5 ms·
Believing the best evidence is not a good idea if the evidence is weak. One thing that many science journalists are not very good at is conveying how strong the
by greglindahl 7y ago
Believing the best evidence is not a good idea if the evidence is weak. One thing that many science journalists are not very good at is conveying how strong the evidence is.
- tempestn 7y agoIt's a good idea as long as the belief is proportionately weakly held.
- RealityVoid 7y agoBut his is not the way most people think about things. For most people it's white or black, it is or it isn't. Speaking of degrees of belief makes you look like an indecisive fool at times.
- tempestn 7y agoIf I were running for office I might be a bit careful about how I expressed such things, but having a degree of belief proportional to the degree of evidence appears the opposite of foolish to me. I hold that belief moderately strongly.
- greglindahl 7y agoDo you change your diet based on weak science? If you tell someone you weakly believe a paper about diet science, do you think they might change their diet?
- waterhouse 7y agoIf, a priori, food A and food B seem equivalent to you, and you're currently eating food A, and then you get a weak report that food B is better, then it seems like an ok decision to switch to B. If your prior belief was that food A was a little bit better, then you might switch or not depending on the exact magnitudes of "weak" and "a little bit". If your prior belief was that food A was moderately or significantly better, then the weak report would not be sufficient evidence to switch (though it could be good reason to do more research).
- greglindahl 7y agoYou have a lot of faith in people! What I observe is that people change their diets all the time based on weak science.