4 ms·

>Having a citation from a well regarded source Who gets to decide who is "well regarded" and who is not?

goatlover 10y ago
The community of people who have spent their time becoming knowledgeable in that field. Or do you suppose that any quack peddling snake oil is as knowledgeable as someone who went to medical school and practices medicine?
- Mz 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.[5] He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed. Galileo also comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair I am sure there are many others, those are just ones I readily remember off the top of my head. Current "experts" are really terrible about defending their current belief system, and actual evidence be damned. Their jobs and whatever depend on them being right, so don't confuse them with the facts LA LA LA NOT LISTENING. (And because they are experts, many other people simply defer to them.) This does not appear to have changed in the modern world.
  - intended 10y ago
    I completely disagree. These particular incidents highlight those occasions when new knowledge had to overcome challenges between experts, It completely ignores the many times experts knew things, and applied them and improved the working of their field. You are absolutely overfitting an example used to highlight a pitfall. Instead you are using it to dismiss experts. In other words you are re-broadcasting the anti expert propaganda which is constantly being spread for the past several decades. Do note: if this was a modern news channel, The usual next step would be to bring up a total hack and have them repeat some truly outlandish claim, and state "the experts are all in cahoots, and are against homeopathy/AGW/etc. they have a monetary interest!" Of course experts have a monetary interest. Expert Programmers are experts in their code. They earn a living off of it. Does that stop them from making rational choices.
    - kaoD 10y ago
      Honestly, he has a point. It's not even that their jobs depend on stagnation: often being an expert makes you blind to new facts and change, shielded on your own expertise. Being an expert only means you've had lots of exper-ience in the field. Less empirical sciences rapidly change (or worse, simultaneously holds contradicting) views and thus, generate distrust. Experts, except the truly groundbreaking ones, are only good at touting the status quo. They're just more likely to be correct because, well, the status quo in science is the most "unincorrect" knowledge we have. So far. You're just bringing up a strawman with the homeopathy "example".
  - sjy 10y ago
    It would be better if you provided more recent examples: medical science was very primitive in the 19th century, and Galileo was not persecuted by scientists. More recently, Marshall and Warren's research on stomach ulcers quickly led to the rejection of the expert consensus which had prevailed for decades, because technological advances enabled them to present convincing evidence to a profession which had come to accept the importance of scientific research.
    - Mz 10y ago

The community of people who have spent their time becoming knowledgeable in that field. Or do you suppose that any quack peddling snake oil is as knowledgeable as someone who went to medical school and practices medicine?

Mz 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.[5] He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed. Galileo also comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair I am sure there are many others, those are just ones I readily remember off the top of my head. Current "experts" are really terrible about defending their current belief system, and actual evidence be damned. Their jobs and whatever depend on them being right, so don't confuse them with the facts LA LA LA NOT LISTENING. (And because they are experts, many other people simply defer to them.) This does not appear to have changed in the modern world.
- intended 10y ago
  I completely disagree. These particular incidents highlight those occasions when new knowledge had to overcome challenges between experts, It completely ignores the many times experts knew things, and applied them and improved the working of their field. You are absolutely overfitting an example used to highlight a pitfall. Instead you are using it to dismiss experts. In other words you are re-broadcasting the anti expert propaganda which is constantly being spread for the past several decades. Do note: if this was a modern news channel, The usual next step would be to bring up a total hack and have them repeat some truly outlandish claim, and state "the experts are all in cahoots, and are against homeopathy/AGW/etc. they have a monetary interest!" Of course experts have a monetary interest. Expert Programmers are experts in their code. They earn a living off of it. Does that stop them from making rational choices.
  - kaoD 10y ago
    Honestly, he has a point. It's not even that their jobs depend on stagnation: often being an expert makes you blind to new facts and change, shielded on your own expertise. Being an expert only means you've had lots of exper-ience in the field. Less empirical sciences rapidly change (or worse, simultaneously holds contradicting) views and thus, generate distrust. Experts, except the truly groundbreaking ones, are only good at touting the status quo. They're just more likely to be correct because, well, the status quo in science is the most "unincorrect" knowledge we have. So far. You're just bringing up a strawman with the homeopathy "example".
- sjy 10y ago
  It would be better if you provided more recent examples: medical science was very primitive in the 19th century, and Galileo was not persecuted by scientists. More recently, Marshall and Warren's research on stomach ulcers quickly led to the rejection of the expert consensus which had prevailed for decades, because technological advances enabled them to present convincing evidence to a profession which had come to accept the importance of scientific research.
  - Mz 10y ago