After this column reported that the State Department was funding nonprofits that target “disinformation” and that have tried to censor American news outlets, we now know that the National Science Foundation has also funded $5.7 million in grants to target disinformation about elections and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.
Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar and law professor at George Washington University, uncovered the two NSF grants from 2021 and 2022.
The first, from 2021 was worth $750,000 and was awarded to the University of Wisconsin system to understand and address, “skepticism regarding the integrity of U.S. elections and hesitancy related to COVID-19 vaccines” by developing a “three-step method to identify, test, and correct real-world instances of these forms of online misinformation.”
Then, in 2022, those same researchers at the University of Wisconsin system received a raise. This new grant was worth $5 million. This time the purpose was for a special project called “Course Correct — Precision Guidance Against Misinformation” that would be “a flexible and dynamic digital dashboard that will help end users such as journalists to (1) identify trending misinformation networks on social media platforms … (2) strategically correct misinformation … (3) test the effectiveness of corrections in real time.”
Of course, what constitutes disinformation or skepticism is subjective, and models like this pose serious threats to free speech and free press. The idea that the U.S. government would directly fund this project is chilling, especially from a scientific agency that should understand the value of open debate and disagreement to get to the truth.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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