8 ms·

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

belltaco 6y ago
It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show. Take the 5G conspiracy for example, 100+ cell phone towers attacked, and workers setting up attacked as well. Lots of testable assertions made, none backed up with any kind of evidence.
- emsy 6y ago
  But this could very well be a result of priming people for a consensus (or its opposition) I’m too young to judge but it wasn’t always like this or was it?
  - chrismcb 6y ago
    Galileo says, no it wasn't always like this.
  - johnny22 6y ago
    depends on what you mean by always, but looking back at how this was handled re: tobacco, leaded gasoline, and climate change (pre 2000) should give you some idea. As far as I personally can see, it's been like this for a large portion of the 1900s at least.
  - auslegung 6y ago
    Yes, things have always been this way and if you really want to see just how long, look at speeches and other “news” from Ancient Greece. The significant difference today is how quickly and widely falsehoods can be distributed and redistributed, and how many different sources this can happen to. Pre Internet, if I started telling my friends about this thing called QAnon, how far and how quickly could it really spread? Not far and not quickly. Today however it can spread across the world in a day and be picked up by every major news outlet. It’s disturbing, and we should all be very concerned.
    - jakeogh 6y ago
      Curious people can read the posts directly at qmap dot pub.
- droopyEyelids 6y ago
  I agree normal people aren't well equipped. But when you phrase it that way, you make it sounds like the professionals are well equipped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
  - autokad 6y ago
    I remember when I saw a headline that said gene researchers say there is no way the virus was made in a lab. I'm like oh this should be interesting, they must have done some sort of dating on the mutations. maybe there are markings biologists can look at that are telling signs of natural vs man-made. or compared genomes to ... And there 100% undeniable argument: the virus effects bats and people researching bio weapons would -only- look at virus that effects humans. I'm like really? are you really that narrow minded and completely devoid of imagination? you think labs are only for making bio-weapons? you think someone making a bio-weapon would limit themselves to just virus that effects humans? that's your full proof thinking? I'm like wow. wow.
    - voldacar 6y ago
      >you really that narrow minded and completely devoid of imagination? you think labs are only for making bio-weapons? It wouldn't even have to be bio-weapon related. It could just be a genetically altered virus (routine in gain of function research) that escaped a lab due to an accident or carelessness, and was later covered up with the whole wet market story. People who disdain the idea that the virus could be man made are almost always attacking the hypothesis of a deliberate bio-weapon release, which is such a straw man.
      - droopyEyelids 6y ago
        It's the whole "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" thing... but I always like to add, "and don't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by the fundamental complexity of life"
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  >It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show I'm pretty sure this is the exact attitude that the poster was describing. You're just blanket dismissing out of mainstream science with accusations of bad faith.
- akimball 6y ago
  You argument appears to be that I should focus on a strawman instead of evaluating the evidence.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- etangent 6y ago
  I believe this is "bbut what if baad people cite my article?" defense for what is essentially a form of authoritarian groupthink.
logjammin 6y ago
"You better agree with consensus" has always been the current culture in science. It's nothing to do with science itself -- just human emotionality. We don't change unless we have to, unless there's overwhelming evidence that we need to.
- robbiep 6y ago
  That is antithetical to the principles of science, but it depends on what area of science you operate in. To take the spectrum of shades of grey: - white would be math - first hint of grey with physics - greyer all they way down to biology where every different field has their own bar graphs You're a lunatic if you say 2+2=5, to return to the cases in point, it's been done, it's been dusted (mostly), and there's going to be a lot more work to do in the future to clear it up but people will always want to see the 'missing link' or proof that there was no leakage (deliberate or otherwise) from the lab. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
newacct583 6y ago
> "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." Isn't that the whole point of science? Big claims require big proof. What standard are you proposing be used instead? Or are you leaning on the "better" in that sentence in the sense of coercion? As in, you're saying that arguments without overwhelming evidence that contradict established consensus are being suppressed? If so, how? This garbage is being circulated endlessly. There's not a virologist in the world who isn't aware of it. It's not suppressed. It's just wrong.
- autokad 6y ago
  the papers make a lot of specific arguments. if you have evidence against those arguments, you can say this point is wrong, here is the evidence against it, therefore that claim is likely wrong. Thats science. Your method comes off as: thats not the consensus, thus you are wrong.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    You're missing the point of "consensus". The value of having a scientific consensus of trusted sources is precisely that we don't have to all individually read random conspiracy nonsense and come up with counterarguments on our own. We can trust the experts. So if you come by with a theory that isn't supported by those experts, the burden is on YOU to convince people, not me. Now I know you're going to come right back and tell me why, this time, after the last thousand tries, the consensus really is wrong and the conspiracy nuts are actually believing in a REAL conspiracy this time. And again I'll rely on my general sense of statistics to tell me who to trust.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      > The value of having a scientific consensus of trusted sources is precisely that we don't have to all individually read random conspiracy nonsense and come up with counterarguments on our own. We can trust the experts. This sounds like a priesthood. Don’t consider evidence from rando papers. Instead, simply trust the consensus view of these certain, special people who have been blessed as truth-knowers and wear the right robes and hats.
jonahbenton 6y ago
Read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Always how it has been, since beginning of the thing we call "science."
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Yeah but maybe the fact that science and politics and media have become so interwoven and in some cases march to the same drum, it does feel like something is quantitatively different about science in 2020.
  - jonahbenton 6y ago
    Agree both that 2020 is completely effed and that important issues from political perspective right now are unusually science driven. Having to go through the process Kuhn describes but where both the brains involved in paradigm transition are not trained in evidence, and, the accumulating evidence is...people dying from COVID...is just so grim.
lord_braleigh 6y ago
You're free to present crazy-sounding arguments in day-to-day conversation, but a journal isn't the place to present crazy arguments. Journals are where you present overwhelming evidence or replicate/falsify existing results.
- ddxxdd 6y ago
  Journals are where scientists present any sort of evidence that is backed by sound reasoning, meta-studies are where overwhelming evidence tends to be presented. If it were any other way, then where would scientists publish underwhelming evidence that is crucial for accumulation in order for overwhelming evidence to appear?
lemmsjid 6y ago
I think there's a two way problem. The current state of public discourse on science in the U.S. is very skewed from scientific consensus. For example a YouGov poll found that 49% of Americans think that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab. This kind of skew between public perception and scientific consensus can create a siege mentality, because it's easy to find someone who has been convinced by some media subculture that something is self-evidently true in spite of reams of evidence to the contrary. As in the vaccination-autism connection situation, all it can take is one scientific study, subsequently debunked, to give an entire movement the validation they need to completely ignore an enormous consensus with plenty of data to back it up. BTW (need to add this disclaimer on the internets, I often forget) I'm not disagreeing with you, just riffing off your comment with some more thoughts.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  What are the “reams of evidence” that the virus did not come from a lab?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lemmsjid 6y ago
    True, that was a poor argument on my part. I should say, lack of evidence that it did. Which weakens my argument, so thanks for pointing it out.
- unishark 6y ago
  Anti-vaxxers is a pretty small movement according to polls, compared to the attention they've been getting (ten percentish). And it's certainly not just a US thing. More people probably believe in astrology. I'm not a virologist (nor a conspiracy theorist, by the way), but every time I read articles about the origin of covid being settled, I feel like the writer is trying to push an agenda. Yes they give perfectly sound logical reasoning, sure, but that's all it is. The counter view obviously will continue to be driven by the location of the origin. Edit: and by the way, the autism-caused-by-vaccines theory is not solely the result of a bad study getting too much attention. It is similarly the result of people making conclusions from big coincidences. In this case the onset of autism (at least the age when symptoms get bad) is commonly around the same age that children get vaccinated. The study didn't just make that idea up, they were trying to validate a belief that was already held relatively widely.
bamboozled 6y ago
How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally accepted as the truth? Sometimes ideas initially can seem crazy because they're unfamiliar I guess. I suppose in this case, I oppose this idea because it sounds kind of scary.
- nemo 6y ago
  How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally rejected as false?
- akimball 6y ago
  Almost always. Have you met reviewer number 2? I suppose he's right most of the time, and feels vindicated as a result. I'm just troubled by the the modulus, the work of merit, rare and precious as it is, that suffers from the statistically justified bias for false negatives. I can certainly understand opposing an idea for diverse reasons, valid or invalid, but I can't understand how it is that some people seem to feel that opposing ideas on the basis of the balance of their features, rather than digging into the conditional structure and examining their merits and demerits, is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed. I consider that many of that group may have been anti-maskers as well, and that eventually evolution will take care of it, but I probably won't see the benefit of that.
bshoemaker 6y ago
That's because it's exhausting to debunk idiots & those operating in bad faith (often both); it takes several orders of magnitude more work to respond and debunk that unicorns don't exist than it does to post that they do.
- akimball 6y ago
  It would be inappropriate to infer that the OP was advocating for unicorns.
- theknocker 6y ago
  Consensus should be determined by science, not the other way around. Otherwise, what is the point of science? edit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." t. redditadmin.txt
  - jmcgough 6y ago
    This isn't just about science. Conspiracy theorists and unethical people with agendas use documents like this to support their beliefs, and it becomes impossible to refute them. In the age of social media, misinformation and conspiracy theories can cause real damage.
    - nodamage 6y ago
      As a recent and somewhat topical example of this, there is an article circling around the internet right now that cites about a dozen studies proving that "masks don't work". If you actually read through the quoted studies you quickly realize that they don't actually support the author's conclusion at all. But that didn't stop the author from taking a bunch of out of context quotes to make an argument that sounded vaguely scientific - scientific enough for people with a particular agenda to parade it around as if the science was on their side. I started writing a rebuttal to this article, but as I was carefully reading through the details of the nth study to see if it actually matched what the author claimed, I realized I was just massively wasting my own time. The people spreading the article around don't actually care, they never read those studies and they never will. They just wanted something scientific-looking to cite that backs up their pre-existing opinions.
mekoka 6y ago
> it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." That current culture of science has gradually driven me toward skepticism. Unless I see converging evidence from various independent sources, a claim is just a big "maybe". How many of the claims have been peer reviewed, or replicated (when everyone is busy publishing their own papers, or competing to make the news, or signing book deals)? How much of what is repeated by those with a platform just a gambit, riding on the reputation of those claiming it first? How much is just unchecked assumptions (e.g. that others will have certainly verified the claims)? As you start looking closer, the level of imposture and bullshit is just too high. Scientists are as human as anyone, with everything it implies.
- pdfernhout 6y ago
  Something I put together about 10 years ago: https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-abou... "Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding. ..." See especially from Marcia Angell: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-co... "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." And, from the 1990s, from David Goodstein, who was Vice Provost of Caltech then, here is part of why thing have gotten that way: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html "Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."
groby_b 6y ago
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" If you make a claim that's wildly diverging from established consensus, yes, you're required to bring overwhelming evidence. Because the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the claim being wrong. There's no point in relitigating everything from first principles unless you can make it extremely clear it's worth the effort.
- akimball 6y ago
  I would go a step further: The odds of any claim being wrong are overwhelming, regardless of whether it is endorsed by the consensus or not, whether it is ordinary or extraordinary. Brains are not truth-making machines. Anyhow, I'm not sure what is extraordinary about biowarfare labs making biowarfare agents. It's actually quite ordinary.
iskander 6y ago
It's not just weak, it's incoherent and seemingly written by someone who misunderstood some wikipedia articles on virology. There's a difference between someone trying to seriously assess the possibility of lab origins for SARS-CoV-2 and whatever GPT-3 generated nonsense this post is.
La1n 6y ago
>current culture in science It's been that way for a long time, with Kuhn writing a whole book on it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_...

belltaco 6y ago

It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show. Take the 5G conspiracy for example, 100+ cell phone towers attacked, and workers setting up attacked as well. Lots of testable assertions made, none backed up with any kind of evidence.

emsy 6y ago
But this could very well be a result of priming people for a consensus (or its opposition) I’m too young to judge but it wasn’t always like this or was it?
- chrismcb 6y ago
  Galileo says, no it wasn't always like this.
- johnny22 6y ago
  depends on what you mean by always, but looking back at how this was handled re: tobacco, leaded gasoline, and climate change (pre 2000) should give you some idea. As far as I personally can see, it's been like this for a large portion of the 1900s at least.
- auslegung 6y ago
  Yes, things have always been this way and if you really want to see just how long, look at speeches and other “news” from Ancient Greece. The significant difference today is how quickly and widely falsehoods can be distributed and redistributed, and how many different sources this can happen to. Pre Internet, if I started telling my friends about this thing called QAnon, how far and how quickly could it really spread? Not far and not quickly. Today however it can spread across the world in a day and be picked up by every major news outlet. It’s disturbing, and we should all be very concerned.
  - jakeogh 6y ago
    Curious people can read the posts directly at qmap dot pub.
droopyEyelids 6y ago
I agree normal people aren't well equipped. But when you phrase it that way, you make it sounds like the professionals are well equipped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
- autokad 6y ago
  I remember when I saw a headline that said gene researchers say there is no way the virus was made in a lab. I'm like oh this should be interesting, they must have done some sort of dating on the mutations. maybe there are markings biologists can look at that are telling signs of natural vs man-made. or compared genomes to ... And there 100% undeniable argument: the virus effects bats and people researching bio weapons would -only- look at virus that effects humans. I'm like really? are you really that narrow minded and completely devoid of imagination? you think labs are only for making bio-weapons? you think someone making a bio-weapon would limit themselves to just virus that effects humans? that's your full proof thinking? I'm like wow. wow.
  - voldacar 6y ago
    >you really that narrow minded and completely devoid of imagination? you think labs are only for making bio-weapons? It wouldn't even have to be bio-weapon related. It could just be a genetically altered virus (routine in gain of function research) that escaped a lab due to an accident or carelessness, and was later covered up with the whole wet market story. People who disdain the idea that the virus could be man made are almost always attacking the hypothesis of a deliberate bio-weapon release, which is such a straw man.
    - droopyEyelids 6y ago
      It's the whole "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" thing... but I always like to add, "and don't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by the fundamental complexity of life"
mtgp1000 6y ago
>It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show I'm pretty sure this is the exact attitude that the poster was describing. You're just blanket dismissing out of mainstream science with accusations of bad faith.
akimball 6y ago
You argument appears to be that I should focus on a strawman instead of evaluating the evidence.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
etangent 6y ago
I believe this is "bbut what if baad people cite my article?" defense for what is essentially a form of authoritarian groupthink.

logjammin 6y ago

"You better agree with consensus" has always been the current culture in science. It's nothing to do with science itself -- just human emotionality. We don't change unless we have to, unless there's overwhelming evidence that we need to.

robbiep 6y ago
That is antithetical to the principles of science, but it depends on what area of science you operate in. To take the spectrum of shades of grey: - white would be math - first hint of grey with physics - greyer all they way down to biology where every different field has their own bar graphs You're a lunatic if you say 2+2=5, to return to the cases in point, it's been done, it's been dusted (mostly), and there's going to be a lot more work to do in the future to clear it up but people will always want to see the 'missing link' or proof that there was no leakage (deliberate or otherwise) from the lab. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

newacct583 6y ago

> "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." Isn't that the whole point of science? Big claims require big proof. What standard are you proposing be used instead? Or are you leaning on the "better" in that sentence in the sense of coercion? As in, you're saying that arguments without overwhelming evidence that contradict established consensus are being suppressed? If so, how? This garbage is being circulated endlessly. There's not a virologist in the world who isn't aware of it. It's not suppressed. It's just wrong.

autokad 6y ago
the papers make a lot of specific arguments. if you have evidence against those arguments, you can say this point is wrong, here is the evidence against it, therefore that claim is likely wrong. Thats science. Your method comes off as: thats not the consensus, thus you are wrong.
- newacct583 6y ago
  You're missing the point of "consensus". The value of having a scientific consensus of trusted sources is precisely that we don't have to all individually read random conspiracy nonsense and come up with counterarguments on our own. We can trust the experts. So if you come by with a theory that isn't supported by those experts, the burden is on YOU to convince people, not me. Now I know you're going to come right back and tell me why, this time, after the last thousand tries, the consensus really is wrong and the conspiracy nuts are actually believing in a REAL conspiracy this time. And again I'll rely on my general sense of statistics to tell me who to trust.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    > The value of having a scientific consensus of trusted sources is precisely that we don't have to all individually read random conspiracy nonsense and come up with counterarguments on our own. We can trust the experts. This sounds like a priesthood. Don’t consider evidence from rando papers. Instead, simply trust the consensus view of these certain, special people who have been blessed as truth-knowers and wear the right robes and hats.

jonahbenton 6y ago

Read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Always how it has been, since beginning of the thing we call "science."

chrisco255 6y ago
Yeah but maybe the fact that science and politics and media have become so interwoven and in some cases march to the same drum, it does feel like something is quantitatively different about science in 2020.
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  Agree both that 2020 is completely effed and that important issues from political perspective right now are unusually science driven. Having to go through the process Kuhn describes but where both the brains involved in paradigm transition are not trained in evidence, and, the accumulating evidence is...people dying from COVID...is just so grim.

lord_braleigh 6y ago

You're free to present crazy-sounding arguments in day-to-day conversation, but a journal isn't the place to present crazy arguments. Journals are where you present overwhelming evidence or replicate/falsify existing results.

ddxxdd 6y ago
Journals are where scientists present any sort of evidence that is backed by sound reasoning, meta-studies are where overwhelming evidence tends to be presented. If it were any other way, then where would scientists publish underwhelming evidence that is crucial for accumulation in order for overwhelming evidence to appear?

lemmsjid 6y ago

I think there's a two way problem. The current state of public discourse on science in the U.S. is very skewed from scientific consensus. For example a YouGov poll found that 49% of Americans think that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab. This kind of skew between public perception and scientific consensus can create a siege mentality, because it's easy to find someone who has been convinced by some media subculture that something is self-evidently true in spite of reams of evidence to the contrary. As in the vaccination-autism connection situation, all it can take is one scientific study, subsequently debunked, to give an entire movement the validation they need to completely ignore an enormous consensus with plenty of data to back it up. BTW (need to add this disclaimer on the internets, I often forget) I'm not disagreeing with you, just riffing off your comment with some more thoughts.

gridlockd 6y ago
What are the “reams of evidence” that the virus did not come from a lab?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lemmsjid 6y ago
  True, that was a poor argument on my part. I should say, lack of evidence that it did. Which weakens my argument, so thanks for pointing it out.
unishark 6y ago
Anti-vaxxers is a pretty small movement according to polls, compared to the attention they've been getting (ten percentish). And it's certainly not just a US thing. More people probably believe in astrology. I'm not a virologist (nor a conspiracy theorist, by the way), but every time I read articles about the origin of covid being settled, I feel like the writer is trying to push an agenda. Yes they give perfectly sound logical reasoning, sure, but that's all it is. The counter view obviously will continue to be driven by the location of the origin. Edit: and by the way, the autism-caused-by-vaccines theory is not solely the result of a bad study getting too much attention. It is similarly the result of people making conclusions from big coincidences. In this case the onset of autism (at least the age when symptoms get bad) is commonly around the same age that children get vaccinated. The study didn't just make that idea up, they were trying to validate a belief that was already held relatively widely.

bamboozled 6y ago

How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally accepted as the truth? Sometimes ideas initially can seem crazy because they're unfamiliar I guess. I suppose in this case, I oppose this idea because it sounds kind of scary.

nemo 6y ago
How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally rejected as false?
akimball 6y ago
Almost always. Have you met reviewer number 2? I suppose he's right most of the time, and feels vindicated as a result. I'm just troubled by the the modulus, the work of merit, rare and precious as it is, that suffers from the statistically justified bias for false negatives. I can certainly understand opposing an idea for diverse reasons, valid or invalid, but I can't understand how it is that some people seem to feel that opposing ideas on the basis of the balance of their features, rather than digging into the conditional structure and examining their merits and demerits, is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed. I consider that many of that group may have been anti-maskers as well, and that eventually evolution will take care of it, but I probably won't see the benefit of that.

bshoemaker 6y ago

That's because it's exhausting to debunk idiots & those operating in bad faith (often both); it takes several orders of magnitude more work to respond and debunk that unicorns don't exist than it does to post that they do.

akimball 6y ago
It would be inappropriate to infer that the OP was advocating for unicorns.
theknocker 6y ago
Consensus should be determined by science, not the other way around. Otherwise, what is the point of science? edit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." t. redditadmin.txt
- jmcgough 6y ago
  This isn't just about science. Conspiracy theorists and unethical people with agendas use documents like this to support their beliefs, and it becomes impossible to refute them. In the age of social media, misinformation and conspiracy theories can cause real damage.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    As a recent and somewhat topical example of this, there is an article circling around the internet right now that cites about a dozen studies proving that "masks don't work". If you actually read through the quoted studies you quickly realize that they don't actually support the author's conclusion at all. But that didn't stop the author from taking a bunch of out of context quotes to make an argument that sounded vaguely scientific - scientific enough for people with a particular agenda to parade it around as if the science was on their side. I started writing a rebuttal to this article, but as I was carefully reading through the details of the nth study to see if it actually matched what the author claimed, I realized I was just massively wasting my own time. The people spreading the article around don't actually care, they never read those studies and they never will. They just wanted something scientific-looking to cite that backs up their pre-existing opinions.

mekoka 6y ago

> it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." That current culture of science has gradually driven me toward skepticism. Unless I see converging evidence from various independent sources, a claim is just a big "maybe". How many of the claims have been peer reviewed, or replicated (when everyone is busy publishing their own papers, or competing to make the news, or signing book deals)? How much of what is repeated by those with a platform just a gambit, riding on the reputation of those claiming it first? How much is just unchecked assumptions (e.g. that others will have certainly verified the claims)? As you start looking closer, the level of imposture and bullshit is just too high. Scientists are as human as anyone, with everything it implies.

pdfernhout 6y ago
Something I put together about 10 years ago: https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-abou... "Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding. ..." See especially from Marcia Angell: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-co... "The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." And, from the 1990s, from David Goodstein, who was Vice Provost of Caltech then, here is part of why thing have gotten that way: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html "Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

groby_b 6y ago

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" If you make a claim that's wildly diverging from established consensus, yes, you're required to bring overwhelming evidence. Because the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the claim being wrong. There's no point in relitigating everything from first principles unless you can make it extremely clear it's worth the effort.

akimball 6y ago
I would go a step further: The odds of any claim being wrong are overwhelming, regardless of whether it is endorsed by the consensus or not, whether it is ordinary or extraordinary. Brains are not truth-making machines. Anyhow, I'm not sure what is extraordinary about biowarfare labs making biowarfare agents. It's actually quite ordinary.

iskander 6y ago

It's not just weak, it's incoherent and seemingly written by someone who misunderstood some wikipedia articles on virology. There's a difference between someone trying to seriously assess the possibility of lab origins for SARS-CoV-2 and whatever GPT-3 generated nonsense this post is.

La1n 6y ago

>current culture in science It's been that way for a long time, with Kuhn writing a whole book on it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_...