Psychology Today tries to memory hole "Is Nudge Theory the Right Approach to Coronavirus?"

Welcome to our first release of The Memory Hole. This will be an ongoing series that archives literature of various kinds for posterity, shares links to backups to prevent them from being lost forever, and provides our own commentary. These will usually be articles that have already been disappeared.

Today we bring you an article published in Psychology Today on March 14, 2020. Access to the original source has since been removed. You can still find the complete text archived here, here, and here.

At first glance, you might actually think this piece was being critical. But look at what they’re actually saying:

You may be wondering whether there is published evidence showing that applying nudge theory to something like coronavirus is empirically accurate. Looking at the published evidence, the answer is no. It is difficult to find any randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews or meta-analyses showing that nudge theory works in the context of infections or illnesses. Therefore, using nudge theory to tackle coronavirus is a very risky gambit.

Absent are any criticisms of government overreach or mention of ethical implications of a government deploying psychological manipulation against the population. In fact, they seem dissatisfied with the fact that the loving government would be so stupid to allow even an illusion of personal autonomy by using the so-called nudge unit instead of imposing more authoritarian restrictions.

They go on (emphasis mine):

The UK government drew advice from experts including virologists, epidemiologists and behavioural scientists who suggest that the UK should apply nudge theory in making people individually responsible for containing coronavirus by washing their hands, coughing into tissues, and self-isolating if they have symptoms.

Relying on the public to limit the peak of coronavirus virus is a big risk because of the lack of actual published evidence showing that this works in the context of coronavirus or similar infections.

So they are actually suggesting to distrust the government, that its panels of experts are not credible because there is an absence of scientific evidence to support not abusing the population even more. They then go on to suggest “listening to other countries for suggestions on how to stay safe”. Interestingly, they did not expand on the fact that said other countries were never merely “suggesting”, nor did they ever actually keep anyone “safe”.

I wonder why they’ve scrubbed this article.