The mainstream doesn't like the counter narrative information. That's why they censor it. As far as many are concerned, the only reality is the official narrative. Anything else is unreal and made-up nonsense my people who don't know what they're talking about.
In an attempt to prove that the counter narrative covid skeptic groups didn't know what they were talking about and employed lack of scientific rigor and process, some people from MIT infiltrated various covid skeptic groups to try to expose them. Rather than show how flawed these groups were, we ended up finding some critical thinking instead.
Their findings are published in a paper titled Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use OrthodoxData Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online. One of the main conclusions was admitting how these groups view science itself:
"Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution."
What a shocker. To actually understand that science is a process. It's not an institution. There is no "the science" contrary to the nonsense rhetoric and propaganda from the mainstream and those who support the official narrative.
Those who accept the notion of "the science" are the believers, they are adherence to scientism. Those who understand that science is an actual process that attempts to uncover the truth of reality are the ones who actually have a grasp on what science is. The majority of people don't have this understanding as they merely believe in "the science" that comes from parroting sources that support the official narrative. They think consensus is what establishes "the science" and what is real or not real, true or not true.
Here are some other conclusions they study came to about the counter narrative covid skeptics:
"Indeed, anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries, who espouse naïve realism about the “objective” truth of public health data."
"In other words, anti-maskers value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over “expert” interpretations."
"Its members value individual initiative and ingenuity, trusting scientific analysis only insofar as they can replicate it themselves by accessing and manipulating the data firsthand."
"They are highly reflexive about the inherently biased nature of any analysis, and resent what they view as the arrogant self-righteousness of scientific elites."
"Many of the users believe that the most important metrics are missing from government-released data.
"The lack of transparency within these data collection systems—which many of these users infer as a lack of honesty—erodes these users’ trust within both government institutions and the datasets they release."
"These groups argue that the conflation of asymptomatic and symptomatic cases therefore makes it difficult for anyone to actually determine the severity of the pandemic."
"For these anti-mask users, their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific rigor, not less."
"The message that runs through these threads is unequivocal: that data is the only way to set fear-bound politicians straight, and using better data is a surefire way towards creating a safer community."
"Arguing anti-maskers need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed & inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: they are deeply invested in forms of critique & knowledge production they recognize as markers of scientific expertise"
"We argue that anti-maskers’ deep story draws from similar wells of resentment, but adds a particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic, condescending elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking from the public."
And despite all these conclusions about how scientifically minded and critically thinking these people are, the authors of this paper finished their conclusions by suggesting there are "horrifying ends" to people thinking for themselves and distrusting the notion that "the science is settled". They just don't like the conclusions that the skeptics come to and think it's dangerous, rather than admit that the conclusions they come to are more based on science than what the government and their authorized medical experts are saying.