursework on misinfo now. The School of International Studies wades into the subject:

Jackson School Task Force tackles the international problem of fake news and misinformation — and offers solutions

In the Jackson School for International Studies, students have a unique opportunity to enact real change on a pressing social issue: participation in a Jackson School Task Force. In winter 2018, a task force tackled fake news and misinformation — producing a 140-page report, now accessible online and contributing to the academic conversation on the issue.
“The New State of the News: Confronting Misinformation in the Digital Age” was designed and taught by Scott Radnitz, associate professor of International Studies and adjunct associate professor of Political Science and Sociology. Task forces, offered every winter quarter to seniors in the International Studies major, are themed around real world problems. Students collaboratively research and write a detailed report directed toward policy makers, and at the end of the quarter, gain professional experience through defending their findings to a visiting subject matter expert.

The UW Strategic Planning course:

Confronting Fake News and Misinformation

Universities have long endeavored to teach students the habits of mind and critical thinking skills that are the cornerstone of informed and responsible civic engagement. Today, these endeavors have taken on a new sense of urgency.
At the University of Washington, we strive to equip our students with the skills to navigate today’s complex and ever-changing media landscape. While propaganda and misinformation are nothing new, today’s media landscape presents information consumers with a host of new challenges:
Click-driven models of production that value user interaction over truth
Algorithms that create echo chambers instead of spaces for civic debate
Social media platforms that facilitate the spreading of misinformation at record speeds
We help students confront fake news and misinformation with a focus on the timeless—habits of mind like evaluating sources, asking for proof, digging deeper—and the timely—understanding the digital media landscape and its financial drivers. Our goal? To empower our students to be savvy consumers, and responsible producers, of news and information.

N&V: Informed Choice Washington stands in awe of the forces at work, both government and private, that label communications as misinformation. We hope that these misinfo courses do not indoctrinate students to simply comply with someone else’s labeling decision, but rather train them to consider source documents and the source of the information itself. This coursework reminds ICWA of the Masters in Public Health curriculum which doesn’t require a technical bachelors degree. As we’ve seen, MPH graduates simply follow the herd. Our hope is that this (red?) army of misinformation experts use their minds to seek actual truth before applying misinfo labels.

WSU Medical Student Speaks Out on the Firing of Dr. Moon

(This article was revised on 8-10-23 to correct Mr. Lim’s quotes. Note that he bears no negative feelings toward WSU. Misquotes and any misrepresentation was solely the fault of the contributing reporter Bob Runnells).

Earlier this summer, second-year medical student Kevan Lim learned that Dr. Renata Moon was no longer affiliated with Washington State University when he asked Dr. Moon for a faculty letter of recommendation. In her reply to Mr. Lim, Dr. Moon stated that she could not provide one, for WSU had not renewed her teaching contract. Mr. Lim subsequently searched online and found ICWA’s earlier article about Dr. Moon’s contract termination.

Dr. Moon’s employment status with WSU was raised in a memo delivered to her about comments she made at US Senator Ron Johnson ‘s roundtable discussion last December about the COVID-19 shots for children: “There were components with the roundtable that were inconsistent with expectations of the evidence based medical education expected in developing a future generation of physicians. The expressed views will require us to review your teaching assignments in the frame of the education of our students.”

Confirming the connection between the WSU memo and Dr. Moon’s employment status, her annual contract was terminated, as uncovered in the complaint filed July 13, 2023 in Benton County Superior Court by the Silent Majority Foundation:

“On June 29, 2023, I received notice from Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine that my employment contract as a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine would not be renewed for the 2023-2024 academic year. My employment was terminated by Washington State University.”

During Senator Johnson’s Roundtable Discussion in December of 2022, Dr. Moon used the package insert that comes with the COVID-19 shots to express dismay:

“It says ‘left intentionally blank’ on it. So how am I to get informed consent to parents when I have … This is what I have: a government that is telling me that I have to say ‘safe and effective,’ and if I don’t, my license is at threat. And so how am I going to give informed consent to patients? We’re seeing an uptick in myocarditis. We’re seeing an uptick in adverse reactions. We have trusted these regulatory agencies. I have for my entire career until now. Something is extremely wrong.”

During the last week of July, ICWA interviewed Mr. Lim to obtain his reflections on Dr. Moon and the medical school. Dr. Moon taught a practical clinical medicine course to a small group of students, one of whom was Mr. Lim. In the course, each group is assigned to an experienced practitioner. Typically, groups stay with the same practitioner for two years.

Mr. Lim had positive things to say about both the school and Dr. Moon. He praised the school’s curriculum, the support it provides its students, and the professors. Regarding Dr. Moon, Mr. Lim expressed appreciation for the impact she had on his medical studies. “The constructive criticism she gives, the professionalism that she displayed in instructing, the respect with which she handles complicated subjects such as sexism in medicine, and the guidance she provides in handling medical cases, patient examinations, and recording medical encounters will make me a stronger physician.”

Mr. Lim specifically cited Dr. Moon’s approach to challenging issues like sexism in medicine as something he will remember and learn from. “She is very good at pointing out concrete issues and concrete biases that exist in medicine, particularly toward groups that have not been historically represented in medicine, such as women. And she’s very realistic with acknowledging the struggles that these marginalized groups have faced, yet she’s also very practical with her advice on how to still take care of a patient’s needs while addressing things that are wrong in an institution and taking care of yourself.”

Solely based on what she said in class, Mr. Lim would have never been aware about the beliefs that Dr. Moon held about COVID-19 vaccinations. “She never raised those subjects in class.” He only learned about her views when he looked up his professors online, and found a news article from Idaho in which Dr. Moon presented her view on certain ideologies about the country and her view on issues surrounding coronavirus vaccines. Mr. Lim did not discuss the issue with other students in the class. He said that unless they had looked her up themselves, he did not think that they would have been aware on her views until a visiting professor mentioned that Dr. Moon held “different views on vaccination.”

Mr. Lim did not mind that Dr. Moon held views that were not in line with the majority of the medical school faculty, staff, and students. He “considered one of the school’s strengths to be the fact that it had a professor or faculty on its books that held ‘alternate’ views.”

He furthermore elaborated that:

“one of the strongest aspects of our country is the right to be able to freely express your ideas and to have your ideas debated, evaluated, disagreed with, agreed with, and learned from. I think that when there are views that are expressed that are outside of the majority of a particular institution might be espousing, those views are incredibly important, and are a strength. It would be nice if institutions did what they could to support members of its staff or faculty who did hold alternate views, and to preserve open dialogue.”

WSU’s termination letter to Dr. Moon said nothing about her past involvement with its medical school. She had worked or volunteered for the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine since 2015, starting with contributions to the accreditation effort before the school even launched. For three years, she volunteered on both the Admissions Committee and the Diversity-Equity Committee. She was the founding faculty sponsor for the school’s Pediatric Interest Group, while she taught at the school as an Associate Clinical Professor. By all accounts, Dr. Moon was a significant contributor to the founding of the school itself, making her termination far from routine.

Mr. Lim knew that Dr. Moon was a senior professor with lots of practical experience, but he wasn’t aware that she had helped start the school. When asked about his reaction to learning about Dr. Moon’s lack of a renewal contract, Mr. Lim stated that he was sad that things did not work out between her and the school, because he was looking forward to another year of learning from her.

Mr. Lim said that he didn’t have enough information to make an educated comment about what happened between Dr. Moon and the school.

“I understand that are two sides to every story, and that behind every decision that’s made is a very complicated set of sub-decisions, analyses, and viewpoints. I am still very grateful and very appreciative of the school where I’m at, and I enjoyed hearing from the many different viewpoints … in the school.”

However, he reiterated that he was sad that Dr. Moon was no longer affiliated with the school.

“I wish circumstances were different and I wish that an institution that I respect and a professor that I respect would have been able to find a way to continue the relationship.”

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