3 ms·

Is smoking tobacco harmful to your health? Is lead in petrol poisoning children? Is the earth heating up due to mankind's actions? Are bees being harmed by pest

by moomin 9y ago

Is smoking tobacco harmful to your health? Is lead in petrol poisoning children? Is the earth heating up due to mankind's actions? Are bees being harmed by pesticides? Seems like all these things have answers that, being honest, we all knew the answer to long before the question was "settled". But there was an awful lot of money to be made prolonging the ambiguity.

skybrian 9y ago
Yes, keeping people confused about the science is an industry tactic. However, saying "we all knew the answer" is just hindsight bias, not real knowledge. Respect the science, don't pretend it didn't need to be done.
taneq 9y ago
Yeah, it was necessary to have solid proof, but really? Insecticide is harmful to insects? This was in doubt? Reallllly?
- skybrian 9y ago
  If you're curious about what's going on in the world, yes, you will be curious about whether insecticides affect all insects, and how much they're affected. (After all, there are many different species.)
  - taneq 9y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't test the assumption. I just meant that it's not unreasonable to expect that a broad-spectrum insecticide family would have a good chance of affecting any given insect type.
panarky 9y ago
See also "Merchants of Doubt" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film)
whiddershins 9y ago
Is second hand smoke extremely harmful? Obviously it is, except science proceeded to show it doesn't seem to be. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/02/secondhand_smoke_isn_t_as_bad_as_we_thought.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... Is dietary cholesterol harmful? Obviously it is, except no experiment or even commonly advanced scientific hypothesis ever said it was. The hypothesis was that saturated fat intake raised blood cholesterol levels which in turn lead to more heart disease. But common wisdom was that somehow this meant egg yolks must be deadly. And shrimp. Oh, and then the saturated fat hypothesis didn't replicate well. And so forth. In contrast to your sentiment, I wish we actually based more policy on well replicated science, rather than what is "obvious."
- specialist 9y ago
  Second hand smoke ain't harmful? That reminds me... I used to run a BBS network. We all used mail clients, to better work offline. My very favorite feature was the twit filter. Kinda like how I can block individual numbers on my phone. So everyone hand their own ban hammers. It was awesome. And sorely missed.
okonomiyaki3000 9y ago
I (and I'm sure many others) feel exactly the same way. But we also need to admit the possibility of something like confirmation bias. So, you've mentioned several cases where we finally got a result which was exactly what we expected all along. Those cases stand out to use because they our brains naturally prefer them to cases where we were wrong. So then I have a couple of questions. When were we wrong? What are some other cases which didn't turn out like we expected? It may be harder to think of them but they must exist. What would have been the consequence of acting too early on those cases based on our speculation, now that we know we had been wrong? Do you think we should start to take a more proactive approach to these kinds of problems? I mean, should we look at a problem and assume it's caused by whatever happens to look like the culprit?
- Herodotus38 9y ago
  One example of where we are wrong is the commonly held belief that saccharin causes cancer. I mean, it's artificial, it's cheating to get sweetness, it has to be bad right? Turns out the initial studies looking at bladder cancer in rats were misleading (lots of confounders). See this link for some basic information: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d... There is a further good writeup on it in the great book "The Biology of Cancer" by Robert A Weinberg, but it is a textbook.

by moomin 9y ago

skybrian 9y ago

Yes, keeping people confused about the science is an industry tactic. However, saying "we all knew the answer" is just hindsight bias, not real knowledge. Respect the science, don't pretend it didn't need to be done.

taneq 9y ago

Yeah, it was necessary to have solid proof, but really? Insecticide is harmful to insects? This was in doubt? Reallllly?

skybrian 9y ago
If you're curious about what's going on in the world, yes, you will be curious about whether insecticides affect all insects, and how much they're affected. (After all, there are many different species.)
- taneq 9y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't test the assumption. I just meant that it's not unreasonable to expect that a broad-spectrum insecticide family would have a good chance of affecting any given insect type.

panarky 9y ago

See also "Merchants of Doubt" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt_(film)

whiddershins 9y ago

Is second hand smoke extremely harmful? Obviously it is, except science proceeded to show it doesn't seem to be. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/02/secondhand_smoke_isn_t_as_bad_as_we_thought.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... Is dietary cholesterol harmful? Obviously it is, except no experiment or even commonly advanced scientific hypothesis ever said it was. The hypothesis was that saturated fat intake raised blood cholesterol levels which in turn lead to more heart disease. But common wisdom was that somehow this meant egg yolks must be deadly. And shrimp. Oh, and then the saturated fat hypothesis didn't replicate well. And so forth. In contrast to your sentiment, I wish we actually based more policy on well replicated science, rather than what is "obvious."

specialist 9y ago
Second hand smoke ain't harmful? That reminds me... I used to run a BBS network. We all used mail clients, to better work offline. My very favorite feature was the twit filter. Kinda like how I can block individual numbers on my phone. So everyone hand their own ban hammers. It was awesome. And sorely missed.

okonomiyaki3000 9y ago

I (and I'm sure many others) feel exactly the same way. But we also need to admit the possibility of something like confirmation bias. So, you've mentioned several cases where we finally got a result which was exactly what we expected all along. Those cases stand out to use because they our brains naturally prefer them to cases where we were wrong. So then I have a couple of questions. When were we wrong? What are some other cases which didn't turn out like we expected? It may be harder to think of them but they must exist. What would have been the consequence of acting too early on those cases based on our speculation, now that we know we had been wrong? Do you think we should start to take a more proactive approach to these kinds of problems? I mean, should we look at a problem and assume it's caused by whatever happens to look like the culprit?

Herodotus38 9y ago
One example of where we are wrong is the commonly held belief that saccharin causes cancer. I mean, it's artificial, it's cheating to get sweetness, it has to be bad right? Turns out the initial studies looking at bladder cancer in rats were misleading (lots of confounders). See this link for some basic information: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/artificial-sweeteners-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d... There is a further good writeup on it in the great book "The Biology of Cancer" by Robert A Weinberg, but it is a textbook.