9 ms·

Thank you both for taking the time to create accounts and respond. Both of these responses are amazing, and it's lurkers/posters like you that make this site gr

by piker 9y ago

Thank you both for taking the time to create accounts and respond. Both of these responses are amazing, and it's lurkers/posters like you that make this site great. One question: some of your responses attack only the credibility of the speaker (OP's 1st, 4th and your 4th, 5th points). Is this typical in scientific discourse? They seem to detract from your analysis to me.

dvt 9y ago
Contrary to popular belief (and internet logical fallacy experts), attacking the credibility of the speaker is a perfectly fine thing to do. The quality of the speaker is often times a pretty good indicator of the quality of the message.
- otterley 9y ago
  Indeed. Just because a conclusion is based on logically fallacious arguments doesn't mean it's untrue, or that the arguments should have no persuasive power whatsoever. (Taken to its logical extreme, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.)
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Attacking the arguer's credibility isn't fallacious if their argument depends in any way on their credibility, as it clearly does in this Newsweek story.
    - otterley 9y ago
      I'm not familiar with that exception in logical thinking. What argument is logically dependent on someone's credibility?
      - tptacek 9y ago
        For instance, this Newsweek article and the claims made by the doctor in it depend on the doctor's own reports of their interpretations of MRI scans. Observing that the doctor making those interpretations is disreputable is an important and logically meaningful point. Really what you're observing is that the argument in Newsweek sidesteps logic and appeals implicitly to the authority of that doctor. Presented with the argument that the subject of the article is credible enough to be believed on their own terms, we're left with a debate about that subject's credibility. The weird idea embedded in this meta-debate is that alone among all the innumerable topics we can address with logical argument, from rankings of Led Zeppelin songs to the proper distribution of ownership of the means of production between capital and labor, the credibility of a human being on any particular subject is exempt from scrutiny, lest we fall into the trap of "ad hominem".
        Natsu 9y ago
        It's not necessary to drag one's assessment of their credibility into this at all, though. Points 1-3 of the original post are all that need to be argued. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway7890 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway7890 Credibility is not "exempt" from scrutiny, it simply doesn't change the truth value of any factual statements about whether the treatment works. If it somehow could change the truth of whether this approach worked or not, then if this guy presented the opposite conclusion, somehow this treatment could either start or stop working based only on the person's opinion and reputation. There's obviously no causal mechanism for that to happen and believing it would require magical thinking. So arguing over it is irrelevant and inserting it into the argument is pointless. We instead can properly say that he hasn't answered a lot of good questions about his approach or presented sufficient evidence to believe in it, which is the rational approach.
      - lilactown 9y ago
        In pure logic, credentials don't matter. However we're discussing something that is not pure logic (i.e. we are relying on the author's expertise and insight, and the publication to accurately represent that), so credibility is certainly relevant.
      - dpierce9 9y ago
        Argument from authority. A said X, A is an authority on X, Therefore, X is true. This is a valid inductive argument. It is valid when A is an actual authority, when they are speaking truthfully, etc. It doesn't guarantee the truth of the conclusion but it is a fine argument. How do you know Booth shot Lincoln? You read it in a textbook, the textbook is written by someone who is an authority on history or that part f history, etc. It isn't deductive (like a proof in geometry or logic) but it is a good argument. Many logic books call argument from authority invalid and what they mean is that it isn't deductively valid but it is an inductively valid argument form (If it were always invalid, we would be quite mired in ignorance).
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        Other people have made good replies, but this is also a pet peeve of mine, so I'm going to jump in as well. Another way to think about it is as witness testimony. When you do a logical, mathematical proof, you are building on a well-defined and well-known set of axioms, using well-defined steps of logical inference. With a few well-known exceptions, we don't argue over mathematical proofs. Either the logic flows from the axioms or it doesn't. Once you step away from pure mathematics, you no longer have a small number of well-defined axioms or clear inference. Instead you have a lot of what amounts to witness testimony. Sometimes, you recount an observation. "X drowned and was dead for 15 minutes." "X had brain damage." "X fully recovered." It is reasonable to dispute these statements based on the credibility of the person making them. Some of these statements may be the product of inference, which is also less clear than logical inference. For instance, "X has brain damage." might have been inferred from "An MRI of X looked like Y." and "Y indicates severe brain damage." Now you have a host of ways where the statement could be wrong, based on the reliability of the person making the observation and the inference. Did the person actually take an MRI, or were they lying about it, or did they misread it, or did they actually rely on a third-party who did one or the other? Is the inference method "Y indicates severe brain damage" valid? Did the person in question correctly apply it? People don't like to attack the credibility of others; it seems mean and it can easily slip into elitism. But examining the credibility of someone presenting evidence is absolutely critical to truth-finding. Personal integrity is an absolute necessity, in science, medicine, and law.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
CydeWeys 9y ago
Pointing out that someone is a quack is a really effective refutation of their arguments. If you were arguing about WWII history with someone, might it not affect your trust in their credibility if you found out they were a Holocaust denier? Or if you're arguing geography with someone and it's pointed out that they're a flat Earther?
- ferentchak 9y ago
  Pointing out someone is a quack is also a great way to keep differing opinions out of a discussion and thus make sure that rational discourse is avoided on issues that are useful to the person pointing. It's always useful to think of these situation in circumstances where you don't have any emotional involvement because otherwise you mind can play tricks on you. For example imagine you are a European Scientist who really wants to fit every animal onto tree structure with mammals over here and squid here and all the animals fall into some easy to understand structure that makes total sense to you. And some weird guy comes back from Australia with natures most awesome animal the platypus. A furry creature that lays eggs with poison feet. Your simple identification chart is totally jacked. It way easier to say he is a quack that evaluate the evidence you don't like. Heck it's totally inconvenient that your life's work is wrong, it's going to cost you money and esteem. tldr; pointing out a quack is a great excuse for avoiding evaluating their arguments but refutes none of them. Everyone's time is valueable and figuring out what adventures to spend it on is important. Confusing that reasonable justification of where to spend your time with their argument being false is a dangerous habit to get into. You end up always thinking you are right and avoiding things that challenge your beliefs.
tptacek 9y ago
It's an Internet myth that the credibility of an argument's source is out of bounds in a debate. If and only if the arguer's credibility has no logical connection to their argument, then attacking the arguer is fallacious. Otherwise, as is very much the case here, it is not.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  Good point. I think people may confuse logic with believability. I could propose in this comment a cure for cancer based on a perfectly sound a logical argument and my (lack of medical) credibility would have zero affect on the cogency of what I was saying. But it does mean, you should probably not be convinced, or at least not send me all of your money to invest in my cancer research startup. Also for some reason it's very easy to judge something as reasonable when we actually don't have any domain expertise. Not sure why, it seems built into most of us to feel natural.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I'm not going to give an inch on this. This isn't an issue of logic versus persuasion. It is logically valid to attack the credibility of an argument that depends in any way, implicitly or overtly, on the credibility or authority of its bearer. The "ad hominem fallacy" is misused on the Internet probably more than it is applied correctly.
    - WhitneyLand 9y ago
      I don't think you have to give an inch. I'm agreeing it's legit to judge someone's argument based on credibility. The reason is imperfect information. If I described here an actual, real, cure for all cancer, people shouldn't believe it because credibility is shit, it hasn't been clinically proven, and it might take 10 years to do so. If I write in a solid proof for a millennium prize problem, you're probably going to be safe not worrying about my credibility at all because the truth will be known in pretty short order. Usually the more uncertainty the more credibility has to be weighted.
- 9y ago
genericpseudo 9y ago
Yes, when appropriate. Think of it as a Bayesian prior...
- mindcrime 9y ago
  Exactly. There's good reason to think that most of human reasoning and the way we attain "knowledge" is not strict deductive logic from firm premises. Rather it's a mixture of Bayesian inference, abductive reasoning "to the best explanation", etc.
dumbneurologist 9y ago
Haha. This is an incredibly polite reply, sharpened to a very fine point. I'm grateful I have something to contribute to a site that I've gotten an incredible amount out of. And it's a powerful reminder that very very smart people can have a hard time critically appraising medical claims. As powerful as the internet is, medicine is really complicated, and it's easy for doctors to forget that. I'll let the surgeon speak for him/herself, but for my part: I am raising the issue of industry size and quackery to give other readers context. It doesn't make the article wrong necessarily, but I would want to have that context as a non-expert reader trying to understand how it fits into the larger body of scientific understanding. And I would say yes, that does happen (and is appropriate to have happen) in scientific discourse. On a related note: one amazing site that isn't well known is the OpenPayments[1], maintained by the US government. If you live in the US and have doctor, you can see how much compensation they received from industrial sources. Some of the numbers are shocking. Put your own doctor in, and see where they are. There is no need to resort to conspiracy claims when you can audit them, to some degree, yourself. The physician mentioned in the article, Dr. Paul Harch, has received $74.48. So way to go Dr. Harch! we can worry much less about getting a skewed opinion based on a industry payments. But weighing against that is his CV, which lists publications with "D Amen", who I suspect is Daniel Amen - an overly-credulous hyperbaric oxygen physician who has his own page on quackwatch[2], and subscribes to medical theories that are even less credible than the ones in newsweek. When Mehmet Oz[3] is an endorsement on your web site (Amen; not Harch), the public is justified in putting you in the same category. Farther down the CV is "Department of Defense trials for hyperbaric oxygen and TBI: issues of study design and questionable conclusions", wherein I'm predicting he single-handedly dismantles a large federal study of whether HBO is useful for traumatic brain injury. Feel free to find the original article and independently appraise it, if you think it's worth your time... I can barely find 10 minutes to pay back a favor to a good-natured community that has taught me a lot about computers and programming. Finally: let's not lose sight of the incredibly good thing that happened for this child. Regardless of how or what or why, this is an exceptional outcome, and it's fantastic for this child. I only wish it wouldn't create false-hope for families who are less fortunate, but have thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to blow on questionable treatments and false reason for hope. 1. https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ 2. https://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html https://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU

by piker 9y ago

dvt 9y ago

Contrary to popular belief (and internet logical fallacy experts), attacking the credibility of the speaker is a perfectly fine thing to do. The quality of the speaker is often times a pretty good indicator of the quality of the message.

otterley 9y ago
Indeed. Just because a conclusion is based on logically fallacious arguments doesn't mean it's untrue, or that the arguments should have no persuasive power whatsoever. (Taken to its logical extreme, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.)
- tptacek 9y ago
  Attacking the arguer's credibility isn't fallacious if their argument depends in any way on their credibility, as it clearly does in this Newsweek story.
  - otterley 9y ago
    I'm not familiar with that exception in logical thinking. What argument is logically dependent on someone's credibility?
    - tptacek 9y ago
      For instance, this Newsweek article and the claims made by the doctor in it depend on the doctor's own reports of their interpretations of MRI scans. Observing that the doctor making those interpretations is disreputable is an important and logically meaningful point. Really what you're observing is that the argument in Newsweek sidesteps logic and appeals implicitly to the authority of that doctor. Presented with the argument that the subject of the article is credible enough to be believed on their own terms, we're left with a debate about that subject's credibility. The weird idea embedded in this meta-debate is that alone among all the innumerable topics we can address with logical argument, from rankings of Led Zeppelin songs to the proper distribution of ownership of the means of production between capital and labor, the credibility of a human being on any particular subject is exempt from scrutiny, lest we fall into the trap of "ad hominem".
      - Natsu 9y ago
        It's not necessary to drag one's assessment of their credibility into this at all, though. Points 1-3 of the original post are all that need to be argued. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway7890 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=throwaway7890 Credibility is not "exempt" from scrutiny, it simply doesn't change the truth value of any factual statements about whether the treatment works. If it somehow could change the truth of whether this approach worked or not, then if this guy presented the opposite conclusion, somehow this treatment could either start or stop working based only on the person's opinion and reputation. There's obviously no causal mechanism for that to happen and believing it would require magical thinking. So arguing over it is irrelevant and inserting it into the argument is pointless. We instead can properly say that he hasn't answered a lot of good questions about his approach or presented sufficient evidence to believe in it, which is the rational approach.
    - lilactown 9y ago
      In pure logic, credentials don't matter. However we're discussing something that is not pure logic (i.e. we are relying on the author's expertise and insight, and the publication to accurately represent that), so credibility is certainly relevant.
    - dpierce9 9y ago
      Argument from authority. A said X, A is an authority on X, Therefore, X is true. This is a valid inductive argument. It is valid when A is an actual authority, when they are speaking truthfully, etc. It doesn't guarantee the truth of the conclusion but it is a fine argument. How do you know Booth shot Lincoln? You read it in a textbook, the textbook is written by someone who is an authority on history or that part f history, etc. It isn't deductive (like a proof in geometry or logic) but it is a good argument. Many logic books call argument from authority invalid and what they mean is that it isn't deductively valid but it is an inductively valid argument form (If it were always invalid, we would be quite mired in ignorance).
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Other people have made good replies, but this is also a pet peeve of mine, so I'm going to jump in as well. Another way to think about it is as witness testimony. When you do a logical, mathematical proof, you are building on a well-defined and well-known set of axioms, using well-defined steps of logical inference. With a few well-known exceptions, we don't argue over mathematical proofs. Either the logic flows from the axioms or it doesn't. Once you step away from pure mathematics, you no longer have a small number of well-defined axioms or clear inference. Instead you have a lot of what amounts to witness testimony. Sometimes, you recount an observation. "X drowned and was dead for 15 minutes." "X had brain damage." "X fully recovered." It is reasonable to dispute these statements based on the credibility of the person making them. Some of these statements may be the product of inference, which is also less clear than logical inference. For instance, "X has brain damage." might have been inferred from "An MRI of X looked like Y." and "Y indicates severe brain damage." Now you have a host of ways where the statement could be wrong, based on the reliability of the person making the observation and the inference. Did the person actually take an MRI, or were they lying about it, or did they misread it, or did they actually rely on a third-party who did one or the other? Is the inference method "Y indicates severe brain damage" valid? Did the person in question correctly apply it? People don't like to attack the credibility of others; it seems mean and it can easily slip into elitism. But examining the credibility of someone presenting evidence is absolutely critical to truth-finding. Personal integrity is an absolute necessity, in science, medicine, and law.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

CydeWeys 9y ago

Pointing out that someone is a quack is a really effective refutation of their arguments. If you were arguing about WWII history with someone, might it not affect your trust in their credibility if you found out they were a Holocaust denier? Or if you're arguing geography with someone and it's pointed out that they're a flat Earther?

ferentchak 9y ago
Pointing out someone is a quack is also a great way to keep differing opinions out of a discussion and thus make sure that rational discourse is avoided on issues that are useful to the person pointing. It's always useful to think of these situation in circumstances where you don't have any emotional involvement because otherwise you mind can play tricks on you. For example imagine you are a European Scientist who really wants to fit every animal onto tree structure with mammals over here and squid here and all the animals fall into some easy to understand structure that makes total sense to you. And some weird guy comes back from Australia with natures most awesome animal the platypus. A furry creature that lays eggs with poison feet. Your simple identification chart is totally jacked. It way easier to say he is a quack that evaluate the evidence you don't like. Heck it's totally inconvenient that your life's work is wrong, it's going to cost you money and esteem. tldr; pointing out a quack is a great excuse for avoiding evaluating their arguments but refutes none of them. Everyone's time is valueable and figuring out what adventures to spend it on is important. Confusing that reasonable justification of where to spend your time with their argument being false is a dangerous habit to get into. You end up always thinking you are right and avoiding things that challenge your beliefs.

tptacek 9y ago

It's an Internet myth that the credibility of an argument's source is out of bounds in a debate. If and only if the arguer's credibility has no logical connection to their argument, then attacking the arguer is fallacious. Otherwise, as is very much the case here, it is not.

WhitneyLand 9y ago
Good point. I think people may confuse logic with believability. I could propose in this comment a cure for cancer based on a perfectly sound a logical argument and my (lack of medical) credibility would have zero affect on the cogency of what I was saying. But it does mean, you should probably not be convinced, or at least not send me all of your money to invest in my cancer research startup. Also for some reason it's very easy to judge something as reasonable when we actually don't have any domain expertise. Not sure why, it seems built into most of us to feel natural.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I'm not going to give an inch on this. This isn't an issue of logic versus persuasion. It is logically valid to attack the credibility of an argument that depends in any way, implicitly or overtly, on the credibility or authority of its bearer. The "ad hominem fallacy" is misused on the Internet probably more than it is applied correctly.
  - WhitneyLand 9y ago
    I don't think you have to give an inch. I'm agreeing it's legit to judge someone's argument based on credibility. The reason is imperfect information. If I described here an actual, real, cure for all cancer, people shouldn't believe it because credibility is shit, it hasn't been clinically proven, and it might take 10 years to do so. If I write in a solid proof for a millennium prize problem, you're probably going to be safe not worrying about my credibility at all because the truth will be known in pretty short order. Usually the more uncertainty the more credibility has to be weighted.
9y ago

genericpseudo 9y ago

Yes, when appropriate. Think of it as a Bayesian prior...

mindcrime 9y ago
Exactly. There's good reason to think that most of human reasoning and the way we attain "knowledge" is not strict deductive logic from firm premises. Rather it's a mixture of Bayesian inference, abductive reasoning "to the best explanation", etc.

dumbneurologist 9y ago

Haha. This is an incredibly polite reply, sharpened to a very fine point. I'm grateful I have something to contribute to a site that I've gotten an incredible amount out of. And it's a powerful reminder that very very smart people can have a hard time critically appraising medical claims. As powerful as the internet is, medicine is really complicated, and it's easy for doctors to forget that. I'll let the surgeon speak for him/herself, but for my part: I am raising the issue of industry size and quackery to give other readers context. It doesn't make the article wrong necessarily, but I would want to have that context as a non-expert reader trying to understand how it fits into the larger body of scientific understanding. And I would say yes, that does happen (and is appropriate to have happen) in scientific discourse. On a related note: one amazing site that isn't well known is the OpenPayments[1], maintained by the US government. If you live in the US and have doctor, you can see how much compensation they received from industrial sources. Some of the numbers are shocking. Put your own doctor in, and see where they are. There is no need to resort to conspiracy claims when you can audit them, to some degree, yourself. The physician mentioned in the article, Dr. Paul Harch, has received $74.48. So way to go Dr. Harch! we can worry much less about getting a skewed opinion based on a industry payments. But weighing against that is his CV, which lists publications with "D Amen", who I suspect is Daniel Amen - an overly-credulous hyperbaric oxygen physician who has his own page on quackwatch[2], and subscribes to medical theories that are even less credible than the ones in newsweek. When Mehmet Oz[3] is an endorsement on your web site (Amen; not Harch), the public is justified in putting you in the same category. Farther down the CV is "Department of Defense trials for hyperbaric oxygen and TBI: issues of study design and questionable conclusions", wherein I'm predicting he single-handedly dismantles a large federal study of whether HBO is useful for traumatic brain injury. Feel free to find the original article and independently appraise it, if you think it's worth your time... I can barely find 10 minutes to pay back a favor to a good-natured community that has taught me a lot about computers and programming. Finally: let's not lose sight of the incredibly good thing that happened for this child. Regardless of how or what or why, this is an exceptional outcome, and it's fantastic for this child. I only wish it wouldn't create false-hope for families who are less fortunate, but have thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to blow on questionable treatments and false reason for hope. 1. https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ 2. https://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html https://www.quackwatch.org/06ResearchProjects/amen.html 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU